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Meanwhile, in Israel…A Time for Truth

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2024 //
8

Soldiers of the Israeli Defense Force discovered the bodies of six young hostages while searching the vast tunnel infrastructure under Gaza. All six had been captured on October 7, 2023 They were young people, and each had been shot in the head within 24-48 hours of being found. This event provoked massive protests in Israel, with hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, demanding both a ceasefire and a release of all the hostages. The national labor federation called a general strike in support of these demands. Sadly, while the public wants an end to the war, the leaders on both sides do not.

The following article by Amir Tibon appeared yesterday in Ha’aretz, a liberal Israeli news site.

It seems like a lifetime ago, but just two weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Israel, and ended his visit to the country with a surprising statement. The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said, had accepted the latest bridging proposal put forward by the United States and the other mediators in the talks for a hostage release and cease-fire deal.

Blinken’s intention was good: He wanted to increase the pressure on Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who has been stalling and refusing to compromise for months now, sticking to maximalist positions and doing everything he can to avoid negotiating in good faith. Almost 11 months into the war that Sinwar initiated with the October 7 massacre, Gaza is in ruins, tens of thousands are dead, but the man who brought this calamity on his people is hiding in a tunnel and haggling for time.

The problem with Blinken’s statement is that on the other side of the negotiating table is a cynical and ruthless politician who feels even less urgency to reach a deal than Sinwar. Netanyahu pulled on Blinken the same trick he has been pulling on American diplomats for his entire career: Doublespeak. One message in English, the opposite in Hebrew.

And so, after a lengthy conversation in which Netanyahu promised the secretary that he will accept the bridging documentput forward by the mediators, Blinken gave his statement – and the Israeli prime minister, having “pocketed” the achievement, moved on to his next move.

In the two weeks that have passed since the visit, Netanyahu has done everything humanly possible to turn Blinken’s statement into a total joke. He imposed new conditions for any future agreement, stated that Israel will “never” evacuate its forces from the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, and pushed Israel’s security cabinet to pass a decision that prohibits any withdrawal from there. His own defense minister warned the cabinet members during a heated discussion on Friday morning that Netanyahu’s desired decision is a de facto death sentence for the dozens of living hostages still held in Gaza. Netanyahu ignored him.

It’s too late to save the six hostages who were murdered last week by Hamas, after surviving 11 months in the tunnels of Gaza. The time to save them was in June and July, when a deal was in hand, and Netanyahu again added new, last-minute obstacles.

At the end of the day, the Biden administration – which seems much more eager than the Israeli government and Hamas to reach a deal – is facing an impossible situation. Sinwar is an ultrareligious fanatic with a murderous zeal and a messianic world view. Netanyahu is an egotistic, selfish man who values the survival of his own coalition over the survival of the hostages. It’s not clear if the administration can truly get a deal under these circumstances. But if it can’t, it owes one thing to the families of the hostages, especially the American ones: to tell the truth, and stop allowing either side to use political tricks and manipulations.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Extremism, International

Paul Krugman: Why Do Republicans Oppose Free Lunches for Children?

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2024 //
35

Paul Krugman, the economist who writes a regular column for the New York Times, recently explored why Republicans oppose free lunch for students. The simple answer is that it’s just plain weird. The more complex answer is that they don’t want to create an “entitlement” for children. The irony that he does not explore is why Republicans are unwilling to pay for free lunches, yet eager to pay the tuition of students who attend religious or other private schools, regardless of their family’s income.

He writes:

You could say that Tim Walz became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee with one weird trick — that is, by using that word to describe Donald Trump and JD Vance, a categorization that went viral. In his maiden campaign speech he upgraded it a bit further to “creepy and weird as hell.” (If you think that’s over the top, have you seen Trump’s bizarre rant speculating about whether Joe Biden is going to seize back his party’s presidential nomination?)

But Walz is more than a meme-maker. He has also been an activist governor of Minnesota with a strong progressive agenda. And I’d like to focus on one key element of that agenda: requiring that public and charter schools provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students.

Perhaps not incidentally, child care has long been a signature issue for Kamala Harris, and Walz’s policies may have played a role in his selection as her running mate.

In any case, free school meals are a big deal in pure policy terms. They have also met fierce Republican opposition. And the partisan divide over feeding students tells you a lot about the difference between the parties, and why you really, really shouldn’t describe the MAGA movement as “populist.”

Now, even many conservatives generally support, or at least claim to support, the idea of cheap or free lunches for poor schoolchildren. The National School Lunch Program goes all the way back to 1946, when it passed with bipartisan support and President Harry Truman signed it into law.

Why should the government help feed kids? Part of the answer is social justice: Children don’t choose to be born into families that can’t or won’t feed them adequately, and it seems unfair that they should suffer. Part of the answer is pragmatic: Children who don’t receive adequate nutrition will grow up to be less healthy and less productive adults than those who do, hurting society as a whole. So spending on child nutrition is arguably as much an investment in the future as building roads and bridges.

There’s a strong case that in general child nutrition programs more than pay for themselves by creating a healthier, higher-earning future work force. In other words, this is one area where there really is a free lunch.

Schools, then, should feed students who might otherwise not get enough to eat. But why make free meals available to all children, rather than only to children from low-income households? There are multiple reasons, all familiar to anyone who has looked into the problems of antipoverty policy in general.

First, trying to save money by limiting which children you feed turns out to be expensive and cumbersome; it requires that school districts deal with reams of paperwork as they try to determine which children are eligible. It also imposes a burden on parents, requiring that they demonstrate their neediness.

Additionally, restricting free meals to children whose parents can prove their poverty creates a stigma that can deter students from getting aid even when they’re entitled to receive it. I know about this effect from family history: My mother, who grew up in the Depression, used to talk about her shame at not being able to afford new shoes because her parents, although just as poor as her classmates’ parents, couldn’t bring themselves to apply for government assistance.

And it’s not as if feeding children is prohibitively expensive. So if you want to make sure that children get enough to eat, having schools offer free meals to all their students, without an income test, would seem to be simple common sense.

But Republicans in general aren’t on board. The Minnesota law that Walz signed passed essentially along party lines. The people behind Project 2025, in particular, don’t approve. (Yes, despite denials, Project 2025 is a very good guide to what a second Trump administration might do.) The project’s magnum opus, “Mandate for Leadership,” whose 900 pages lays out a detailed policy agenda, singles out feeding students as something that should be reined in. “Federal school meals increasingly resemble entitlement programs,” it warns, as if this is self-evidently a bad thing. A bit farther down, it reads, “The U.S.D.A. should not provide meals to students during the summer unless students are taking summer-school classes.” I guess being hungry isn’t a problem when school is out.

Stories like this are why my hackles rise whenever people call MAGA a populist movement. The people who will almost certainly make policy if Trump wins are as committed as ever to a right-wing economic agenda of cutting taxes on the wealthy while slashing programs that help Americans in need — including programs that help children.

In addition to being cruel, this agenda tends to be unpopular. Most Americans support providing all students with meals, regardless of their income, just as most Americans now support the Affordable Care Act, which Trump will very likely again try to destroy if returned to office.

But the American right lives in an echo chamber that normalizes views on both economic and social policy that are very much at odds with what a majority of voters want. Those extreme views often fly under the radar. But sometimes they do attract attention. And when they do, many people find them … weird.

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, Elections, Funding, Health, Hypocrisy, Inequality, Poverty, Students, Vouchers

Thom Hartmann: Scams, Corruption and the Election

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2024 //
6

Thom Hartmann encourages readers to beware of political scams right before the elections. The economy is cooling off. Why isn’t the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates? Is it because the chair of the Federal Reserve is a Republican? Did you know about Trump’s increase in wealth during his presidency? I don’t agree that Trump wants to get elected to make money; I think he wants to stay out of jail. But we may both be right.

He writes:

—  Is the Fed Chair “trying to get Donald Trump elected” by keeping rates high? The anti-corruption watchdog group Revolving Door Project is claiming that lifetime Republican and former commercial banker Jerome Powell, now the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is “trying to get Donald Trump elected.” Fully two months ago, Powell noted that “this is no longer an overheated economy” and “the labor market appears to be fully back in balance.” Yesterday’s jobs numbers — lower than expected new jobs (144,000) and a jump in unemployment to 4.3% — suggest the economy is on the verge of tipping into recession, an event that Trump yesterday pointed out and proclaimed is happening because of “Kamalanomics.” The Project’s Executive Director Jeff Hauser was explicit: “That Powell’s Fed still refuses to lower interest rates—after Trump said that rates shouldn’t be lowered before the election—raises questions about the central bank’s independence. Whether the Fed keeps rates high or brings them down, one of two presidential candidates will benefit. While lower rates would provide much-needed economic relief to the American people, Powell has instead chosen to stick it to the people and give an electoral boost to Trump.” Senator Elizabeth Warren yesterday called on the Fed chair to “cancel his summer vacation” and “lower interest rates now.” The warnings signs are flashing bright red — with worldwide declines in stock market indexes — and if Powell and the Fed don’t lower interest rates at least a half point within the next few weeks, it’ll be safe to conclude that Hauser is exactly right in his diagnosis of this situation. 

— Did Egypt give a $10 million bribe to Trump? The Washington Post published a blockbuster report yesterday, detailing how the Egyptian government pulled together $10 million in cash in 2016 right after Donald Trump sought out Egyptian dictator El-Sisi and promised him a presidential visit (which he fulfilled) right after his inauguration. The Department of Justice found out about it in 2019 and the FBI began an investigation, but Attorney General Bill Barr — one of the most publicly corrupt senior government officials in modern history — put the kibosh on the investigation. As a result, nobody knows if or how the money was delivered to Trump, although right around the time it would have been delivered Trump took the unusual step of putting exactly $10 million of his own money into his campaign. Saudis and Russians own large parts of Trump Tower and multiple nations funneled millions to Trump by booking blocks of rooms in his DC hotel and then just leaving them empty. Forbes estimates that Trump’s businesses brought in $2.4 billion during his four years as president; hundreds of millions of that came from foreign governments and from his charging the Secret Service and our US government a small fortune for their stays at Trump properties around the world. His entire presidency, it turns out, was a giant grift; no wonder he wants back into office. 

— Senate Republicans tell us who they are. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan increased child tax credits in a way that lifted an estimated 30 million children out of poverty, cutting the US child poverty rate in half. They expired last year, and legislation to reinstate them passed the House with roughly equal votes from both Democrats and Republicans. Iowa Senate Republican Chuck Grassley famously opposes help to poor families, saying “passing a tax bill that makes the president look good mailing out checks before the election, means he could be reelected and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts.” Senate Republicans got the message and killed the bill on Thursday afternoon, keeping child poverty in America at a higher level than any other developed nation in the world.

Republicans say that the child tax credits are an effort by Democrats to buy votes. Maybe they are but when they were in effect, they cut child poverty rates in half. That’s reason enough for both parties to support them.

Categories Cruelty, Economy, Elections, Fraud, Republicans, Trump

North Carolina: Republican Candidate for State Superintendent is an Extremist and Crackpot

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2024 //
2

CNN reported that Michele Morrow, the GOP candidate for State Superintendent of Schools in North Carolina, filmed a video on January 6 urging Trump to “put the Coonstitution to the side” and use the military to stay in power. Morrow was in DC for the January 6 rally but she says she never entered the Capitol.

In a deleted Facebook livestream she filmed from her hotel room, Morrow called for mass arrests of anyone who helped certify the 2020 election. “And if the police won’t do it and the Department of Justice won’t do it, then he will have to enact the Insurrection Act,” said Morrow. “In which case the Insurrection Act completely puts the Constitution to the side and says, now the military rules all.”

Morrow was at the Capitol as the attack occurred, according to public videos reviewed by CNN that show her in a restricted area on the northwest side of the Capitol. CNN has seen no evidence that Morrow entered the Capitol building that day or that she engaged in violence, and she was not charged with any crimes.

In March’s Republican primary, Morrow defeated the incumbent North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, a job that manages the state’s $11 billion budget for K-12 public schools and helps set education priorities and implement curriculum standards.

That same month, CNN’s KFile reported Morrow had previously called for the public execution of Barack Obama and the death of Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats in comments on a since-deleted X account.

“I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad,” Morrow wrote in a since-deleted post from May 2020 about Obama. “I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.”

Morrow home-schooled her children. She previously lost a local school board election. She is running now to take control of the education of all the children in North Carolina.

A terrifying prospect.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, North Carolina, Privatization, Trump

Jim Hightower: The Real Purpose of Project 2025

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2024 //
14

Jim Hightower is a Texas Democrat who spent some time in state government, back in the days when Democrats had a shot at winning statewide offices in Texas. He warns here about the real purpose of Project 2025: to turn our country into a white Christian nation. The Founders never said that. In fact, the only things they said in the Constiturion was that there should be no religious test for office. And the First Amendment barred any establishment of any religion and guaranteed freedom of religion. So what these extremists are doing is a blatant violation of the Constitution.

Hightower writes:

We’ve seen a ton of social media posts and emails in the last week or so about Project 2025, and although we’re still working on a fuller analysis to give you the lowdown on what it means to you, as well as tools to fight it, we felt it was urgent to get some solid info into Lowdowner’s hands as soon as we could. Y’all are quite the army of activists (we see the results when you take action!) and we know that if we offer up the goods, you can take them and run with them.

Here’s our brief primer on what this mess is, what’s at stake, and what you can start to do.

What is it?

If you don’t know what Project 2025 is, or would like a brief summary to use to alert others about it, here you go:

It’s a painstakingly detailed, 922-page step-by-step plan to impose an American dictatorship of moneyed authoritarians and Christian nationalists, removing your and my democratic rights. Yes, this is an actual coup.

It sounds insane, yet there it is—a document written and being loudly promoted by a power-mad cluster of Trump bosses, Putin-esque despots, Reagan-loving economists and Ayn Rand-ian academics, moneyed corporate donors, and general far-right quacks and media blowhards. It’s innocuously coded “Project 2025” because the intent is to launch their full assault on the democratic fabric and structure of our national government next January, on Day 1 of another Trump presidency.

This scheme has been devised by The Heritage Foundation, a DC think tank set up in 1973 to promote the elitist economic and cultural doctrines of its über-rich founding funders, Joseph Coors (yes, that Coors) and Richard Mellon Scaife (yes, that Mellon). In recent years, Heritage has gone from merely being right-wing zealots to off-the-charts Trumpists… and now they’re going deep into the distant extremist cosmos. Thus, the head cosmonaut, Kevin Roberts, has megalomaniacally exulted that Project 2025 is “the second American revolution.” Unfortunately, it’s a dangerous devolution, with little tin-hat Kevin acting out what he pretends is a heroic coup.

This would be silly and inconsequential, except the Trump Party has become alarmingly treacherous. Ominously referencing the January 6th violent assault on democratic rule, Kevin said that his coup “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Of course, “the left”—i.e., sane democracy fighters like you and me—do not acquiesce to tyrannical wannabes.

But his ace is that The Donald, despite his denials, has hailed Heritage’s authoritarian agenda as his own and has cheered its plan to fire thousands of public employees on Day 1, replacing them with a lockstep army of enforcers that Heritage and others say they’ve already recruited to seize and Trump-ize every federal agency. This, combined with Trump’s own pledge to use the US military to enforce his political will, is where Project 2025’s subversive coup gets real. 

Here are just a few of the steps we’ve learned so far that Heritage autocrats intend to implement: 

  • Nearly eliminating abortion access altogether at the national level.
  • Cutting Social Security benefits.
  • Giving ever-more tax breaks to corporations and gabillionaires. 
  • Selling off national parklands, wetlands, wildlife sanctuaries and other public properties
  • Eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR, PBS).
  • Imposing a “biblically-based” definition of marriage and families.
  • Eliminating the Department of Education.
  • Preventing LGBTQ+ couples from adopting children.
  • Eliminating the food stamp program (SNAP) and the free school lunch program.
  • Putting the Department of Justice and other independent agencies under the direct political control of the President.
  • Eliminating organic food promotion, conservation programs, and most climate policies of the Agriculture Department

For more in depth reading, check out this series from the Center for American Progress.

Why is this different from previous right-wing agendas?

One, they were piecemeal proposals, like Bush the Second’s failed attack on Social Security, or they were just sloganeering war whoops, like Grover Norquist’s empty call to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub. 

Two, Project 2025 is a comprehensive, all-in-one blueprint for a radical plutocratic and theocratic takeover of our government, surreptitiously advanced by many of the same anti-democracy corporate supremacists and billionaires who’ve already seized control of the judicial branch.

Three, the Republican Party is perfectly willing to submit to and grovel at the feet of moneyed extremists, media demagoguery, and political thuggery—even in support of stupid, poisonous policies the American people overwhelmingly reject.

Four: Donald.

What can I do?

Right now, the most important thing you can do is to tell your friends and family about this terrifying agenda. Right-wingers are currently attacking the media reporting on this, calling progressives and even moderates who oppose the coup “Chicken Little”-types, trying to minimize this elitist assault on America itself. We cannot let them.

The most important people to share it with are not your super conservative relatives that drive you nuts, but rather people who may be feeling ambiguous about voting for a Democrat (whoever that is ends up being) for President. You’re not going to change the people who’ve already gone over to the crazies, but you have a chance at inspiring more undecided voters to at least vote against an explicitly un-American, Christian Nationalist, fascist ideology.

Categories Citizenship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans, Trump

Biden Administration Negotiates Historic Prisoner Swap with Russia

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2024 //
15

Good news for the families of Americans wrongfully detained in Russia: their loved ones have been released in a multi-nation deal. The deal confirmed that the U.S. was trying to include Andrei Navalny in the swap but he was killed in a Russian prison camp before the deal could be finalized. Trump, as customary, claimed that he could have gotten the prisoners released in a day, undoubtedly by a phone call to his pal Putin. But Whelan’s family complained that Trump did nothing to get him out of Russian prisons.

MSNBC News reports:

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine veteran Paul Whelan are among the Americans released on Thursday in a prisoner swap between the U.S., Russia and other countries.

Russian-American radio journalist Alsu Kurmashev, U.S. permanent resident Vladimir Kara-Murza and 12 German nationals held in Russia have also been released in exchange for eight Russian nationals who were being held in the U.S., Slovenia, Germany, Norway and Poland.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called the swap, one of the largest since the Cold War, “historic.” 

“It’s the culmination of many rounds of complex, painstaking negotiations over many, many months,” Sullivan said on a call with reporters Thursday morning.

Gershkovich, 32, was detained in March 2023 while he was on assignment in Moscow. He was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security prison last month. Both the U.S. government and Gershkovich’s employer, The Wall Street Journal, called his trial a “sham.”

Whelan, 54, had been serving a 16-year sentence in a Russian penal colony after being convicted of espionage in 2020. He was arrested in December 2018 while in Russia for a friend’s wedding. 

Both men and the U.S. government have vehemently denied allegations of espionage.

Negotiations in prisoner swaps between the U.S. and Russia have often been colored by political tensions. Sources told NBC News earlier this year that a deal to release Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, as well as Whelan and Gershkovich, had been in the works before Navalny died in a penal colony in February. At the time, President Joe Biden blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalny’s death.

In 2022, while criticizing the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, former President Donald Trump said he had turned down a deal to secure Whelan’s release in exchange for Bout. Whelan’s family has said that Trump did little to move negotiations forward when he was president. 

Trump has also repeatedly claimed that he would free Gershkovich from Russian detention if he wins the November election, boasting that Putin would “do that for me, but not for anyone else.” His remarks were widely criticized, including for potentially scuttling the possibility of Gershkovich’s release prior to the U.S. election.

Categories Biden, Cruelty, International, Trump

ProPublica: J.D. Vance Says Trust Alex Jones, Not Rachel Maddow

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2024 //
89

ProPublica reported on a speech by J.D. Vance in which he praised the notorious Alex Jones, who has been ordered to pay $1.5 billion to the parents of children murdered in the Sandy Hook school massacre. Jones claimed that the massacre was staged by “crisis actors” to build support for gun control. The parents of the dead children were harassed by Jones’ followers for years.

Now we learn, in a report by Andy Kroll of ProPublica and Nick Sugrey of Documented, that Vance’s views are more extreme than we knew.

They wrote:

Sen. J.D. Vance, whom Donald Trump named as his vice presidential running mate Monday, told a group of influential young conservatives in a closed-door speech in 2021 that they should stand up for “nonconventional people” who speak truth, such as Infowars founder Alex Jones.

“If you listen to Rachel Maddow every night, the basic worldview that you have is that MAGA grandmas who have family dinners on Sunday and bake apple pies for their family are about to start a violent insurrection against this country,” Vance said. “But if you listen to Alex Jones every day, you would believe that a transnational financial elite controls things in our country, that they hate our society, and oh, by the way, a lot of them are probably sex perverts too.”

Vance went on, “Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that’s actually a hell of a lot more true than Rachel Maddow’s view of society.”

He said that every person in attendance for his speech believed “something that’s a little crazy.” In his case, he said, “I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society. That’s a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well-educated people in this country right now.”

Vance made these remarks at a September 2021 gathering of the Teneo Network, an invitation-only group of young conservatives that counts elected officials, pro athletes, financial executives and media figures among its members. Vance joined Teneo six years ago. ProPublica and Documented obtained a video recording of his 30-minute speech and question-and-answer session, which has not been previously reported.

Vance’s remarks at the conference — which you can read a transcript of or watch in full below — give a rare unvarnished look at his thinking and illustrate how aligned he is with various factions within the conservative and MAGA movements. “I’ll throw out the standard campaign speech,” he began his Teneo talk. “[I’ll] actually just try to level with you guys about what I do see is the big — a few big problems that are in our country right now.”

Watch J.D. Vance’s Speech at a Private Teneo Network Event

Vance’s 2021 speech lays out what he sees as the “big problems” facing the United States and what the conservative movement should do to address them. (Obtained by ProPublica and Documented)

According to tax records, the Teneo Network’s chairman is Leonard Leo, the legal activist who built a pipeline of lawyers who interpret the Constitution based on the “original intent” of the framers or the meaning of the words in the text when they were written. One of the most influential conservatives of the past three decades, Leo helped confirm all six conservative justices currently serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. Leo-aligned judges have pushed to restrict abortion rights and rein in the government’s power to regulate corporations.

Leo has said he views the Teneo Network as a way to extend his influence beyond the judiciary to industries including finance, media, government and Silicon Valley. The network identifies and cultivates conservative leaders in “other areas of American culture and American life where things are really messed up right now,” as Leo put it in a Teneo video.

According to internal Teneo documents, Vance joined Teneo in 2018, several years before he ran for Senate in his home state of Ohio. His book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” had already become a bestseller, and Vance was a commentator for CNN while running his own nonprofit and investment fund backing startup companies outside of Silicon Valley.

“JD Vance has been part of the organization for at least five years and his appearance at the 2021 Teneo Retreat was well received by many young professional leaders in attendance,” Leo said. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

By the time Vance spoke at Teneo’s 2021 conference, he had joined the race to fill outgoing Sen. Rob Portman’s seat. Despite his past criticisms of Trump, which included calling the former president an “idiot” and comparing him to Adolf Hitler, Vance won Trump’s endorsement in 2022 and cruised to a comfortable victory.

Vance’s connection to Teneo could form a bridge between different factions of the Republican Party that seem to be at odds. Previous news stories have reported that Trump and Leo, who advised the former president on judicial nominees during his administration, are no longer as close as they once were. Russ Vought, a Trump ally, publicly denigrated the Federalist Society, the legal networking group Leo and others built into a juggernaut.

Adding Vance to the ticket bolsters the connections between Leo’s network and the Trump 2024 campaign. It also strengthens ties between Trump’s reelection bid and the Project 2025 blueprint, which outlines plans for a second Trump administration, including firing thousands of career civil servants, shuttering the Department of Education and replacing ambitious goals to combat climate change with ramped-up fossil fuel production. In a recent TV interview, Vance said the document contained “some good ideas” but claimed that “most Americans couldn’t care less about Project 2025” and that the Trump campaign wasn’t affiliated with it.

In his Teneo remarks, he bemoaned that decades ago major corporate CEOs reliably donated money to Republicans but now they give heavily to Democrats. He lamented that conservatives had “very few oligarchs on our side,” had “lost every institution in American society” and needed to make corporations “taking the side of the left in the culture wars feel real economic pain.”

“So we’ve not just lost the academy,” meaning universities, “which we’ve lost for a long time; we haven’t just lost the media, which has been on the side of the left for a long time; we now find ourselves in a situation where our biggest multinational corporations are active participants in the culture war on the other side,” he said. “It’s really been a few of us over the past few years who have recognized that the big corporations have really turned against conservatives in a very big and powerful way.”

He argued that conservatives needed to take action against corporations that, say, defended abortion rights or punished employees who spoke out against abortion access. “If we’re unwilling to make companies that are taking the side of the left in the culture wars feel real economic pain, then we’re not serious about winning the culture war,” he said.

He said that Americans were “terrified to tell the truth” and “point out the obvious,” including that “there are real biological, cultural, religious, spiritual distinctions between men and women.” He added, “I think that’s what the whole transgender thing is about, is like fundamentally denying basic reality.”

Shortly before he spoke at the Teneo conference, Vance drew criticism when he tweeted that “Alex Jones is a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow.” Jones, founder of the online show Infowars, gained a following with his promotion of conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. More recently, judges in several states ordered him to pay $1.5 billion to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, which Jones had called a hoax.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Guns, Lies

Project 2025: A Recipe for Disaster!

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2024 //
41

Former President Trump recently discovered that members of his administration had produced a set of plans for his next term. They did this under the guidance of the Heritage Foundation, the Republican Party’s ideological center. If you believed that Trump knew nothing about this 900-page guidebook, I know of a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Project 2025 is a handbook of extremism. It represents the far-right Republicans’ desire to eliminate many federal programs and, as right winger Grover Norquist one memorably said, “Shrink it so it can be drowned in a bathtub.”

North Carolina public school advocates Patty Williams and David Zonderman are public school graduates and parents. They wrote the following about Project 2025:

In the Spring of 2023, the Heritage Foundation released Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, aka Project 2025. Now, more than a year later, it is finally getting the serious attention that it demands. In its early pages, the Foundation claims to “have gone back to the future—and then some.” We are warned that, “The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” To fight this supposed incubus sucking the life out of the republic, a growing number of conservative organizations have joined the Heritage Foundation in supporting this project and intend to assemble an army to march on Washington to “deconstruct the Administrative State.”

 

Project 2025 is both breathtaking and scary in its scope. It envisions a far-right rewriting of government missions, policies, and procedures, ranging from the White House, through all Cabinet-level departments, to the Federal Reserve and other independent regulatory agencies.  Tens of thousands of federal employees could be fired or subject to politically-inspired loyalty tests, gutting almost 150 years of civil service reform, and erasing institutional memory, knowledge, and expertise. Whole federal departments—including the Department of Education—and the funding that goes with them could be left on the cutting room floor, with disastrous consequences for the least among us.

 

This far-right “Playbook” is a frontal assault on honest and competent government, and the underpinnings of our 248-year-old democracy. Project 2025 flips the script on our nation’s foundation of liberty, prosperity, and the rule of law by inverting and perverting fact and data about how government actually functions to protect the environment, ensure safe workplaces, and provide some safety net for those in poverty. 

 

Project 2025 may appear to come from the right-wing fever swamp, which conjures up something out of science fiction. Indeed, it does remind us of a legendary Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode, first televised in March of 1962. In “To Serve Man,” earth is visited by the Kanamits. Enormously tall aliens, they appear frightening at first, but are eventually welcomed by humans. The Kanamits help end famine, eliminate war, and provide unlimited energy supplies for the betterment of the planet. 

 

Seemingly altruistic in their efforts, the Kanamits leave a book behind at the United Nations, which a decoding expert, Hero Chambers and his able assistant, Pat, begin to translate. Meanwhile, the Kanamits invite enthusiastic Earthlings to visit their planet, and flight reservations fill up quickly. Only when Pat races up to a space ship about to lift off does she reveal to Chambers that the title of the book—To Serve Man—is a cookbook. A recipe for disaster.

 

Project 2025 also proclaims to serve man, perhaps not literally on a silver platter like the Kanamits; but it may also cannibalize our government, our nation, and our democracy. Unlike the hapless denizens of earth in the Twilight Zone, we don’t need a decoding expert to see through the myths and deceptions that seek to dismantle our enduring republic and its Constitutional rights.

 

Let’s not wait until it’s too late and our collective goose is cooked. It’s time to stir the pot. Encourage your friends and family to vote as though their democracy depends on it—because it does.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans, Vouchers

Louisiana Criminalizes Abortion Pills

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2024 //
21

The Governor and Legislature want to make sure that women in their state cannot obtain an abortion so they passed a law reclassifying abortion drugs as controlled dangerous substances. Most abortions occur by use of the pills, which the Federal Drug Administration has declared to be safe and effective. Currently they are available by mail, but obtaining them without a prescription will soon be illegal. The new law takes effect October 1.

Louisiana lawmakers have added two drugs commonly used in pregnancy and reproductive health care to the state’s list of controlled dangerous substances, a move that has alarmed doctors in the state.

Mifepristone and misoprostol have many clinical uses, and one use approved by the FDA is to take the pills to induce an abortion at up to 10 weeks of gestation.

The bill that moved through the Louisiana Legislature this spring lists both medications as Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, creating penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught with the drugs without a valid prescription. Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed the bill into law in May. It takes effect Oct. 1.

The new law is the latest move by anti-abortion advocates trying to control access to abortion medications in states with near-total abortion bans, such as Louisiana. The law is the first of its kind, opening a new front in the state-by-state battle over reproductive medicine.

Categories Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Gender, Louisiana

Mary Trump: Is America in Cognitive Decline?

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2024 //
81

Mary Trump, daughter of Donald’s older brother, thinks that the nation might be suffering cognitive decline. How, she wonders, could anyone think longingly of the days when her uncle Donald was President, when chaos was a daily phenomenon?

She writes on her blog:

Since so many people are acting as if they’re certified neurologists, I’d thought I’d join in and discuss the one patient I actually am VERY worried about.

The United States of America appears to be experiencing cognitive decline. That’s the only way I can explain the short memories that have erased the horrors of my uncle’s catastrophic four years in the Oval Office. It’s the only way I can explain a poll that shows Donald with a 51 percent approval rating in Wisconsin. It’s the only way I can explain why this race is so close and Donald—the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist and fraud—remains a significant threat to our democracy. 

On Monday, the Huffington Post published a story about how next week’s Republican convention will cash in on the nation’s “collective amnesia” with a program that seeks to remind us about all of the “good times” we had during the Trump administration. Since those good times are purely fictional—unless, of course, you’re like Stephen Miller and enjoy kidnapping and incarcerating small children—it’s going to be fascinating to see how they go about it, and whether or not the corporate media fall for it.

As writer S.V. Date noted, “Donald Trump left the White House with violent crime spiking, thousands of Americans dying each day from a disease he claimed was no worse than the common cold and having attempted a coup to remain in office despite having lost reelection.”

“The former and would-be future president and the Republican National Committee on Monday released a schedule of convention themes that counts on Americans forgetting all that and instead waxing nostalgic for his years in office.” 

Waxing nostalgic? For a time when over 5,000 Americans were dying every day; basic supplies, like toilet paper and hand sanitizer, were impossible to find; and Donald showed his concern for the American people by playing golf every day?

Yes, I’m worried about us.

Don’t get me wrong—I wish I could forget, too. I wish I could forget the refrigerated morgue vans that idled in the streets of New York City while Donald threatened to withhold vital PPE from our frontline medical workers unless Gov. Cuomo kissed his ass.

I wish I could forget the way Donald ordered peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square to be tear-gassed so he could go do a photo-op in front of a church.

I wish I could forget the way he talked about the ratings of his COVID briefings while people were on lockdown and hospital emergency rooms were overflowing.

I wish I could forget the way he tormented non-MAGA Americans with his incessant tweeting.

I wish I could forget his telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

I wish I could forget the anguished screams of police officers as they were beaten and tortured by Donald’s followers on Jan. 6, 2021.

And I wish I could forget how he stacked the Supreme Court with Christian Nationalists who just stole basic human rights from tens of millions of women and then rewarded him by making him—him—king.

But I can’t forget any of that. And I’m determined not to let the rest of the country forget it either. One of our goals has to be to remind this as many people as possible just how bad things were and warn them that things will be so much worse—if we keep forgetting.

Americans have short memories. And after the massive traumas we’ve experienced over the last eight years, it’s completely understandable that people are inclined to forget. That’s how trauma works. The reason things in this country continue to seem bad now despite much evidence to the contrary is because we’ve never recovered from the horrors of the Trump administration. Ironically, forgetting how bad things were is leading to nostalgia for the worst four years of my lifetime.

The fact that it’s explicable doesn’t make it any less horrifying.

At next week’s Republican convention, the opening night’s theme is “Make America Wealthy Once Again.” 

Really? 

Donald left office with the economy cratering and the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover. Under Joe Biden, the stock market is breaking records daily, unemployment has been at impressive lows, wages are up, and manufacturing is back. America is much wealthier than it was when my uncle was in the White House.

On Tuesday, the theme is “Make America Safe Once Again.” 

Really? 

We would ask Officer Brian Sicknick if Donald made America safer, but we can’t because he died after being brutally beaten during Donald’s attack on the Capitol. We could ask former Vice President Pence, but Donald tried to get him hanged.

And on Wednesday, they’re going with “Make America Strong Once Again.” 

That is just beyond the pale. 

Donald is the weakest man I’ve ever known. He kisses up to dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un and Saudi Arabia’s MBS and Hungary’s Orban because he craves their power and hopes his groveling will convince them to lend him some of theirs. He thinks he can tell our allies to go to hell because, with a huge assist from the Republican Party, he’s banking on American’s forgetting who our enemies really are.

Either way, we have just a few short months to remind Americans what it was really like when Donald was in office and help them see—by talking about the Republican platform and the fascist agenda laid out in Project 2025—what the future will look like if Donald and his brown shirts get back into office.

He’s betting that we’ve forgotten a lot of things. And maybe we have. Maybe we aren’t just democracy in decline—maybe we’re a nation experiencing cognitive decline.

If we fail, I fear he will do things to this country and its people that we will never be able to forget. 

Or forgive. 

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Trump
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