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Dana Milbank: What the GOP Vote on the Federal Debt Really Means

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2023 //
12

The federal government has to raise the ceiling on the debt or face a default on its bonds, which would set off a national and international crisis. Congress has raised the debt ceiling many times in the past, including three times during Trump’s term.

An extraordinary part of the national debt was generated during Trump’s four years in office, according to ProPublica, especially his 2017 tax cut for the 1% and corporations:

One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt….The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war.

Republicans do not want to raise the debt ceiling. President Biden challenged them to come up with their own plan. They did. It involves cuts of 22% to everything but Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending.

Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post:

Jen Kiggans had the haunted look of a woman about to walk the plank.

The first-term Republican from Virginia barely took her eyes off her text Wednesday as she read it aloud on the House floor. She tripped over words and used her fingers to keep her place on the page.
The anxiety was understandable. Like about 30 other House Republicans from vulnerable districts, she was about to vote in favor of the GOP’s plan to force spending cuts of about $4.8 trillion as the ransom to be paid for avoiding a default on the federal debt.

“I do have serious concerns with the provision of this legislation that repeals clean-energy investment tax credits, particularly for wind energy,” she read. “These credits have been very beneficial to my constituents, attracting significant investment and new manufacturing jobs for businesses in southeast Virginia.”

Directing a question to the Republicans’ chief deputy whip, Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.), she asked for “the gentleman’s assurance that I will be able to address these concerns as we move forward in these negotiations and advocate for the interests of my district.”

The gentleman offered no such assurance. “I support repealing these tax credits,” he replied, offering only the noncommittal promise to “continue to work with the gentlewoman from Virginia, just like we will with all members.”

Kiggans then cast her vote to abolish the clean-energy credits her constituents find so “beneficial.”
House GOP leaders are celebrating their ability to pass their debt plan, even though it has no chance of surviving the Senate nor President Biden’s veto pen. But the bill’s passage has achieved one thing that cannot be undone: It has put 217 House Republicans on record in favor of demolishing popular government services enjoyed by their constituents.

In Kiggans’s Virginia, the legislation she just backed would strip tax incentives that go to the likes of Dominion Energy, which is building a $9.8 billion offshore wind project in her district. She also voted to ax solar and electric-vehicle incentives for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, and tax breaks projected to bring $11.6 billion in clean-power investment to the commonwealth.

In addition, the bill she supported sets spending targets that require an immediate 22 percent cut to all “non-defense discretionary spending” — that’s border security, the FBI, airport security, air traffic control, highways, agriculture programs, veterans’ health programs, food stamps, Medicaid, medical research, national parks and much more. If they want to cut less than 22 percent in some of those areas, they’ll have to cut more than 22 percent in others.

According to an administration analysis of what the 22 percent cuts translate to, Kiggans is now on record supporting:


Shutting down at least two air traffic control towers in Virginia.


Jeopardizing outpatient medical care for 162,300 Virginia veterans.


Throwing up to 175,000 Virginians off food stamps and ending food assistance for another 25,000 through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program Women, Infants and Children.


Cutting or ending Pell Grants for 162,900 Virginia college students.


Eliminating Head Start for 3,600 Virginia children and child care for another 1,300 children.


Adding at least two months to wait times for Virginia seniors seeking assistance with Social Security and Medicare.


Denying opioid treatment for more than 600 Virginians.


Ending 180 days of rail inspections per year and 1,350 fewer miles of track inspected.


Kicking 13,400 Virginia families off rental assistance.


Similar calculations can be made for the other 30 House Republicans targeted by Democrats in the 2024 elections who joined Kiggans in walking the plank. Since enactment of the clean-energy credits Republicans have now voted to repeal, for example, clean-energy projects worth some $198 billion and 77,261 jobs have moved forward in districts represented by Republicans, according to the advocacy group Climate Power…

Trump’s huge deficits funded tax cuts for the rich. Biden’s deficits are investments in the future and lifelines for struggling people.

The Republicans’ draconian plan with its deep cuts passed by one vote.

But this week, they jammed their giant, secretly negotiated debt-limit bill through the Rules Committee on a party-line vote — at 2:19 a.m. And they did it with a “deem-and-pass” rule.


Even then, after all the reversals and surrenders, the bill came within one vote of failing. The lawmaker who cast the final, deciding vote? Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).


How apt that this legislation, built on one broken promise after another, should be carried over the finish line by the world’s most famous liar.

Categories Biden, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Environment, Fake, Funding

The Mississippi Free Press: A Powerful Voice for News, History and Truth!

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2023 //
3

Donna Ladd, a native Mississippian, founded the Mississippi Free Press three years ago to shine a bright light on the state’s politics, history, and culture. The MFP has grown into a journalistic force. I am excited to join its advisory board, because the force of sunlight can be so powerful. I want to share Donna Ladd’s last newsletter, introducing a new reporter—Torsheta Jackson—and describing some of their exciting plans for the future. This team wants to free Mississippi from the dead hand of the past. Read Donna’s letter and I think you will understand why I am so enthusiastic about the Mississippi Free Press.

Read our latest stories from mfp.ms. And please support our work: mfp.ms/donate. Thank you! Meet Torsheta Jackson!

Donna writes:

One of my favorite reporting trips ever was touring around Noxubee County with then-freelance writer Torsheta Jackson in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because she grew up in the East Mississippi county, over on the Alabama border, Torsheta was the tour guide, driving us around in her big truck I had to lift myself into. First, she pointed out where she grew up in Shuqualak (locally pronounced “Sugar-lock”), the child of educators. Along the way, she pointed out slabs where industry, grocery stores and schools used to stand before her hometown became a shell of its former self over the decades after forced integration in 1970.

We walked around the ruins that now dominate the little downtown and talked about poverty, neglect, white-flight cycles and disinvestment in the county settled by rich white planters—including Mississippi State University founder Stephen D. Lee’s family—and built by enslaved people. The county has always been majority-Black, but usually under white control, from newspapers, to industry, to local education decisions and resources. It was also the site of vicious white terrorism to keep it that way.

Click now to support MFP’s Mapping Mississippi systemic-reporting strategy covering the 82 counties of Mississippi.

In the county seat of Macon, Torsheta showed me the county’s only remaining grocery store—white-owned and too expensive in a region where hunger is far too rampant, she said. She then took me to see the library, which still has its gallows, where they used to hang people in front of crowds on the front lawn, now marketed as a tourist attraction. We looked straight out the front window of the library at the tall Confederate statue standing in front of the courthouse across the street in a town that is 82% Black. The Board of Supervisors voted in July 2020 to remove it; last I checked, it was still there as post-George Floyd anti-racism enthusiasm wanes.

Torsheta showed me the abandoned Central Academy, which the superintendent of the county public schools helped open in the 1960s, supported by state vouchers, becoming the seg academy’s headmaster. She drove me to all the now-boarded-up, or disappeared or repurposed, public schools that used to be in Noxubee (locally pronounced “Nock-shu-bee”) County before most white families fled either to C.A. or to the local Mennonite school, which also opened in 1970.

Torsheta and I spent hours in the “new” Noxubee County public school just north of Macon, talking to the principal and the school psychologist—both women she knew growing up there. We learned about the perpetual state of crisis that faces the district and its one remaining public-school system covering the entire county; district leadership was changing again that day, in fact. And, of course, we learned about the systemic challenges that face Black women and their families, in particular, in Noxubee County, from no broadband, to hunger, to mental health and more. Their honesty with us informed Torsheta’s award-winning installment of our “(In)equity and Resilience: Black Women, Systemic Barriers and COVID-19” cause-solutions journalism project. It is now the prototype of our statewide county-level Mapping Mississippi systemic-reporting strategy that we’re amping up by summer with Torsheta’s help and inspiration.

Not to mention, a new area of research opened up for me when I heard the school psychologist’s story about a mob of local white men killing a Black woman school principal to stop the education and advancement of Black children: white terrorism specifically deployed to keep Black children uneducated and, thus, inequity and white control in place for generations to come. They said what they were doing for white-supremacy perpetuity right in the local newspaper. It wasn’t a secret. They bragged about ugly mob race violence by county leaders.Make a recurring donation now monthly, quarterly or annually to support the systemic journalism of Torsheta Jackson and our other reporters. Become an MFP VIP Club member.

It was an eye-opening and powerful journey for us both. Torsheta would later say on MFP Live that, before that reporting experience, she had not understood fully how intentional barriers and discrimination caused the decline of her home county over the decades. After this journey into the past, she did.

It was also on that tour of Noxubee County that I decided that I wanted Torsheta as a full-time reporter to take her systemic journalism across the state and help me build our Education Equity Solutions Lab. This is a very different kind of education reporting than the partisan griping about schools and funding that we usually see in Mississippi. For me, what I called Project Torsheta started on that trip. With her years of teaching experience (19 as of now), her brilliance, her curiosity, her wit and her stunning work ethic, I knew Torsheta was the kind of reporter Mississippi needs and deserves covering education. She can show us like no one else how education’s use as a political tool hurts families, children and whole communities.

Fast forward a couple of years, and it’s happening. Report for America announced Wednesday that it is supporting Torsheta as our lead education-equity reporter to do this work, paying a chunk of her salary for the next two to three years. After two years of working together to figure out timing and resources, Torsheta and I—and our whole team—are ecstatic that our vision is happening. I cannot wait to develop this work with Torsheta, and it doesn’t hurt that we recently hired fantastic Business Manager Jared Norton to free me up for more journalism. Torsheta and I (and others) will soon be traveling the state together again, doing the systemic journalism we know can help improve this state for all of our people.

I’ll talk more soon about our second new reporter we announced this week. Heather Harrison of Copiah County is the vivacious and dogged outgoing editor of The Reflector at Mississippi State. I knew in our first conversation (and then confirmed in a team solution circle) that she is bringing the energy, passion and curiosity that it takes to succeed and thrive at the Mississippi Free Press. She’ll be our first regional full-time bureau reporter, remaining in Starkville to largely cover that region of the state and help us collaborate with the Starkville Daily News.

Needless to say, you readers are making all of this growth happen. We started with $50,000 and one full-time reporter just three years ago. You have helped create 17 good-paying jobs and pay for myriad freelancers, contractors and interns—most of them brilliant and engaged Mississippi natives staying in their home state to do the work. Our resources are mostly from readers. You get it, and you are intentionally helping us grow our team and our reach to more counties.

Please help keep us growing by giving what you can now at mfp.ms/donate. Remember, your recurring donations are paying for at least one reporter already, so every amount matters.

Donna Ladd, Editor and CEO

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Courage, Creativity, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Media, Mississippi

Fabiola Santiago: DeSantis Hates Immigrants Too

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2023 //
14

Fabiola Santiago is a wonderful columnist who writes for the Miami Herald. Whenever I read her opinions, I find myself vigorously agreeing. In this column, she wrote about DeSsntis’s spiteful treatment of immigrants, which is abetted by people who were immigrants or the children of immigrants. Florida, once known for its diversity, is rapidly becoming a stronghold of white and Christian supremacy (DeSantis appeals to Jews in Florida by his devotion to Israel, which also pleases evangelical Christians). Santiago notes that DeSantis will harass businesses that hire undocumented immmigrants (think hotels, restaurants, farms), but exclude businesses owned by his donors. Sounds like fertile ground for a shakedown: contribute to the DeSantis campaign and avoid prosecution.

Santiago wrote recently:

Immigrant-hate-stoking Florida Gov. DeSantis should be persona non grata in South Florida. But gullible voters eagerly follow charlatans.

There are plenty of reasons to whisk away the welcome mat — DeSantis has attacked practically every distinctive feature we once stood for — none more repulsive than his loathing of undocumented immigrants, encapsulated in an immigration bill making its way through the Legislature.

This is a region risen from the tears and triumphs of decades of immigration, and BD — Before DeSantis — even Republican politicians held us up as an example of the heights a diverse community can reach.

Before the abhorrent “Florida blueprint” DeSantis is peddling nationwide — autocracy, anti-gay, anti-Black and anti-women’s rights, anti-immigrant measures — we were heralded as America’s model city of the future.

Now, GOP state lawmakers stand in solidarity with inconceivable intrusion in our communities by a governor with runaway ambition.

Simply put, both versions of the same proposal, House Bill 1617 and Senate Bill 1718, are a slap to the face of our immigrant families — and native-born Americans who have welcomed immigrants into their lives, whether through friendship or marriage.

Families of mixed immigration status, people who straddle two worlds, are a Florida trademark. But if bills pass both chambers, these Floridians could potentially become criminals in the eyes of the law.

If signed by the governor, the new and possibly unconstitutional law would criminalize hosting immigrants in your home and driving them to school, work or anywhere else.

Doing so would be paramount to harboring a fugitive and abetting them. Who and how authorities get to decide who is here illegally or who isn’t is tough to tell.

And neither DeSantis nor the state decides immigration matters. The bill also mandates random raids on businesses to check employees’ immigration status, again not the purview of state government, and forces hospitals to ask patients for their immigration status.

All of these proposals, which should have been dead on arrival when filed, have passed two House and Senate committees.

The consequences of this bill are far reaching for people living in big Florida cities, such as Hialeah — which has the largest concentration of immigrants in the country — and obviously, other Miami-Dade and Broward cities. The same is true for other immigrant hubs, such as Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville, where immigrant advocates held protests recently.

“This bill will negatively impact not only tens of thousands of mixed-status families living in Florida but will also impact thousands of businesses across the state,“ former Miami congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell told me.

“Immigrants have been the backbone of Florida’s economy from the agricultural sector to the hospitality industry. Will Gov. DeSantis raid every business in the state to enforce this law?”

Perhaps not the businesses of his donors, but he will target those of random Hispanics and other minority groups. It’s a political game for the governor with his sights on the presidency.

To win the Republican primary, DeSantis has to outdo former President Trump’s immigrant loathing. Who could have imagined that even possible?

But here’s DeSantis vying to prove to the base that he’s the baddest boy on the extremist Republican right-wing block. And he will boast on the campaign trail, as he likes to say: “Florida delivers results.”

To accomplish his legislative goals, DeSantis misrepresents the nation’s true immigration picture.

He attacks the Biden administration falsely claiming the president is allowing an “open border” when Biden is turning away, repatriating and deporting immigrants at a rate immigration advocates have denounced as “Trump-like.”

But perhaps worse than a Christian nationalist governor’s xenophobia, ethically speaking, is the fact that these bills that hurt immigrant communities are moving along with “yea” votes from Republican Cuban Americans from Miami-Dade. Have they lost all sense of decency?

To see senators with the last names of García and Rodríguez, the children of Cuban exiles, voting to do harm to other immigrants is beyond shameful. Sen. Ana Maria Rodríguez, who chairs the Miami-Dade Delegation, voted to pass the bill out of the Rules Committee.

It’s incomprehensible that she represents Doral, the city known as “Doralzuela” for its huge Venezuelan community.

But, for this generation — as Cuban-American Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez also has demonstrated with her support of DeSantis’ deceitful transport of immigrants to other states — it’s OK to reject one’s heritage. It’s the price of admission to the 1950s-styled Tallahassee club of powerful white men and compliant women.

Maybe Rodríguez’s inner child doesn’t remember how our parents housed with pride and warmth the latest newcomer from Cuba — whether the arrival came visa in hand through the Freedom Flights or aboard a packed shrimper, and without papers, on the Mariel boatlift.

But I remember when the first Hispanic caucus went to Tallahassee for one purpose: to represent us. Now the heirs jauntily walk in the shoes of an immigrant hater and do his bidding without regard to the impact on our communities? They’re weak legislators riding coattails that are a bad fit for immigrant South Florida.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article274039665.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida

Dark Money Pushes Weakening of Child Labor Laws

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2023 //
15

The Washington Post revealed the organization promoting the dilution of child labor laws. Iowa and Arkansas, both solid red states, were first to remove protections for children to meet the needs of employers.

To learn more about the gutting of child labor law in Iowa, watch this chilling video, thanks to reader Greg B.

Remember, the GOP is the party that loves the unborn but disdains the born. They value life in the womb but not actual children.

Investigative reporter Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post wrote:

When Iowa lawmakers voted last week to roll back certain child labor protections, they blended into a growing movement driven largely by a conservative advocacy group.
At 4:52 a.m., Tuesday, the state’s Senate approved a bill to allow children as young as 14 to work night shifts and 15 year-olds on assembly lines. The measure, which still must pass the Iowa House, is among several the Foundation for Government Accountability is maneuvering through state legislatures.
The Florida-based think tank and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, have found remarkable success among Republicans to relax regulations that prevent children from working long hours in dangerous conditions. And they are gaining traction at a time the Biden administration is scrambling to enforce existing labor protections for children.
The FGA achieved its biggest victory in March, playing a central role in designing a new Arkansas law to eliminate work permits and age verification for workers younger than 16. Its sponsor, state Rep. Rebecca Burkes (R), said in a hearing that the legislation “came to me from the Foundation [for] Government Accountability.”
“As a practical matter, this is likely to make it even harder for the state to enforce our own child labor laws,” said Annie B. Smith, director of the University of Arkansas School of Law’s Human Trafficking Clinic. “Not knowing where young kids are working makes it harder for [state departments] to do proactive investigations and visit workplaces where they know that employment is happening to make sure that kids are safe.”

That law passed so swiftly and was met with such public outcry that Arkansas officials quickly approved a second measure increasing penalties on violators of the child labor codes the state had just weakened.
In Missouri, where another child labor bill has gained significant GOP support, the FGA helped a lawmaker draft and revise the legislation, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
The FGA for years has worked systematically to shape policy at the state level, fighting to advance conservative causes such as restricting access to anti-poverty programs and blocking Medicaid expansion.


But in February, the White House announced a crackdown on child labor violators in response to what activists have described as a surge in youths — many of them undocumented immigrants — working at meat packing plants, construction sites, auto factories and other dangerous job sites.
The administration’s top labor lawyer called the proposed state child labor laws “irresponsible,” and said it could make it easier for employers to hire children for dangerous work.
“Federal and state entities should be working together to increase accountability and ramp up enforcement — not make it easier to illegally hire children to do what are often dangerous jobs,” Labor Solicitor Seema Nanda said. “No child should be working in dangerous workplaces in this country, full stop.”
Congress in 1938 passed the Fair Labor Standards Act to stop companies from using cheap child labor to do dangerous work, a practice that exploded during the Great Depression….

On the surface, the FGA frames its child worker bills as part of a larger debate surrounding parental rights, including in education and child care. But the state-by-state campaigns, the group’s leader said, help the FGA create openings to deconstruct larger government regulations.
Since 2016, the FGA’s Opportunity Solutions Project has hired 115 lobbyists across the country with a presence in 22 states, according to the nonpartisan political watchdog group Open Secrets.
“The reason these rather unpopular policies succeed is because they come in under the radar screen,” said David Campbell, professor of American democracy at the University of Notre Dame. “Typically, these things get passed because they are often introduced in a very quiet way or by groups inching little by little through grass-roots efforts.”
Minnesota and Ohio have introduced proposals this year allowing teens to work more hours or in more dangerous occupations, such as construction. A bill in Georgia would prohibit the state government from requiring a minor to obtain a work permit.

The FGA-backed measures maintain existing child labor safety protections “while removing the permission slip that inserts government in between parents and their teenager’s desire to work,” Nick Stehle, the foundation’s vice president, said in a statement.
“Frankly, every state, including Missouri, should follow Arkansas’s lead to allow parents and their teenagers to have the conversation about work and make that decision themselves,” said Stehle, who is also a visiting fellow at the Opportunity Solutions Project.
The FGA declined to make Stehle and other representatives available for interviews.
It’s one of several conservative groups that have long taken aim at all manner of government regulations or social safety net programs. The FGA is funded by a broad swath of ultraconservative and Republican donors — such as the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and 85 Fund, a nonprofit connected to political operative Leonard Leo — who have similarly supported other conservative policy groups.
The youth hiring or employment bills, as they are often titled, represent growing momentum among conservatives who contend that parents and not government policy should determine whether and where 14- and 15-year-olds should work.
“When you say that a bill will allow kids to work more or under dangerous conditions, it sounds wildly unpopular,” Campbell said. “You have to make the case that, no, this is really about parental rights, a very carefully chosen term that’s really hard to disagree with….”

Supporters of the child worker proposals say they reduce red tape around the hiring process for minors. A spokeswoman for Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a rising Republican star, said her state’s law relieved parents of “obsolete” and “arbitrary burdens.”
“The main push for this reform didn’t come from big business,” Stehle, the FGA vice president, wrote in an essay for Fox. “It came from families like mine, who want more of the freedom that lets our children flourish…”

Tarren Bragdon, a former Maine state legislator, founded the FGA in 2011 with a focus on cutting social safety net and anti-poverty programs. It quickly tapped into conservative political fundraising networks and grew from $50,000 in seed funding to $4 million in revenue by its fourth year, according to tax filings and the group’s promotional materials.

In 2020, the most recent year for which the FGA and its funders’ full financial disclosures are available, more than 70 percent of its $10.6 million in revenue came from 14 conservative groups.

The FGA joined the State Policy Network, a confederation of conservative state-level think tanks that practice what leaders call the “Ikea model” of advocacy, its president said during the group’s 2013 conference. Affiliates such as the FGA display prefabricated policy projects for state officials, then provide the tools — including research and lobbying support — to push proposals through legislative and administrative processes.
In 2021, for example, Arkansas legislators passed 48 measures backed by the FGA, according to the foundation’s end-of-year report. It identified Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa among its five “super states” where it planned to increase its advocacy presence.
In 2022, the FGA claimed 144 “state policy reform wins,” including 45 related to unemployment and welfare, across a slew of states.
“Success in the states is critical for achieving national change, as it often opens the door to federal regulatory reform,” Bragdon wrote in the group’s 2021 report. “Once enough states successfully implement a reform, we can use the momentum and proven results to build pressure for regulatory change.”
Yet even legislators who support the FGA’s policies expanding child labor have found their limits.
Missouri’s bill was amended to require a parental permission form for children aged 14 to 16 who want to take a job. The original legislation, edited by the FGA, did not contain any such provision.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Childhood, Cruelty, Dark Money, Economy, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Health, Injustice, Iowa, Jobs

Misty Griffin: Religious Rights Should Not Outweigh Children’s Human Rights

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2023 //
44

Misty Griffin has an important story to tell, based on her dreadful personal experience. Her story is important especially at this moment when so many politicians are repeating the mantra of “parent rights.” Misty reminds us that children too have rights, and not all parents are trustworthy. Misty wrote her story in a book titled Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival.

I asked her to write her story for you.

She wrote:

In the United States, freedom of religion has the ability to cancel out every single child safety law/regulation on the books. Children across the nation are cloistered into strict religious communities that either have their own private religious schools or homeschool their children. Most of these groups do not believe in reporting child abuse and stress the importance of severe corporal punishment and view sexual abuse as a moral failing rather than a serious crime. Children in such religions/churches/cults are left with no one in their orbit who will help them out of abusive situations. Many of these children suffer greatly on a daily basis and seem forgotten by regular society.

A bit of my story.

My stepdad was a wanted pedophile who fled the Seattle area in the late 70s after a warrant was put out for his arrest for molesting the neighbor’s 2 small daughters. My mom met him in 1986 when I was 4. My sister and I became isolated and cut off from society. We were sexually abused and severely beaten multiple times a day.

When I was 7 years old, we started dressing in long dresses and scarves. When I was 10 years old we were dressing like the Amish. My mom told everyone we were being homeschooled (in reality we just did sporadic math and reading lessons here and there in case anyone from the state wanted to see schoolwork.) When I was 11 we moved to a remote mountain ranch in northern WA. At 18 yrs old, I tried to escape and was taken to a real Amish community. Three and half years later I fled the Amish community after 6 months of sexual abuse by the bishop.

My entire church knew that the bishop was a sexual predator. They had shunned him for six weeks for molesting his daughter a few years before I landed in the community. I reported the bishop to the police because I was suspicious he was molesting the children. The police drug their feet and told me point blank that they had to be careful not to trample on the religious rights of the Amish community. The bishop ended up escaping to Canada with his whole family and went on to molest almost all of the 11 children. Eleven years later he was finally sent to prison after one of his daughters asked a neighbor for help. They had come back to the United States by that time.

Child Rights Act

I had approximately a third-grade education when I came out into the “world.” It’s so sad that stories like mine are allowed to happen, but my story is not the only one, In recent years I have received thousands of emails from people who grew up in strict religions/cults. We must call out this religious aspect of child abuse because no matter how many laws and regulations we put on the books if this issue is not addressed and children are not given rights, children in strict religions and cults will never be reached.

I am not anti-religion; I am a non-denominational Christian, but religion should not allow anyone to bypass child safety measures. If you agree please sign my Child Rights Act Petition and share it on social media. Religious Rights should not outweigh children’s Human Rights.

photo

Misty Griffin

www.mistygriffin.com

mistyegriffin@gmail.com

Pasadena, CA

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Corruption, Cruelty, Discipline, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Injustice, Lies, Parents, Religion

Michael Hiltzik: Judge-Shopping Hurts All Americans

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2023 //
34

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times is an extraordinary opinion writer. I subscribe to the LA Times, and I always look forward to his cogent insights. In this one, he describes the tactics of rightwing lawyers, who shop for rightwing judges. When they wanted to invalidate a key plank in Obamacare, they knew exactly where to go to find a zealot to take away free preventive care from all Americans. If not reversed, this decision will cost hundreds of thousands of lives–by denying access to early screenings for cancer and other deadly diseases.

Hiltzik writes:

You might have thought that, more than a dozen years after its enactment, the Affordable Care Act was finally safe from interference by right-wing judges carrying water for religious fanatics and anti-government activists.

Unfortunately, a ruling from a one-horse federal courtroom in Texas reminds us that there’s almost an endless supply of those litigants and the judges who run with them. Less than two weeks ago, U.S. Judge Reed O’Connor invalidated an ACA provision mandating that a long list of preventive care services be provided to patients without co-pays or deductibles.

If O’Connor’s March 30 ruling stands (the government is certain to appeal), it would block no-fee preventive services such as breast- and cervical-cancer screenings for millions of women, smoking cessation programs, hepatitis tests, screening for diabetes, osteoporosis, depression, HIV and many other conditions and health risks.

A court oversteps its authority when an injunction does more than benefit the plaintiffs who have sued.

— Law professors Nicholas Bagley and Samuel Bray

The anti-HIV provision, as it happens, was the principal target of the plaintiffs in this case. Among them are Steven Hotze, a self-described Christian owner of a “wellness” center who complained that the Affordable Care Act mandate to provide anti-HIV drugs would “facilitate behaviors such as homosexual sodomy, prostitution, and intravenous drug use — all of which are contrary to Dr. Hotze’s sincere religious beliefs.”

Hotze also objects to other preventive-care mandates that require his business’ health plans to cover screening for and counseling about sexually transmitted diseases “for those engaged in non-marital sexual behavior.”

O’Connor’s ruling undermines one of the bedrock public-health features of the Affordable Care Act, its encouragement of services aimed at keeping Americans healthy by catching signs of developing medical issues before they require costly interventions.

Sadly, the ruling didn’t come as much of a surprise: Not only did O’Connor telegraph his decision during hearings on the lawsuit months ago, but he’s the same judge who in 2018 tried to throw a monkey wrench into Obamacare by declaring the entire law unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court slapped him down with a 7-2 ruling upholding the act’s constitutionality in 2021, but that didn’t seem to invest O’Connor with any measure of humility.

O’Connor’s latest ruling underscores a major problem with America’s federal judicial system. That’s the ability of hack judges in backwater courthouses to interfere with policy by issuing nationwide injunctions based on specious or at least shallow legal arguments.

In time, we will see whether the Trump Supreme Court agrees that Americans don’t need preventive health care.

—

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Health

Florida: Legislators Remove Penalty for Driving Immigrants

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2023 //
92

Florida legislators are about to enact a bill that criminalizes or punishes anyone who aids or hires undocumented immigrants. One of the new crimes was giving a ride to an immigrant. Church leaders loudly complained that they would not be allowed to pick up immigrants and take them to church.

Humanitarian appeals fell on deaf ears, but the legislators went too far went they interfered with going to church.

TALLAHASSEE — State lawmakers rewrote language Monday in a sweeping immigration bill that religious leaders said could have subjected them to felony charges if they transported people living in the country illegally to church or Sunday school.

A Florida House panel advanced a revised bill that no longer makes it a felony crime to knowingly transport someone without legal status within Florida.

“If it’s within the state of Florida, they are not held liable to any wrongdoing,” said Rep. Kiyan Michael, R-Jacksonville, the bill’s sponsor.

Sister Ann Kendrick, who founded the Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka that helps Central Florida’s immigrant families, was among those calling for lawmakers to reconsider the bill.

“I cart people around all the time who are undocumented,” she said. “I’ll go to jail for… helping a kid? Wow, isn’t that the American way?”

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, DeSantis, Education Reform, Failure, Florida

Florida: Legislators Turn Their Backs on Immigrants

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2023 //
12

Fabiola Santiago is my favorite Miami Herald columnist. I share her sensibility. As I read what she wrote, I say “yes” again and again. Recently she wrote about the disgraceful anti-immigrant sentiment expressed in legislation by lawmakers who came from immigrant families. Miami, she writes, was once celebrated for its ethnic mix. Now Republican legislators are obediently following the xenophobic governor, who is a Christian nationalist. Would DeSantis have let them in? Probably not.

She writes:

Immigrant-hate-stoking Florida Gov. DeSantis should be persona non grata in South Florida. But gullible voters eagerly follow charlatans.

There are plenty of reasons to whisk away the welcome mat — DeSantis has attacked practically every distinctive feature we once stood for — none more repulsive than his loathing of undocumented immigrants, encapsulated in an immigration bill making its way through the Legislature.

This is a region risen from the tears and triumphs of decades of immigration, and BD — Before DeSantis — even Republican politicians held us up as an example of the heights a diverse community can reach.

Before the abhorrent “Florida blueprint” DeSantis is peddling nationwide — autocracy, anti-gay, anti-Black and anti-women’s rights, anti-immigrant measures — we were heralded as America’s model city of the future.

Now, GOP state lawmakers stand in solidarity with inconceivable intrusion in our communities by a governor with runaway ambition. Simply put, both versions of the same proposal, House Bill 1617 and Senate Bill 1718, are a slap to the face of our immigrant families — and native-born Americans who have welcomed immigrants into their lives, whether through friendship or marriage.

Families of mixed immigration status, people who straddle two worlds, are a Florida trademark. But if bills pass both chambers, these Floridians could potentially become criminals in the eyes of the law.

If signed by the governor, the new and possibly unconstitutional law would criminalize hosting immigrants in your home and driving them to school, work or anywhere else.

Doing so would be tantamount to harboring a fugitive and abetting them. Who and how authorities get to decide who is here illegally or who isn’t is tough to tell. And neither DeSantis nor the state decides immigration matters.

The bill also mandates random raids on businesses to check employees’ immigration status, again not the purview of state government, and forces hospitals to ask patients for their immigration status.

All of these proposals, which should have been dead on arrival when filed, have passed two House and Senate committees….

“This bill will negatively impact not only tens of thousands of mixed-status families living in Florida but will also impact thousands of businesses across the state,“ former Miami congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell told me. “Immigrants have been the backbone of Florida’s economy from the agricultural sector to the hospitality industry. Will Gov. DeSantis raid every business in the state to enforce this law?”

Perhaps not the businesses of his donors, but he will target those of random Hispanics and other minority groups.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/article274039665.html#storylink=cpy

Pastors in Florida worry that they will face criminal charges if they provide a ride to church services to an undocumented immigrant.

The ACLU of Florida summarized the bills:

Criminalizes Floridians who shelter, support, and provide transportation to undocumented immigrants, including those who have overstayed their visa or who have lived in Florida for decades and have US born children. Makes it harder for immigrants to provide for their families. Harms businesses by authorizing FDLE to conduct random checks of businesses to ensure compliance. Prohibits public funding for community IDs and requires hospitals to inquire of Medicaid patients whether they’re lawfully allowed in the country and to collect that data.

Florida’s hospitality and tourism industry won’t find it easy to hire people to clean hotel rooms, work in kitchens, and do other low-wage jobs. Where will the agriculture industry find people to tend and harvest their crops?

Despite protests, the compliant Florida legislature seems sure to give Governor DeSantis whatever he wants.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida

Mercedes Schneider: DeSantis Better Build More Prisons in Florida

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2023 //
22

Mercedes Schneider points out that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis believes he can win over the Republican base by turning stuff he doesn’t like into felonies. With so many new laws on the books that carry criminal penalties, Florida will need more prison cells.

Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and the Republican supermajority in the Florida House and Senate are passing incredibly extreme, right-wing legislation, which will surely help DeSantis to curry favor with an extreme, right-wing Republican base in order for DeSantis to become Republican nominee for president in 2024….

Imposing felonies seems to be the legislative way in Florida of late; as a result of a new law in January 2023, the state’s teachers, librarians, and other school officials are packing up library books for fear of being charged with a third-degree felony for allowing the public access to non-government-approved books. But freedomand liberty.

The abortion ban cited above imposes possible third-degree felonies for any medical professional who assists, say, a woman who discovers at 10 weeks that her fetus has no skull. According to DeSantis’ law, since this woman’s life is not in danger, she should (must!) carry the pregnancy to term and give birth to a child without a skull (a child with a 5 percent chance of living one full week and no more).

Surely such cruelty is not good for any forthcoming DeSantis-as-Prez campaign.

A man who sneaks into town to sign such a bill into law under cover of darkness surely knows as much….

So, here’s the rub:

In order to get the Republican nomination, DeSantis needs all of this punitive, “felony” legislation. However, in order to win the presidential election, such fascist extremism is DOA.

Republican megadonors are noticing DeSantis’ extremism.

On April 15, 2023, the Financial Times published an article, entitled, “Top Republican Donor Sours on Florida Governor’s Stance on Social Issues.” From the article:

Top Republican donor Thomas Peterffy [worth $26B] is halting plans to help finance the US presidential bid of Florida governor Ron DeSantis due to his extreme positions on social issues. 

“I have put myself on hold,” the billionaire told the Financial Times. 

“Because of his stance on abortion and book banning . . . myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.” …

In January, Peterffy told the FT that he was a fan of DeSantis and was “looking forward” to backing a presidential bid by the governor.

But now, he says: “I am more reluctant to back him. We are waiting to see who among the primary candidates is most likely to be able to win the general, and then put all of our firepower behind them.”

Ahh, the DeSantis quandary: How to sell out to the base and also win the general election?

Might be a good idea to sign into law Florida legislation that does not include the words, “third-degree felony.”

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Politics

Iowa: Legislature Will Spend Millions to Kick Poor People Off Food Stamps

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2023 //
41

This is a story I don’t understand, so I’m sharing and hoping someone can explain my questions. Iowa is a red state. The legislature is about to make it harder for poor people to gain access to federal aid for food, a program called SNAPor . Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal government’s most effective food assistance pipeline. The legislature knows that about 300,000 Iowans rely on SNAP to feed themselves and their family. But they think that Iowa can save money by reducing SNAP beneficiaries, also that getting food aid reduces the incentive to work.

So here are my questions:

How can people be so cruel?

Why do these legislators get re-elected?

As a reader of this blog, you will not be surprised to see which billionaires are behind this effort to take food access away from hungry families.

Kyle Swenson of the Washington Post reported:

The state legislature, with the support of the Republican supermajority, was poised to approve some of the nation’s harshest restrictions on SNAP. They include asset tests and new eligibility guidelines. By the state’s own estimate, Iowa will need to spend nearly $18 million in administrative costs during the first three years — to take in less federal money. The bill’s backers argue the steps would save the state money long term and cut down on “SNAP fraud.”

The measure is part of a broader national crackdown on SNAP, the federal program at the heart of the nation’s welfare system. The proposed legislation was not a homegrown effort but the product of a network of conservative think tanks pushing similar SNAP restrictions in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and other states. But experts say Iowa’s represents the boldest attack yet on SNAP, and Republicans in Congress have signaled a similar readiness to impose limits on federal food assistance.


“There are pockets where you are seeing a movement toward more restrictions to kick people off SNAP,” said Diane Schanzenbach, a professor at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. “But the SNAP program is really well-designed. It’s effective and efficient, and it does a tremendous amount of good. Generally, proposals to change it usually are going to make it worse…”

Iowa’s food bank operators say any new restrictions on food stamps are likely to fuel a surge in demand. But they are not sure whether they can absorb it because they are still reeling from a decision last year to scale back SNAP benefits.


When the coronavirus pandemic started in 2020, the federal government temporarily raised its allotment of SNAP dollars for the 41 million Americans in the program. Then in April 2022, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) decided to end those emergency SNAP benefits a year early, leaving the 286,874 Iowans with less money each month for food.


Nonprofits also felt the impact when the federal money disappeared. Data collected by the food banks show the smaller SNAP payouts drove more Iowas to seek their help than at any point during the pandemic emergency. After April 2022, the 15 food banks that fall under the umbrella of the Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC) began seeing “numbers that we hadn’t seen for the past two years,” said Daniel Beck, the network’s data coordinator.


“When people get more SNAP, they don’t need food pantries as much,” Beck said. “That just a fact…”

Iowa ended 2022 with a general-fund budget surplus of $1.91 billion. But at the start of the 2023 legislative session, Republicans made clear that limiting access to SNAP was a priority because of cost concerns.


“It’s these entitlement programs,” House Speaker Pat Grassley (R), grandson of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R), told reporters in January. “They’re the ones that are growing within the budget, and are putting pressure on us being able to fund other priorities. And so I think it’s time for us to take a serious look at what they are.”
If budget concerns were not driving the legislation, political opportunity was. In November 2022, Republicans expanded their majorities in both statehouse chambers.


In January, 39 Republican House members sponsored a bill that would require an asset test, meaning families and individuals are barred from accessing SNAP, Medicaid, and other assistance programs if the value of their cars, farm equipment or other items are too high. The measure would also create more paperwork for recipients, and ban those using SNAP from buying candy and soda, as well as fresh meat, white bread, baked beans or American cheese, among other items. None of the 39 legislators, including Grassley, responded to requests for comment.

The proposal’s backers argued that SNAP assistance de-incentivized families from working or from taking on more hours at the jobs they already had. They also pressed the case that the current program would eliminate “SNAP fraud.”
Republican supporters point to Iowa’s SNAP error rate of 11.81 percent in 2019, which the state was fined for, even though it was in line with the national standard in 2021. (The Agriculture Department warns that the error rate is “not a fraud rate” because it also includes underpayments and eligibility mistakes.)

Northwestern’s Schanzenbach noted that other states are moving toward fewer eligibility requirements, not more, because around 40 percent of SNAP recipients nationally are either elderly or disabled. “They have stable incomes then, so there is just not really much of an upside to having them certify more often,” she said.
Eventually, Iowa legislators stripped the food restrictions from the SNAP bill after a number of prominent players in state business — including the Iowa Beverage Association, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry and Tyson Foods — lobbied against the bill.


But the version of the proposal that the legislature would later vote on kept the assets test, tasked the state with contracting with a third-party vendor to conduct rigorous identity verification and authentication on recipients, raised the monthly income threshold of SNAP participants to 160 percent of the federal poverty level for households and gave recipients only 10 days to respond to paperwork mistakes or discrepancies before they are cut from the program.

Enacting the bill is expected to cost Iowa more than $17 million in the first three years, far more than the $2.2 million the state spends each year to administer SNAP. (The federal government funds SNAP and splits administrative costs 50-50 with the state. Last year, Iowa received $60.4 million in federal SNAP funds).


Most of that amount would go toward hiring workers and installing systems to process, authenticate and monitor compliance.
Opponents in the Iowa Capitol and beyond wonder if the expense is really necessary to police the rolls of a federal program that for many recipients is still not enough to live on….

As the SNAP bill wove through the statehouse, a long list of interest groups came out against it, including the Iowa Grocery Industry Association, the Iowa Catholic Conference, and the Iowa Farmers Union.


Its biggest proponent was the Opportunity Solutions Project, a Florida think tank that has successfully shepherded similar bills through other statehouses.


The nonprofit says it shares “high-quality research and data analysis with state lawmakers to ensure new laws are carefully crafted to expand opportunity and freedom for all.” According to OpenSecret, the group had registered 57 active lobbyists in 22 states in 2022.


The OSP is the lobbying arm of the Foundation for Government Accountability. Both groups are run by Maine state legislator Tarren Bragdon, who started the FGA in 2011 with three employees and less than $60,000 in the group’s bank account. According to tax records, that money was a grant from the State Policy Network, a major funder for right-wing think tanks and organizations that has been linked to conservative superdonors such as Charles Koch and the DeVos family. OSP did not respond to calls for comment.

Categories Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Iowa
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