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Oklahoma: State Superintendent Fires Attorney Who Supported Trans Students

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2023 //
9

Nuria Martinez-Keel wrote in The Oklahoman about the ouster of a state attorney who defied the state superintendent by supporting transgender people, whose numbers in the state must be minuscule. Since Republicans have decided that transgender people are a threat to national security, Lori Murphy had to go.

An attorney known for her support of transgender people and objections to the state’s rulemaking on classroom race and gender discussions was fired last week from the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

Assistant general counsel Lori Murphy worked at the agency for eight and a half years.

The Education Department terminated her employment “effective immediately” on Thursday, according to a letter to Murphy from the agency’s human resources office.

The letter did not cite a cause for her firing.

“I no longer speak for the agency (that’s what it means when you fire your lawyer), and I can’t speak to the reasoning for my termination,” Murphy wrote in a statement. “It was my honor to work my ass off on behalf of the students of Oklahoma from 2014 through January 26, 2023, a task I shared with hundreds of (Education Department) colleagues and thousands of school staff members across the state.”

New state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters is in the midst of orienting the Education Department toward his goals, one of which he said is ridding the agency and public schools of “liberal indoctrination.”

The department declined to explain the rationale for firing Murphy.

“The agency does not comment on the HR process or on personnel decisions,” spokesperson Matt Langston told The Oklahoman on Monday.

Four days after swearing in as state superintendent, Walters exempted Murphy’s position from a section of Oklahoma law that would have otherwise allowed her to file a complaint over termination, according to a human resources letter sent to Murphy on Jan. 13, which The Oklahoman also obtained.

Heads of state agencies are allowed to do so for no more than 5% of their employees.

“Just as public education serves everyone, public education builds from the truth that everyone can learn and grow when provided with the educational services and supports they need,” Murphy wrote in her statement. “From our 4-year-olds entering Oklahoma’s nationally recognized public preschool programs for the first time, to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.”

For more than two years, Murphy has worn masks that read “Trans Ally” or “Black Lives Matter” while attending monthly meetings of the Oklahoma State Board of Education. She wore a “Trans Ally” mask again at a state board meeting on Thursday.

Walters was a champion of legislation regulating transgender students’ use of school bathrooms by birth sex rather than by gender identity.

As the state Board of Education deliberated how to give teeth to House Bill 1775, Murphy objected to the board members’ handling of the process. She resigned from her role overseeing administrative rulemaking for the board, though she continued as an assistant general counsel for the state agency.

The state board ultimately approved rules that allowed it to demote a school district’s accreditation and suspend or revoke an educator’s certification over violations of HB 1775, a 2021 law that bans schools from teaching certain race and gender concepts, such as a person should feel guilt on account of their race or sex.

Although Murphy suggested rules that mostly restated the text of the law, the board opted for a rulemaking process she said operated “far outside the reach of previous emergency rule actions” and wrongly excluded public comment, according to internal emails The Oklahoman obtained at the time.

“Quite literally, I cannot sign my name to this action,” Murphy wrote to the board.

Although it did not collect public comment before approval of the temporary rules, the Education Department did so before the agency regulations became permanent.

Recently, Walters said he instructed his staff to investigate two teachers he accused of indoctrinating students. Both teachers have spoken against HB 1775.

Walters was referring to Tulsa Public Schools teacher Tyler Wrynn and former Norman High School teacher Summer Boismier. He has called for both of their teaching certificates to be revoked.

“I, as the state superintendent and the Department of Education, will do everything within our power to not allow our kids to be indoctrinated by far-left radicals and to hold those accountable who have done so,” Walters said in a video posted to social media.

Wrynn was captured in an edited video identifying himself as an anarchist who wants to “burn down the whole system,” beliefs he said he had to hide because of HB 1775.

Boismier made national news when she posted a QR code link in her classroom to the Brooklyn Public Library’s collection of banned books. She resigned from Norman Public Schools in opposition to HB 1775 and has since moved to New York to accept a position with the Brooklyn library.

“I feel like I cannot do my job and follow that law at the same time,” Boismier said in an August interview with The Oklahoman. “It puts teachers in an impossible position. It forces educators to commit educational malpractice in order to keep our jobs.”

 

Reporter Nuria Martinez-Keel covers K-12 and higher education throughout the state of Oklahoma.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bias, Censorship, Cruelty, Oklahoma

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner: Race Matters

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2023 //
35

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner write a blog called Steady. Their voice is always thoughtful, reasonable, informed, and…steady. I think that they, like me, are old enough to remember when we believed that overt racism was ebbing and that white supremacy was dead. Our hopes have been shattered since 2016. It takes the use of critical race theory to understand why we were so naive. Here is their take on the big Education story of the day:

Photo credit: Octavio Jones

Editor’s note: this is an ironic banner in front of DeSantis. Florida is not free for those who don’t share his ideology. If you think racism exists today in Florida, you are not free to discuss it in school or college. You are free to agree with him.

Rather and Kirschner write:

Much of American history is entangled with racism and white supremacy. That is the reality of our beloved nation, no matter how much we wish it were not.

As we sit here nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century, it is obvious that we need to have the maturity to look back to our past as well as ahead to the future. Can we do this with our eyes wide open? Will we study and learn from the lessons of history?

You can’t grapple with the truth if you hide it from view. Yes, our national narrative is an inspiring one — of freedom, rights, and new opportunities. But it is also a narrative of pain — of the bondage, rape, and murder of enslaved people. It is a story of mass death, broken treaties, and land stolen from Native people. And it is a story of persecution of the “other,” time and again.

The chasm between the noble promises of our founding documents and our historical realities continues to obstruct our national journey toward a more perfect union.

Yes, ours is a country that has facilitated exploration, innovation, and growth, but it is also one built upon families torn apart at the auction block, bodies whipped, and police dogs and fire hoses set against children.

Cities were redlined. Public schools were segregated. And despite our carefully cultivated national image as a meritocracy, throughout our history we have seen talent overlooked and our common humanity diminished on account of people’s race, religion, and sexual orientation.

The ripples of injustice continue to destabilize our society.

It shouldn’t be controversial to say any of this. But acknowledging these truths today is a political act, because it threatens the privileged narratives of those who seek to sugarcoat our past. These are men and women who serve their own ambitions by fortifying their cynical holds on power, delighting in division, feeding off fear, and applauding anger.

And that brings us to Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis.

Listing all of his efforts to leverage the power of his office to attack equity, empathy, and justice would stretch this post immeasurably. But doing so would also jeopardize the central point: DeSantis is an opportunist. He is not weighing the merits of any one campaign. Rather, he wants headlines as a culture warrior standing up to “wokeness,” a term he has eagerly redefined to suit his own purposes. It allows him to sneer at and dismiss any attempt to reckon with American injustice.

DeSantis has focused his assaults on two of our society’s most traditionally marginalized groups: Black Americans and the LGBTQ community. While these populations have thus far felt the brunt of his targeting, we need to see clearly that his rhetoric is a threat to all who care about a democratic, peaceful, empathetic, and just America. Those of us with the greatest privilege should bear a special burden in rejecting this hate.

DeSantis’s pugilism has enabled him to consolidate power in Florida. Any opposition to his toxic initiatives must contend with the uncomfortable truth that voters validated his message and style via his landslide win in November. Now DeSantis thinks he can take his show on the road with a presidential bid. That remains to be seen. Florida has been trending Republican in recent years, and success there might not translate to the current battleground states, many of which saw big Democratic wins in the midterms.

All that being said, there is a great danger to framing this struggle primarily through the lens of electoral politics. This normalizes a discourse that should be rejected by society’s mainstream. Just as the outright bigotry of the past became socially unacceptable, so too should these latest attempts at divisiveness.

It should not surprise us that DeSantis is making schools — both K-12 and college — a central target. He wants to teach a distorted view of America. He wants to make dissenting speech not only suspect but even criminal. He wants to silence the voices of his critics and of critical thinking more generally. This is a playbook that has been followed by demagogues before to very dangerous ends.

It is essential that DeSantis not be covered by the press through a false equivalence paradigm. We can debate what we should teach and how to teach it. But we can’t replace the truth, as unsavory as it may be, with sanitized narratives that suit those already in power. This is a battle for the minds of the voters of the future. This is about what kind of nation we will become.

But DeSantis primarily cares about what kind of country we are now. He wants to appeal to fear because he thinks he can mine that fear for votes. That is his game plan. And he’s not hiding it. There can be no appeasement. DeSantis has already shown that he isn’t interested in deliberations or good faith compromise. Those would disrupt his approach of means to an end.

History illustrates that hatred can be taught, but so can empathy and justice. We are on a winding journey as a nation. And we have much farther to go. But we have made progress in the face of bigots and autocrats because people had the courage to forge the inequities of our past into a more equitable future.

This history, this truth, is what scares people like DeSantis the most. But it is one that can give us hope if we are determined not to look away.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Curriculum, DeSantis, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Inequity, Injustice, Race, Racism, Republicans, Shame

Robert Hubbell on Ron DeSantis’s Re-education Camps

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2023 //
23

Robert Hubbell writes a thoughtful, informative blog. I’m posting this as part of my personal project to understand the new face of white supremacy. White supremacy has always been there, simmering below the surface. Trump invited them to show their faces and step into the daylight. They did, and DeSantis is sending them signals that he wants to be their champion.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has set his anti-education sites on Florida’s state colleges. Through a series of political and legal maneuvers, he has ceded control over Florida’s state colleges to ultra-conservative culture warriors like Christopher Rufo. In short order, DeSantis has announced that he will rid Florida state colleges and universities of curricula not “rooted in Western tradition” or that “compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality.”

Amid the torrent of reporting on Ron DeSantis’s attack on critical race theory and intersectionality, the quiet part is often left unsaid. So let me say it: DeSantis’s educational agenda is code for racism and white supremacy. (Other parts of his agenda seek to erase the dignity and humanity of LGBTQ people.) DeSantis’s invocation of “Western tradition” is meant to suppress knowledge regarding the people (and contributions) of Asia, Africa, South America, Oceania, and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. See Talking Points Memo, DeSantis Makes 2024 Ambitions Clear As He Pours Gasoline On His ‘Woke’ Education Fire.

Given DeSantis’s generalized ignorance, his call to focus on “Western tradition” is a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to the discussion of unpleasant truths about America. For example, the enslavement of Black people was a “tradition” in North America for 246 years—and the abolition of that evil practice is relatively recent (155 years ago). So, a college course that honestly addresses the Western “traditions” of North America should include an examination that the role of slavery played in the economic, social, and political development of America.

But DeSantis isn’t stopping at converting Florida’s colleges and universities into re-education camps in the worst traditions of the USSR. He is seeking to up-end centuries of “Western tradition” embodied in the Constitution and the English common law: the requirement of a unanimous jury to impose capital punishment. DeSantis has floated the idea that a less-than-unanimous jury verdict can impose a sentence of death—an unconstitutional proposal designed to inflict the death penalty on more Black and Latino Americans. See Vox, Ron DeSantis wants to make it much easier for the state to kill people.

DeSantis is willing to do all this because he wants to capture Trump’s loyal base—which is the only hope that DeSantis has of becoming a credible candidate. As Trump becomes mired in criminal prosecutions, DeSantis will become emboldened and radicalized beyond his already extremist views. Doing so ignores the lessons of the 2022 midterms: persuadable Americans are done with Trump and his MAGA extremism. Like all military generals, Ron DeSantis is fighting the last war (the presidential election of 2020) and has failed to heed the tectonic shift that occurred in the midterms.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Character, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, History, Injustice, Lies, Propaganda, Racism, Trump

Charlie Sykes: The Nazis Are Back on Twitter

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2023 //
16

Charlie Sykes used to be a conservative Republican. Then Trump became President, and Sykes became a Never Trumper (maybe before the election, I’m not sure). Charlie and other Never Trumpers and their friends created a website called The Bulwark. It is consistently interesting. Charlie wrote the following post.

He wrote:

When Twitter banned neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes back in December 2021, the site’s Head of Safety and Integrity, Yoel Roth said, “Hateful conduct has no place here.”

But Roth is gone, Elon Musk is in charge, and the Nazis are back.

Fuentes, last seen here as Donald Trump’s dinner guest, was reinstated just hours after another actual Nazi, Andrew Anglin— who once described his approach as “Non-ironic Nazism masquerading as ironic Nazism” — asked Musk to bring his friend back on Twitter.

Anglin tweeted Musk that the Holocaust-denying, Jew-baiting Fuentes is “a very nice person and I can vouch that he’ll never say anything mean.”

Leah McElrath @leahmcelrathThe reinstatement of the Twitter account of Nick Fuentes came hours after Andrew Anglin—editor of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer—publicly asked Elon Musk to let Fuentes back on Twitter: 2:51 PM ∙ Jan 24, 202393Likes66Retweets

Musk, apparently took him at his word, and Fuentes made his triumphant return, with his usual restraint, dignity, and class.

Image

**

Who is this new Musk-whisperer?

Back in 2017, The Atlantic profiled Anglin: “The Making of An American Nazi.”

Anglin is an ideological descendant of men such as George Lincoln Rockwell, who created the American Nazi Party in the late 1950s, and William Luther Pierce, who founded the National Alliance, a powerful white-nationalist group, in the 1970s. Anglin admires these predecessors, who saw themselves as revolutionaries at the vanguard of a movement to take back the country. He dreams of a violent insurrection.

But where Rockwell and Pierce relied on pamphlets, the radio, newsletters, and in-person organizing to advance their aims, Anglin has the internet. His reach is exponentially greater, his ability to connect with like-minded young men unprecedented.

Since then, Anglin has tried to rebrand himself as just a garden-variety American Nationalist, but this is mostly eye-wash for clueless billionaires. Notes the Anti-Defamation League:

In an effort to validate their leap from neo-Nazis to flag-waving American patriots, he and his followers equate American nationalism to white nationalism by claiming America was founded on anti-Semitic and racist principles.

**

Anglin is also one of the most vicious trolls on the far-right. I wrote about him in my book, “How the Right Lost Its Mind,” describing the explosion of harassment aimed at Jewish critics of Donald Trump at the time.

Many of the worst instances of harassment were connected to a website known as the Daily Stormer and its founder, a neo-Nazi activist named Andrew Anglin.

I first became aware of the site when I received, via email, a photoshopped image of my picture inside a gas chamber. A smiling Donald Trump wearing a German military uniform is poised to press the red “gas” button. The photoshopping tool had been created by the website and was widely used to troll both Jewish and non-Jewish critics of the Trump campaign.

The site takes its name from the German Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer,which was notorious for the viciousness of its anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews. After World War II, Der Stürmer’s publisher, Julius Streicher, was executed for crimes against humanity.

Anglin created the site in 2013 as an updated version of his previous website, which he called Total Fascism. As of this writing, the new website features pictures of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump and the slogan “Daily Stormer— The World’s Most Goal-Oriented Republican Website.”

It is important to emphasize again that the Alt Right is a mansion with many rooms and some very real divisions. Anglin, for example, is not a fan of Milo Yiannopoulos, who is depicted on the Daily Stormer with a cartoon of the Jewish nose superimposed on his face and is referred to as “Filthy Rat Kike Milo.”

But Anglin is also interested in emphasizing the common ground among the various disparate groups and interests that make up the white nationalist movement. In his own guide to the Alt Right, Anglin notes that the movement included various factions, but that they had all been led “toward this center-point where we have all met. The campaign of Donald Trump is effectively the nexus of that centerpoint.”

Impressed by Trump’s rhetoric on illegal immigrants, Anglin endorsed Trump in 2015 and urged the readers of the Daily Stormer to “vote for the first time in our lives for the one man who actually represents our interests.”

After Trump called for barring Muslims from the country, the site declared: “Heil Donald Trump— The Ultimate Savior.” But Anglin’s greatest accomplishment was the creation of what he calls his “Troll Army,” which he uses to attack political opponents, deployed to great effect in early 2016.

After GQ magazine published a profile of Melania Trump by writer Julia Ioffe, the future First Lady took to Facebook to denounce the piece as “yet another example of the dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting.” Anglin quickly mobilized his Troll Army, posting an article headlined: “Empress Melania Attacked by Filthy Russian Kike Julia Ioffe in GQ!”

The post featured a picture of Ioffe wearing a Nazi-era yellow star with the word “Jude” and a call to action from Anglin:

“Please go ahead and send her a tweet and let her know what you think of her dirty kike trickery. Make sure to identify her as a Jew working against White interests, or send her the picture with the Jude star from the top of this article.”

The result was a torrent of abuse, including death threats against the journalist.

On Twitter, she was sent pictures of Jews being shot in the head and pictures of her wearing concentration camp stripes. When she answered her phone, a caller began playing a recording of a speech by Adolf Hitler.

“The irony of this is that today,” Ioffe told the British newspaper the Guardian, “I was reminded that 26 years ago today my family came to the US from Russia. We left Russia because we were fleeing antisemitism. It’s been a rude shock for everyone.”

The response from the GOP nominee was also troubling. When Trump was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the anti-Semitic attacks and death threats, the future president pointedly refused to condemn them, pleading ignorance and saying, “I don’t have a message to the fans. A woman wrote an article that was inaccurate.”

Trump’s refusal to denounce the Troll Army was greeted with delight by Anglin, who immediately posted: “Glorious Leader Donald Trump Refuses to Denounce Stormer Troll Army.” He exulted:

“Asked by the disgusting and evil Jewish parasite Wolf Blitzer to denounce the Stormer Troll Army, The Glorious Leader declined. The Jew Wolf was attempting to Stump the Trump, bringing up Stormer attacks on Jew terrorist Julia Ioffe. Trump responded to the request with “I have no message to the fans” which might as well have been “Hail Victory, Comrades!””

**

Fast-forward to 2023:

Image
Categories Accountability, Bias, Bigotry, Billionaires, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Fascism, Media, Trump

Florida Wants Girls to Report When They Menstruate!

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2023 //
39

No freedom in Florida! The state where personal privacy goes to die! Soviet-style mind & body control! I’m guessing the purpose of this diktat is to check to make sure no trans women are competing in women’s sports. But there are worse things at stake her. Privacy. Freedom. An intrusive state, a government that counts your menstrual cycle. Gross!

#DictatorDeSantis

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Freedom

Iowa: Republicans Propose Banning People on Food Stamps from Buying Fresh Meats and Other Foods

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2023 //
88

Republicans in the Iowa Legislature want to limit the foods that people who are on food stamps may purchase. They don’t think poor people deserve to eat well. They also want to lower the threshold for eligibility so that fewer people can get food assistance.

What can you say about such cruelty? Why does anyone vote for them? People without the milk of human kindness in their bodies.

Salon reports:

Iowa House Republicans introduced a bill that would place restrictions on the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, limiting who qualifies for food assistance and what foods they can buy.

The new bill, House File 3, dictates what the more than 250,000 Iowans who rely on SNAP can or cannot buy at grocery stores, Luke Elzinga, spokesperson for local food nonprofit DMARC told Axios Des Moines.

HF3 also targets several other public assistance programs, such as Medicaid, and reduces the income level Iowans need to qualify for the program…

Some of the proposed restrictions mean that low-income, older, and disabled Iowans who rely on SNAP benefits would not be able to purchase items like fresh meat, white bread, or sliced cheese.

The bill dictates that people can only purchase 100% whole wheat bread, brown rice and 100% whole wheat pasta — no white grains allowed.

Also on the “do not buy list” are baked, refried or chili beans. Instead, recipients must purchase black, red, and pinto beans. Cooking oil, spices, and salt and pepper would have to be crossed off the shopping list, along with soup, and canned vegetables and fruit.

Fresh meats are off the table, as Iowans would only be able to purchase canned products like canned tuna or salmon. Sliced, cubed, crumbled, and American cheese would also be eliminated from SNAP food purchases….

“I don’t think the 39 co-sponsors of this bill know just how restrictive this is, and that it would ban meat,” he said. “Under this bill, no ground beef, no chicken, no pork in the state of Iowa. I just can’t believe that they knew that was what it was when the bill was introduced.”

Do Republicans believe in freedom? Or control?

Categories Cruelty, Health, Iowa

Thom Hartmann: Beware the GOP “Two Santas” Scam

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2023 //
20

Thom Hartmann looks back to the Ronald Reagan presidency to explain how Republicans seized the strategy of tax cuts and spending to counter the Democrats’ winning formula of social welfare spending. Now Republicans are threatening to force the federal government to default on the national debt, which would plunge the global economy into chaos, unless Democrats make deep cuts in social programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Hartmann writes:

The media refers to it as a debate around the debt ceiling, but it’s actually far simpler than that. And entirely political.

Back in November, a few weeks after House Republicans won the election and seized control of that body, I wrote to you warning that the House Republicans would try the same scam that Ronald Reagan first rolled out in the 1980s. I wrapped the article up with the “hope that Democratic politicians and our media will, finally, call the GOP out on Wanniski’s and Reagan’s Two Santa Clauses scam.”

So far, no soap. I haven’t heard a single mention of Two Santas in the mainstream media, and I’ll bet you haven’t, either. That’s the bad news.

The good news — perhaps — is that the scam has lost its sting after working so well for them for 42 years. President Biden and House Democrats are standing firm, saying they have no intention of negotiating around the debt ceiling with terrorists threatening to destroy our economy.

But even if it’s the last gasp of this scam, it appears House Republicans plan to go out with a bang. So let’s quickly review how Two Santas works.

Back in 1976 the Republican Party was a smoking ruin. Nixon had resigned after being busted for lying about his “secret plan to end the Vietnam War,” his involvement in the Watergate burglary, and his taking bribes from Jimmy Hoffa and the Milk Lobby. He only avoided prosecution because Gerald Ford pardoned him. 

His first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had also resigned to avoid prosecution for taking bribes.

Newspaper and television editorialists were openly speculating the GOP might implode. The Party hadn’t held the House of Representatives for more than two consecutive years since 1930(and wouldn’t until 1994), Jerry Ford had ended the War the year before in a national humiliation, the unemployment rate was over 7 percent, as was inflation after hovering around 11 percent the year before.

The Republican Party had little to offer the American people beyond anti-communism, their mainstay since the 1950s.

Americans knew it was Democrats who’d brought them Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, subsidized college, the right to unionize, antipoverty programs, and sent men to the moon. And they knew Republicans had opposed the “big government spending” associated with every single one of them.

But one man — a Republican strategist and editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal named Jude Wanniski — thought he saw a way out. It was, he argued, a strategy that could eventually bring about a permanent Republican governing majority.

In a WSJ op-ed that year, Wanniski pointed outthat Americans thought of Democrats as the “Party of Santa” and Republicans as, essentially, Scrooge. Republicans, he noted, hadn’t even proposed a tax cut in 22 years!

The solution, Wanniski proposed, was for Republicans to start pushing tax cuts whenever the GOP held the White House. This would establish their Santa bona fides, particularly if Democrats objected. It would flip the script so Democrats would fill the role of Scrooge.

To make it even easier for Republicans to cut taxes, Wanniski invented and publicized a new economic theory called Supply-Side Economics. When taxes went down, he said, government revenue would magically go up!

Four years later, when Reagan came into the White House with the election of 1980, he picked up Wanniski’s strategy and doubled down on it. (In the primary of 1980, he’d even run on it: his primary opponent, George Herbert Walker Bush, derided it as “Voodoo Economics.”)

Reagan not only cut taxes on the rich: he also radically increased government spending, goosing the economy into a sugar high while throwing the nation deeply into debt.

Citing Supply-Side Economics, in eight short years Reagan ran up greater deficits than every president from George Washington to Jerry Ford combined, taking our national debt from around $800 billion all the way up to around $2.6 trillion when he left office.

By 1992, when Bill Clinton won the presidency, Reagan and Bush’s debt had climbed to over $4.2 trillion, giving Republicans a chance to double down on Two Santas. Bill Clinton would be their test case.

House Republicans loudly demanded that Clinton “do something!” about the national debt, waving the debt ceiling like a cudgel. Over the next eight years they repeatedly wielded the debt ceiling, shutting down the government twice. The battles lifted Newt Gingrich to the speakership. 

Clinton caved, making massive cuts to the social safety net to get a balanced budget, a gut-shot to the Democratic Santa programs.

By the end of the Clinton presidency the formula was set. When Republicans held the White House, they’d spend like drunken Santas and cut taxes to the bone to drive up the national debt.

When Democrats come into the presidency, Republicans would use the debt ceiling to force them to cut their own social programs and shoot the Democratic Santa. 

As I noted last November, when Clinton shot Santa Claus the result was an explosion of Republican wins across the country as GOP politicians campaigned on a “Republican Santa” platform of supply-side tax cuts and pork-rich spending increases.

Democrats had controlled the House of Representatives in almost every single year since the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, but with Newt Gingrich rigorously enforcing Wanniski’s Two Santa Claus strategy, they used the debt ceiling as a weapon.

State after state turned red and the Republican Party rose to take over, in less than a decade, every single lever of power in the federal government from the Supreme Court to the White House.

Looking at the wreckage of the Democratic Party all around Clinton in 1999, Wanniski wrote a gloating memo that said, in part:

“We of course should be indebted to Art Laffer for all time for his Curve… But as the primary political theoretician of the supply-side camp, I began arguing for the ‘Two Santa Claus Theory’ in 1974. If the Democrats are going to play Santa Claus by promoting more spending, the Republicans can never beat them by promoting less spending. They have to promise tax cuts…”

Ed Crane, then-president of the Koch-funded Libertarian CATO Institute, noted in a memo that year:

“When Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Vin Weber, Connie Mack and the rest discovered Jude Wanniski and Art Laffer, they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. In supply-side economics they found a philosophy that gave them a free pass out of the debate over the proper role of government. … That’s why you rarely, if ever, heard Kemp or Gingrich call for spending cuts, much less the elimination of programs and departments.”

Two Santa Clauses had fully seized the GOP mainstream.

Never again would Republicans worry about the debt or deficit when they were in office, and they knew well how to scream hysterically about it and hook in the economically naïve media as soon as Democrats again took power….

Please open the link and read the rest of the article.

Categories Budget Cuts, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Economy, Extremism, Fake, Funding, Republicans

The Phony “Culture Wars” Are Hurting Students, Teachers, and Schools

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2023 //
36

Far-right extremists concocted a cascading series of so-called culture wars that have no basis in fact or reality. Their purpose is to undermine public trust in teachers and public schools, paving the way for divisive “school choice,” which defunds public schools.

Teachers are intimidated, fearful that they might violate the law by teaching factual history about race and racism. Students are deprived of honesty in their history and social studies classes. Schools are slandered by extremists. Needless divisions are created by the lies propagated by zealots whose goal is to privatize public funding for schools.

First came the furor over “critical race theory,” which is not taught in K-12 schools. CRT is a law school course of study that examines systemic racism. The claim that it permeates K-12 schools was created as a menace threatening the children of America by rightwing ideologue Chris Rufo, who shamelessly smeared the teachers of America as purveyors of race hatred that humiliated white children. Rufo made clear in a speech at Hillsdale College that the only path forward was school choice. The entire point of Rufo’s gambit was the destruction of public trust in public schools.

Then came a manufactured brouhaha over transgender students who wanted to use a bathroom aligned with their sexual identity. The number of transgender students is minuscule, probably 1%. And yet again there was a furor that could have easily been resolved with a gender-neutral bathroom. Ron DeSantis made a campaign ad with a female swimmer who complained that she competed against a trans woman. What she didn’t mention was that the trans woman was beaten, as was she, by three other female swimmers.

And then came the nutty claim that teachers were “grooming” students to be gay. Another smear. No evidence whatever. Reading books about gay characters would turn students gay, said the critics; but would reading about elephants make students want to be elephants?

Simultaneously, extremists raised loud alarms about books that introduced students to dangerous ideas about sexuality and racism. If they read books with gay characters, students would turn gay. If they read about racism, they would “hate America.” So school libraries had to be purged; even public libraries had to be purged. One almost expected public book burnings. So much power attributed to books, as if the Internet doesn’t exist, as if kids can’t watch porn of all kinds, as if public television does not regularly run shows about American’s shameful history of racism.

As citizens and parents, we must stand up for truth and sanity. We must defend our schools and teachers against libelous claims. We must oppose those who would ban books.

Of course, parents should meet with their children’s teachers. They should partner with them to help their children. They should ask questions about the curriculum. They should share their concerns. Learning benefits when parents, teachers, students, and communities work together.

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Fraud, Lies, Politics, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans, School Choice

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: The West Must Stop Putin Now!

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2022 //
62

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a history at New York University who specializes in fascism and authoritarian leaders.

She wrote:

Authoritarianism is about having the power to get away with crime, and waging a genocidal war against another country without othercountries intervening in ways that force a cessation of conflict counts as a big win in the autocrat world. In fact, from the minute they receive intelligence about a planned invasion, autocrats watch carefully to see what happens to transgressors of the international order–and adjust their own plans for aggression accordingly.

Allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of annihilation against Ukraine to continue by not giving Ukraine the arms it needs to definitively repel the Russian invaders increases the risk that other autocrats will ramp up their own imperialist aspirations. Autocrats interpret any ambivalence about shutting down their peers’ territorial expansions as license to proceed with similar aggressive acts.

History is clear about what happens in such cases. Most people are familiar with the folly of the September 1938 British and French-brokered Munich agreement, which allowed the Third Reich to annex the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia six months after it annexed Austria.

Far fewer know about the earlier appeasement that set the stage for Hitler’s actions: Benito Mussolini’s war on League of Nations member Ethiopia, which started in October 1935. This was the biggest military operation since World War I, with Italy’s formidable air force dropping hundreds of tons of illegal chemical weapons on Ethiopians.

The weak sanctions levied on Italy by the League of Nations did not deter Il Duce from continuing to commit war crimes. He declared victory in May 1936, and occupied Ethiopia until the Allies drove the Italians out in 1941. “Was it ever likely to be effective?” Winston Churchill wrote critically of the sanctions in June. “Was it real or sham?” That same month, exiled Emperor Haile Selassie I denounced the war crimes to the League of Nations, but no action was taken against the Fascists.

By then, Mussolini’s admirer Hitler had all the information he needed about the consequences a despot might face for military aggression. In March 1936, while Mussolini’s war entered its sixth month, the Führer remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles.

Twenty-first century autocrats watch their kindred spirits’ fates with equal interest. Since the start of Putin’s war on democratic Ukraine, the world has become far less safe. A few weeks before the Russians invaded, Putin and Chinese head of state Xi Jinping issued a joint statementabout the new “multipolar” era of international relations. The premise of this new era –unrestrained imperialism for Russia and China– has become all too clear.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping together in Beijing, Feb. 4, 2022. Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik/AFP/via Getty Images

Xi Jinping has since become far more aggressive towards the West. His government has increased its rhetoric about its imperialistic claims on Taiwan. He has consolidated his personal power with a third term, while further puffing up his personality cult in ways not seen among Chinese premiers since Mao Zedong.

Turkey has also ramped up its bellicose and expansionist rhetoric regarding Syria and Greece. It has also persecuted Armenians, through its ally Azerbaijan, in the disputedterritory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Autocrats are transactional beings. You have a deal with an autocrat until you don’t, meaning no one should think that Putin will negotiate with or about Ukraine in good faith. That also holds for their relationships with each other (as Joseph Stalin discovered when Hitler invaded Russia despite signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact).

Even as dictators cheer on lawlessness that goes unpunished by the democratic order, they also circle each other like vultures, looking for signs of weakness that they can exploit. And everyone knows that Putin is more vulnerable as a player in the sphere of influence game with his resources and attention focused on Ukraine. Turkey, along with China, will seek to fill any power vacuum Putin’s weakness opens up in Eurasia and beyond.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s relationship with Putin has always been volatile. In the course of a few months in 2016 they went from almost going to war to being “best friends,” dining on plates that immortalized their friendship. I was skeptical of Erdogan’s early claims that he would be a “peacemaker” and mediator between Russia and Ukraine. Turkey intends to exploit this international crisis to increase its own power and prestige.

Now Serbian President Aleksandr Vucic has become the latest authoritarian to be galvanized by the possibilities created by the prolongation of Putin’s war. He has put his military on high alert, citing rising tensions with the Republic of Kosovo. Serbia does not recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

All of these conflicts have long histories that are independent of the new climate created by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet democratic powers’ acceptance of a continuance of Putin’s war will only further destabilize the international order. It also increases the chances that democratic strongholds such as Taiwan will be targeted for “reunification” –the word of choice for autocrats since the days of Hitler to market their imperialism to their peoples and the world.

That’s why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was right to state in his speech to U.S. Congress that supporting Ukraine is an investment in global security. He knows that when an autocrat gets away with an imperialist and genocidal war it only increases his megalomania and hubris, making it far more difficult to rein him in later on. It also increases the likelihood that other autocrats will commit their own aggressions toward targeted territories.

And it’s why the warning that economist Anders Aslund issued to his fellow Europeans should be heeded, not least because it builds on historical precedent. As an expert on Putin’s kleptocracy, Aslund knows the value and prestige impunity has among autocrats. “If you don’t deliver enough of arms & funds to Ukraine now,” he tweeted, “you might have to face Russian troops yourselves later on.”

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fascism

Texas Gov. Abbott Sneers at the Spirit of Christmas

By dianeravitch
December 25, 2022 //
53

Texas Governor Greg Abbott took pride in sending three bus loads of Venezuelan immigrants from Texas to Washington, D.C. on Christmas Eve. They were sent to the home of Vice-President Harris, where they arrived in bitter cold weather without proper clothing. Men, women, and children.

Is this the spirit of Christmas? Was there no room at the inn in Texas? What was the message of Jesus? What kind of a Christian is Governor Abbott and his buddy Florida Governor Ron DeSantis? Where in the New Testament does it say you should treat the hungry and homeless with contempt and use them as political pawns?

NPR reported:

Several busloads of migrants were dropped off at the Washington, D.C., residence of Vice President Kamala Harris on Christmas Eve — apparently the latest in an escalating battle between state officials and the Biden administration over the country’s immigration policy.

A total of three busloads of migrants arrived at the Naval Observatory, where Harris lives, on Saturday evening. The Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, a local grassroots organization, met the migrants, who were inadequately dressed for the freezing temperature, according to the station.

Earlier this year, some state governors began sending buses of migrants to the nation’s capital, after the Biden administration attempted to lift a pandemic-era policy that let the U.S. deny entry to immigrants.

At least one governor from these states, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, said his state is purposefully busing migrants to sanctuary cities, where law enforcement are discouraged from deporting immigrants.

Amy Fischer, an organizer with the Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, told NPR’s All Things Considered on Sunday that Abbott’s actions were “rooted in racism and xenophobia.”

“At the end of the day, everybody who arrived here last night was able to get free transportation, on a charter bus, that got them closer to their final destination,” she said.

Fortunately there are people in the sanctuary cities who are feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and caring for the stranger.

In Abbott’s Texas and DeSantis’ Florida, Christian values have been warped into talking points for rightwing frauds.

WWJD?

Categories Cruelty, DeSantis, Florida, Goodness, Religion, Texas
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