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The Madness of King Donald

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2020 //
22

Trump is obsessed with overturning the election he lost. He continues to tweet that he won and that the election was tainted by widespread fraud, even though his campaign lost every lawsuit in state and federal courts for lack of evidence and was twice rejected by the US Supreme Court. Trump appears to be delusional, egged on by conspiracy theorists and his inflated ego and raging narcissism.

The New York Times published a story about a long meeting at the White House on Friday where Trump considered ways to reverse the results of the election. Trump consulted with attorney Sidney Powell, who was previously ousted as one of his campaign lawyers after she unveiled her theories about voting machines programmed in Venezuela by followers of deceased dictator Hugo Chavez. No court accepted her evidence.

President Trump on Friday discussed naming Sidney Powell, who as a lawyer for his campaign team unleashed conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig voting machines in the United States, to be a special counsel overseeing an investigation of voter fraud, according to two people briefed on the discussion.

It was unclear if Mr. Trump will move ahead with such a plan.

Most of his advisers opposed the idea, two of the people briefed on the discussion said, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer. In recent days Mr. Giuliani has sought to have the Department of Homeland Security join the campaign’s efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the election.

Mr. Giuliani joined the discussion by phone initially, while Ms. Powell was at the White House for a meeting that became raucous and involved people shouting at each other at times, according to one of the people briefed on what took place.

Ms. Powell’s client, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser whom the president recently pardoned, was also there, two of the people briefed on the meeting said. Some senior administration officials drifted in and out of the meeting.

During an appearance on the conservative Newsmax channel this week, Mr. Flynn pushed for Mr. Trump to impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election. At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea.

Ms. Powell’s ideas were shot down by every other Trump adviser present, all of whom repeatedly pointed out that she had yet to back up her claims with proof. At one point, one person briefed on the meeting said, she produced several affidavits, but upon inspection they were all signed by a man she has previously used as an expert witness, whose credentials have been called into question.

The White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly and aggressively pushed back on the ideas being proposed, which went beyond the special counsel idea, those briefed on the meeting said.

Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump there was no constitutional authority for what was being discussed, one of the people briefed on the meeting said. Other advisers from the White House and the Trump campaign delivered the same message throughout the meeting, which stretched on for a long period of time...

Mr. Trump, egged on by supporters like Ms. Powell, has never conceded and, holed up inside the White House, he continues to assert that he actually won — even though the baseless claims Ms. Powell and others have made of widespread fraud have been thoroughly debunked and even many of Mr. Trump’s closest allies have dismissed as preposterous her tale of an international conspiracy to rig the vote...

Ms. Powell accused other Trump advisers of being quitters, according to the people briefed.

But the idea that Mr. Trump would try to install Ms. Powell in a position to investigate the outcome sent shock waves through the president’s circle. She has repeatedly claimed there was widespread fraud, but several lawsuits she filed related to election fraud have been tossed out of court...

Part of the White House meeting on Friday night was a discussion about an executive order to take control of voting machines to examine them, according to one of the people briefed on the discussion.

Mr. Giuliani has separately pressed the Department of Homeland Security to seize possession of voting machines as part of a push to overturn the results of the election, three people familiar with the discussion said. Mr. Giuliani was told the department does not have the authority to do such a thing.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Trump

McKenzie Scott: A Good Billionaire?

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2020 //
71

McKenzie Scott is the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos. She was at his side when he founded Amazon and was the company’s first accountant. She played a role in the success of the company. When they divorced (he left her for another woman), McKenzie received a share of his Amazon stock. She is now one of the richest people in the world. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index ranks her as the 18th richest person in the world, right behind Alice Walton, with a net worth (on Tuesday) of of $62.4 billion (Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of $189 billion).

In a better world, there would be no billionaires. Everyone would pay a fair share of their income and wealth in taxes, and there would be no extremes of wealth or poverty. The rich would still be richer than everyone else, but not obscenely rich, with billions that they could never spend in ten lifetimes.

McKenzie Scott is giving away more than any other billionaire. Last week, she revealed that she had given away $4.1 billion to more than 384 organizations in every state and Puerto Rico. Advised by a team, she selected the recipients to focus on directly helping those who were actively involved in serving the most vulnerable members of society. In late July of this year, she gave away almost $1.7 billion to 116 organizations focused racial equity, LGBT equity, gender equity, economic mobility, empathy, democracy, public health, global development, and climate change.

She wrote on Medium about the groups that received grants:

Some are filling basic needs: food banks, emergency relief funds, and support services for those most vulnerable. Others are addressing long-term systemic inequities that have been deepened by the crisis: debt relief, employment training, credit and financial services for under-resourced communities, education for historically marginalized and underserved people, civil rights advocacy groups, and legal defense funds that take on institutional discrimination.

To select these 384, the team sought suggestions and perspective from hundreds of field experts, funders, and non-profit leaders and volunteers with decades of experience. We leveraged this collective knowledge base in a collaboration that included hundreds of emails and phone interviews, and thousands of pages of data analysis on community needs, program outcomes, and each non-profit’s capacity to absorb and make effective use of funding. We looked at 6,490 organizations, and undertook deeper research into 822. We put 438 of these on hold for now due to insufficient evidence of impact, unproven management teams, or to allow for further inquiry about specific issues such as treatment of community members or employees. We won’t always learn about a concern inside an organization, but when we do, we’ll take extra time to evaluate. We’ll never eliminate every risk through our analysis, but we’ll eliminate many. Then we can select organizations to assist — and get out of their way.

We do this research and deeper diligence not only to identify organizations with high potential for impact, but also to pave the way for unsolicited and unexpected gifts given with full trust and no strings attached. Because our research is data-driven and rigorous, our giving process can be human and soft. Not only are non-profits chronically underfunded, they are also chronically diverted from their work by fundraising, and by burdensome reporting requirements that donors often place on them. These 384 carefully selected teams have dedicated their lives to helping others, working and volunteering and serving real people face-to-face at bedsides and tables, in prisons and courtrooms and classrooms, on streets and hospital wards and hotlines and frontlines of all types and sizes, day after day after day. They help by delivering vital services, and also through the profound encouragement felt each time a person is seen, valued, and trusted by another human being. This kind of encouragement has a special power when it comes from a stranger, and it works its magic on everyone. We shared each of our gift decisions with program leaders for the first time over the phone, and welcomed them to spend the funding on whatever they believe best serves their efforts. They were told that the entire commitment would be paid upfront and left unrestricted in order to provide them with maximum flexibility. The responses from people who took the calls often included personal stories and tears. These were non-profit veterans from all backgrounds and backstories, talking to us from cars and cabins and COVID-packed houses all over the country — a retired army general, the president of a tribal college recalling her first teaching job on her reservation, a loan fund founder sitting in the makeshift workspace between her washer and dryer from which she had launched her initiative years ago. Their stories and tears invariably made me and my teammates cry.

It is obvious that the tax code is not going to be changed any time soon. Trump and McConnell revised it to favor the 1%, and McConnell will fight to keep it skewed toward big donors and corporations.

In the meanwhile, I salute McKenzie Scott for singling out the worthiest organizations and giving money without strings. Unlike the Billionaire Boys and Girls Club (think Gates, Broad, the Waltons), she does not choose organizations that are doing her bidding. She funded organizations serving those in need and gave them unconditional grants.

Not everyone is impressed by her generosity:

Some point out that in a different America, Scott wouldn’t have billions of dollars to give away – instead, more of that wealth would be paid in taxes that could benefit all Americans, and in higher wages to Amazon employees who could use the money directly.

Anand Giridharadas, author of the book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, said in a tweet, which has since been removed, that it was “union-busting and tax avoidance that made the fortune possible.”

As well as praising a billionaire for giving money to HBCUs, Giridharadas said rank-and-file Amazon workers should be praised for their contribution to the company’s success: “Let us salute some folks barely holding on, running up and down warehouse aisles, whose wages did this.”

But even critics of income inequality recognize that McKenzie Scott is far more generous than her fellow billionaires, most of whom signed “The Giving Pledge” (promising to give away most of their wealth) but are taking their time dispensing their vast riches. (Look at the pictures of billionaires on the website of The Giving Pledge. Think Scrooge. Think French Revolution. Liberté, Fraternite, Egalite.)

Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote at CommonDreams that while Scott is a newcomer on the billionaire-giving scene, she is doing it better than others in her cohort.

“She still has a long way to go in her stated intention of giving away all the wealth. But she’s now made two bold moves, putting to shame the other 650 U.S. billionaires who haven’t figured out comparable ways to boldly share,” he said.

“During a pandemic when US billionaire wealth has increased $1 trillion since March, other billionaires should draw inspiration from her approach to move funds to urgent needs, to historically marginalized groups, to share decision-making with non-wealthy people, and to avoid warehousing funds in private legacy foundations.”

Our society has a long way to go to create an economy where everyone has a chance to live a decent life, find satisfying work, have access to good health care, good housing, good schools.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Inequality

Michael Gerson: The Moral Hypocrisy of Conservative Leaders

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2020 //
55

So you thought the election was over after Joe Biden won the vote of the Electoral College on December 14, as predicted, by 306-232. And perhaps you thought it was over when Mitch McConnell finally congratulated Biden after the Electoral College voted and called him the President-Elect.

But: Trump is continuing his hapless campaign to reverse the election, despite the fact that his claims of fraud were rejected more than 50 times in state and federal courts and twice by the Supreme Court. Stephen Miller said that the election was not finished, that several states had prepared their own slates of Trump electors who would take their case to Congress, and that the decision about the presidency would not be finished until January 20, Inauguration Day. George Conway of the Lincoln Project told Anderson Cooper on CNN that Trump was behaving as he is for three reasons: 1) he is delusional; 2) he is scamming his followers by raising money for himself (whoever heard of a billionaire appealing for $5?); 3) he is malevolent.

Michael Gerson wrote in the Washington Post about the hypocrisy of certain rightwing “leaders” who support Trump’s ridiculous claim that the election was “stolen.”

Gerson wrote about the assault on democracy by conservative leaders, who are enabling Trump’s delusional behavior:

“It was stolen,” said conservative luminary William Bennett on a recent podcast. “The election was stolen.”


In a Dec. 10 open letter, a group of conservative stalwarts — including activist Gary Bauer, former senator and former president of the Heritage Foundation James DeMint, and head of the Family Research Council Tony Perkins — alleged that “President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election.” They called on state legislators in battleground states to “appoint clean slates of electors to the Electoral College to support President Trump” and urged the House and Senate to reject competing slates reflecting the actual vote.


For some of us, watching prominent conservatives turn against rationality and democracy is not just disappointing; it is disorienting...

The intellectual bankruptcy and moral hypocrisy of many conservative leaders is stunning. People who claimed to favor limited government now applaud Trump’s use of the executive branch to undermine an election. A similar attempt by Barack Obama would have brought comparisons to Fidel Castro. People who talked endlessly about respecting the Constitution affirm absurd slanders against the constitutional order. People who claimed to be patriots now spread false claims about their country’s fundamental corruption. People who talked of honoring the rule of law now jerk and gyrate according to the whims of a lawless leader.

These conservative leaders no longer deserve the assumption of sincerity. They are spreading conspiratorial lies so unlikely and irrational, they must know them to be lies.

Gerson questions their motives for their immoral claims. Is it cynicism? Fear? A will to power? Why accept blatant lies? Why attack the foundation of democracy, which is free and fair elections? Why defend a would-be tyrant?

Perhaps these conservative leaders view democracy as a secondary concern, compared with the broader crisis of Western civilization. Maybe resisting the impending arrival of cultural and economic Marxism requires conservatives to use whatever means are necessary — including the invalidation of a valid election.
This justification — “by any means necessary” — may be the least conservative arrangement of letters in the English language.

Traditional conservatives have regarded such ideas as the path to tyranny, the highway to the guillotine. This approach assumes an emergency that does not actually exist. Are the barbarian hordes really arriving under the brutal, pitiless direction of . . . Joe Biden? Will the rescue of civilization from decadence really be accomplished under the courageous moral leadership of . . . Donald Trump?


Conservatism is supposed to produce the best of citizens — lawful, loyal and respectful of the Constitution. In some quarters, it is now producing the worst — fractious, resentful and cynical. A large portion of the responsibility rests on conservative leaders, who have sold their convictions cheap.

Categories Biden, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Failure, Hypocrisy, Trump

James Hohmann: Michigan Capitol Locked Down As Electoral College Meets

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2020 //
45

There has never been an election in the United States like this one.

Donald Trump continues to insist that the election was stolen and that he is the rightful winner, even though his opponent Joe Biden has 6-7 million votes more than Trump does and even though Biden will register 306 votes in the Electoral College today, the same as Trump called “a landslide” when he won in 2016. In every presidential election in recent memory, the loser conceded defeat before the Electoral College met. Not Trump. He vows to continue his fight. Some commentators think that he is “fighting” because he is collecting millions of dollars from small donors, which he may use to pay his legal fees after leaving the White House or to pay off bank loans.

About three-quarters of Trump voters believe what he says, despite the Trump campaign’s failure to win in any consequential court, despite 50 losses in state courts, and two rejections by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Among his supporters are people prone to violence. James Hohmann writes in the Washington Post that the Michigan state capitol was locked down to protect the members of the state’s Electoral College.

Michigan’s 16 electors will convene at 2 p.m. Eastern inside a heavily guarded state capitol in Lansing to cast their ballots for Joe Biden to become president and Kamala Harris to become vice president.

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R) said in a statement overnight that the entire capitol complex will be closed to the public based on “recommendations from law enforcement” amid “credible threats of violence.” Police will escort each of the electors from their cars amid what’s expected to be a large “Stop the Steal” protest outside.

This certainly sounds like the prudent call, but it is nevertheless lamentable that the closures – combined with coronavirus precautions – will strip some of the pomp and circumstance from a sacred American tradition that is typically pro forma.

Ugly events this weekend – from Washington, D.C., to Washington state and Minnesota to Kentucky – showed that violence is not hypothetical. This is an especially dangerous development in a democracy that depends upon losers accepting the results of free and fair elections.

Police in Olympia, Wash., arrested an armed right-wing protester and charged him with shooting a counterdemonstrator during protests on Saturday night.

In the nation’s capital, at least four people were stabbed, including someone who is now in critical condition, and 33 more were arrested, after rallies supporting President Trump descended into chaos fueled by white nationalists. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham estimates that as many as 700 Proud Boys and their confederates roamed downtown streets looking to start fights, clashing with about 200 anti-Trump protesters.

Many photographs show the Proud Boys carrying Confederate flags. If they want to secede from the Union, let them go. It is never too late.

Are they Confederates or fascists or both?

Can Trump be impeached retroactively for betraying his oath of office? For attacking the Constitution? For sedition?

Categories Democracy, Fascism, Trump

Jeff Bryant: What Is Worse Than DeVos?

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2020 //
30

Jeff Bryant writes that while we were all celebrating the pending departure of Betsy DeVos, the usual suspects were buying control of local school board elections. We are all aware of her efforts to direct federal funding to private schools and charter schools. But, he warns, we should pay attention to the “threat to democratically governed schools that preceded DeVos and will continue when she is long gone.”

In midsized metropolitan areas like Indianapolis and Stockton, California, parents, teachers, and public school advocates warn of huge sums of money coming from outside their communities to influence local politics and bankroll school board candidates who support school privatization. In phone conversations, emails, and texts, they point to a national agenda, backed by deep-pocketed organizations and individuals who intend to disrupt local school governance in order to impose forms of schools that operate like private contractors rather than public agencies—an agenda not dissimilar from that of DeVos.

In the 2020 school board election in Indianapolis, local teachers and grassroots groups the Indiana Coalition for Public Education and the IPS Community Coalition backed four candidates against a slate of opponents whom locals accuse of representing outside interests. At stake, according to WFYI, was “an ideological tilt” over whether the district would continue to “collaborate with outside groups and charter organizations” or “return to more traditional methods of improving struggling schools.”

Both sides raise the banner of “improving struggling schools,” but locals say what’s really at stake is whether voters retain democratic control of their public schools or see them turned over to private, unelected boards and their corporate supporters and funders.

Similarly, in Stockton, the clash between opposing slates of candidates in the 2020 school board election included controversies over charter school expansion and the influence of outside money in the district.

The controversy broke into public view in July 2020 when 209 Times reportedthat “[p]aid operatives” connected to Stockton’s outgoing mayor Michael Tubbs and three school board members were engaged in “a coordinated campaign of undue influence from outside of the city whose aim is… charter school expansion” into the district.

In both elections, candidates backed by outside organizations and individuals massively outspent candidates supported by local teachers and public school advocates.

In Indianapolis, WFYI reported that political action committees supporting the candidates aligned with charter school interests had contributed more than $200,000 into the election by October 9, while the “[f]our candidates backed by the IPS Community Coalition… [had by then] raised less than $20,000 in total.”

In Stockton, 209 Politics reported independent expenditure committees supporting candidates favoring charter school expansion outspent their opponents 25 to 1.

While the language used by these outside organizations and their benefactors is different from the rhetoric DeVos wields—substituting a message of rescuing struggling schools for DeVos’s calls for libertarian autonomy—the result is much the same: local citizens see democratic governance of their schools being swept aside as private actors get more control to do what they want.

This effort to squelch local democracy is funded by the usual billionaires:  the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the Walton Family Foundation, of Walmart fame; Arnold Ventures, the private foundation of former hedge fund manager and Enron trader John Arnold; and the City Fund, a nationwide organization providing financial support for city-level charter school expansions.

The City Fund is a relatively new organization of experienced charter school promoters that started on day one with $200 million from billionaires John Arnold and Reed Hastings. Its mission: to use the money to undermine democratic control of local school boards and to see that charter-friendly candidates are elected.

The other organization used by the billionaires to funnel money into the Indianapolis school board election was the notorious Stand for Children, which has played the same role in other districts. “Stand” worked closely with the Mind Trust, a local cheerleader for privatization, also funded by billionaires who don’t like local control or democracy.

Bryant reports that another PAC, aligned with Stand for Children, entered the race on behalf of the Alice Walton and Michael Bloomberg, neither of whom lives in Indianapolis or in Indiana.

Bryant relies on the careful research of Thomas Ultican, who has been documenting the billionaires’ determination to take control of urban districts. Their strategy is to promote the “portfolio model” of schools. This is basically a rightwing business agenda that aligns with a corporate model of governance. Outsource management and control. Close low-performing schools, open new schools; repeat.

In the Indianapolis contest, the billionaire-backed candidates outspent the teacher union-backed candidates by a margin of 11-1. All four of the charter-friendly candidates won.

In Stockton, the teacher- and community-backed candidates won.

Please read the article. There is much to learn from it as a cautionary tale.

Here’s the question that lingers: Charter schools are no longer an innovation. The first charter school opened in 1992, almost three decades ago. There is no evidence that charters as such have produced miraculous improvement. Some get high test scores, but typically because they can choose their students and kick out the ones they don’t want. Some are far worse than the public schools they replaced. Some close mid-year, either for financial or academic reasons or low enrollment.

Why are these billionaires so devoted to imposing their ideas on local communities without regard to results? Is it because they disdain democracy?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Disruption, Failure

Frank G. Splitt: The Legacy of Trumpism

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2020 //
77

Frank G. Splitt is an esteemed engineer who recently celebrated his 90th birthday. He writes from the perspective of many years of experience and knowledge.

By Frank G. Splitt December 3, 2020


The Trump Presidency
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly


The experience is shattering. How much stupidity! What delusion among such cultured and actually clever people! Just unconditional belief in the Führer, delight that ‘finally our weapons speak’.1 —Erich Ebermayer, September 3, 1939


My September 21, 2020, essay “Trumpism and Its Factions: An Existential Threat to America’s Democracy,” began with the above epigraph and concluded with the following three questions:2


If the president has his way, who would be able to stop him from using all the levers of government to not only contest the results of the upcoming election if he loses, but also who would stop him from realizing his personal and political aims as well as his ambition if he wins either by votes cast or by a SCOTUS decision as in Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000)? Shades of Germany in the 1930s?”


President Trump’s loyal supporters counter such concerns as well as any and all criticism by citing his policies that resulted in ostensibly good if not great accomplishments. It has been claimed that these accomplishments have been negated by the president’s offsetting personality.3 However, these “good” accomplishments, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder—forming only a piece of an ugly story that goes far beyond the president’s personality.


Not mentioned by his supporters have been vast international reputational as well as social and human costs that are still being paid for these accomplishments. Consider first the likely long-lasting impact of President Trump’s assault on America’s democracy and democratic values, as well as his demeaning of the office of the president via cruelty, incompetence, and alleged corruption as well as obstruction of justice.


Also not mentioned are the president’s trade policies that have damaged the U.S. economy and alienated allies. According to Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin: “the president sought to reduce the trade deficit, increase manufacturing employment, change China’s policies, and reach better deals, but fell short on all accounts”4
Furthermore, consider the cost of the president’s divide-and-conquer strategy that not only tore American’s asunder, but also bolstered America’s slide towards autocracy and the fact that bad behavior and policies have steep costs as well. The list includes: the minority-voter suppression highlighted in a recent Commonweal Magazine editorial,5 blatant lies and gross exaggerations, flagrant self-dealing, the tax evasion, the separation of children from their parents, the encouragement of white supremacists, conspiratorialists, and radical right-wing factions such as neo-Nazis, and, perhaps one of the most egregious of all in terms of lives lost, the downplaying and politicization of COVID-19.


An ugly state of affairs has pervaded the fabric of our nation. Sadly, none of this ugliness has any apparent bearing on the actions of President Trump’s loyal cult-like supporters of their tyrannical leader. For example, it has been reported that half of Republicans say Biden won because of a ‘rigged’ election.6 This belief appears to be a psychological phenomenon akin to the Hitler mania of the German people in the 1930s and the Jim Jones cult’s suicides in 1978.


Seemingly, half of Republicans have unconditional belief in Trump who was prescient when he once boasted: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” These voters believe the election was rigged not only because that’s what they want to believe, but more likely because Trump keeps baselessly saying it was rigged—insisting in a December 2, 2020, White House speech that he won the election.7
All of this would not be possible if these otherwise intelligent voters did not willfully suspend moral judgement and succumb to their avarice, self-interest, and/or any one of a number of political single-issues. This situation is not without its parallels, for example President Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign recalls one of the most disastrous political lies of the 20th century.8


Trump will always have his apologists and his steadfast defenders. They believe he is one of them fighting for what is right against elitist plots and those of the Deep State, as well as any others who may have betrayed them. To abandon their leader now would be to admit they were wrong—deceived or conned by his lies and exaggerations that placated their heart-felt resentment of the socio-political state of affairs in America.8 And, worse yet, admit that it was wrong to have supported him in the first place. It seems that one of the most difficult things for a person to do is admit that they were wrong—sometimes even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.9


What can be said of the president’s sycophantic congressional enablers? This group lives in utter fear of Trump’s base of loyal supporters and seems to believe the president has the right to impede the transition to the Biden presidency to suit his self- centered present and future interests no matter the cost to national security and the health of American citizens. These interests include: raising money, solidifying his base, undermining the Biden administration, deepening and exploiting ethnic, demographic religious, and racial divisions, as well as positioning for a possible 2024 rerun. 10, 11, 12


Finally, in view of the above, what might a post-Trump presidency portend? Although no one can say with any degree of certainty, here is a potential worst-case scenario: President Biden’s efforts to unite the country will fail, undermined beyond bearing by Trump who will be aided and abetted by Senate Republicans unwilling to stand up to him for fear of alienating his base. This will be followed by a further transition from democracy to autocracy while still conforming to the Constitution as interpreted by an unbalanced Supreme Court packed with Trump nominations and backed by a formidable voting block of true believers. This scenario reflects “shades of Germany in the 1930s.”


We will see what we will see


NOTES

  1. Ebermayer, a German liberal intellectual, made these remarks after a visit with aristocratic neighbors who, as Hitler-loyalists, expressed boundless uncritical faith in their leader. The encounter was on the day Britain and France went to war with Germany after it invaded Poland. See pages 368-69 of Frederick Taylor’s book 1939: A People’s History of the Coming of the Second World War (Norton, 2020).
  2. Splitt, Frank G., “Trumpism and Its Factions: An Existential Threat to America’s Democracy, FutureVectors, Sept.21, 2020, Afterword Oct. 13, 2020, http://www.futurevectors.com/Odyssey/Splitt%20- %20Trumpism.pdf
  3. Epstein, Joseph, “Donald Trump, the President His Detractors Loved to Hate,”
    The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Nov.14, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-the-president- his-detractors-loved-to-hate-1160530742143
  4. Irwin, Douglas A., “Trade Truths Will Outlast Trump,” The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, Nov. 20, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trade-truths-will-outlast-trump-11605828052
  5. Editors, “Democracy in America?” Commonweal, Nov. 2020, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/democracy-america
  6. Kahn, Chris, “Half of Republicans say Biden won because of a ‘rigged’ election.” Reuters, Nov. 18, 2020, https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-11-18/half-of-republicans-say-biden-won- because-of-a-rigged-election-reuters-ipsos-poll
  7. Restuccia, Andrew and Leary, Alex, “In Speech, Trump Reasserts Fraud Claims,” The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News, Dec. 3, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-reasserts-fraud-claims-despite- lack-of-evidence-losses-in-court-11606949718
  8. Bittner, Jochem, “1918 Germany Has Warning for America,” The New York Times, Opinion,
    Nov. 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/opinion/trump-conspiracy-germany- 1918.html?smid=em-share
  9. Danner, Mark, “The Con He Rode In On,” The New York Review, Sept. 19, 2020, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/11/19/the-con-he-rode-in-on/.
  10. Woodward, Calvin and Swenson, “AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s flailing effort resting on mendacity,”
    AP News, Nov. 21, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-ap-fact-check-joe-biden-donald-trump- technology/
  11. Reich, Robert, “How can Biden heal America when Trump doesn’t want it healed?” The Guardian, Nov. 8, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/08/joe-biden-donald-trump-election- healing-robert-reich
  12. Romano, Andrew and Walker, Hunter, “Trump in exile: How he will remain a force in the GOP, and a threat to Biden’s politics of unity,” Yahoo News, Nov. 18, 2020, . 13. Mazewski, Matt, “Trump Can Run Again,” Commonweal, Nov. 15, 2020, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/trump-can-run-again/
    Frank G. Splitt, is a former McCormick Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and Vice President Emeritus of Nortel Networks, the author of the book An Odyssey of Reform Initiatives: 1986-2015 and its sequel Reflections: 2016-2019. He is the recipient of The Drake Group’s 2006 Robert Maynard Hutchin’s Award and a 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Optics and Photonics. His books and other writings can be accessed at http://www.futurevectors.com

FutureVectors, Inc.
Mount Prospect, Illinois

Categories Democracy, Elections, Lies, Trump

Texas: Republicans Fighting to Defund Lobbying for Public Institutions, Including Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2020 //
13

The big battle this coming year in the Texas Legislature is about whether public agencies will be allowed to lobby for their interests. No one argues that private interests should be banned from advocating for what they want. Only public agencies—like public schools—would be banned because they use public money.

You can see where this is going. Supporters of public institutions would be gagged and censored, but promoters of privatization would be free to wine and dine legislators.

The Dallas Morning News tells both sides of the story here.

The issue, which has been dubbed “taxpayer-funded lobbying” by supporters and “community censorship” by its detractors, is a major divider between traditional Republicans — particularly those in rural areas who support public schools and their local county governments — and hard-line conservatives who see it as wasteful spending by local officials.

Local officials and the organizations that represent them — like the Texas Association for Counties, the Texas Municipal League and the Texas Association of School Boards — say such a lobbying ban would hurt local jurisdictions and make it more expensive for them to advocate for their constituents. They say the ban is nothing more than an effort to silence the voices of local officials.

Democrats and some Republicans banded together to block the bill last year. That vote resulted in House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and one of his top lieutenants, Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, meeting with conservative activist Michael Quinn Sullivan to target several fellow Republicans who voted against the bill.

The scandal forced Bonnen into early retirement and Burrows had to resign as chairman of the House Republican Caucus. Nonetheless, the bill’s backers say it will return next session.

Arch conservatives claim that cities, counties, public schools, and other public agencies should not be allowed to use taxpayer money to defend the public interest. Profiteers, buccaneers, entrepreneurs, and raiders of the public treasury would be allowed to lobby with no restraints.

Just one more loathsome effort to cripple the public interest by Governor Abbott and his allies.



Categories Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Freedom of Speech, Privatization, Republicans, Texas

Trump Delivers 46-Minute Rant Against Election, Insists He Won All States

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2020 //
73

Our democracy is under attack by the man who took an oath to protect the Constitution. Donald Trump gave a 46-minute speech denouncing the outcome of the election, which he insists was fraudulent despite the fact that his own Attorney General concluded that the Department of Justice did not find evidence of widespread fraud that would change the outcome of the election. Trump’s legal team has filed dozens of lawsuits, almost all of which were rejected in court by judges of both parties, including judges appointed by Trump. The few cases that went in Trump’s favor were over minor issues that did not affect the outcome of the election in any state.

The Washington Post reported on Trump’s speech:

Escalating his attack on democracy from within the White House, President Trump on Wednesday distributed an astonishing 46-minute video rant filled with baseless allegations of voter fraud and outright falsehoods in which he declared the nation’s election system “under coordinated assault and siege” and argued that it was “statistically impossible” for him to have lost to President-elect Joe Biden.


Standing behind the presidential lectern in the Diplomatic Reception Room and flanked by the flags of his office and of the country whose Constitution he swore an oath to uphold, Trump tried to leverage the power of the presidency to subvert the vote and overturn the election results.


The rambling and bellicose monologue — which Trump said “may be the most important speech I’ve ever made” and was delivered direct-to-camera with no audience — underscored his desperation to reverse the outcome of his election loss after a month of failed legal challenges and as some key states already have certified Biden’s victory.


The president’s latest salvo came a day after his attorney general, William P. Barr, said the Justice Department had found no evidence of voting fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.


Trump delivered in person many of the claims he previously has advanced on social media or that his lawyers have brought on his behalf in courts, which have been debunked or summarily dismissed because there is no evidence to support them.
Trump claimed in Wednesday’s video, again without evidence, that “corrupt forces” had stuffed ballot boxes with fraudulent votes. He claimed the fraud was “massive” and “on a scale never seen before.” He called on the Supreme Court to “do what’s right for our country,” which he suggested entailed terminating hundreds of thousands of votes so that “I very easily win in all states.”




Although Trump last week authorized his administration to cooperate with Biden’s transition, he still has refused to concede. With Wednesday’s remarks, the president intensified his protest of the results and threatened to disrupt the nation’s long history of a peaceful transfer of power.
“

This election was rigged. Everybody knows it,” Trump said. He added, “Our country needs somebody to say, ‘You’re right.’ . . . If we don’t root out the fraud, the tremendous and horrible fraud that’s taken place in our 2020 election, we don’t have a country anymore.”




Trump also claimed that Dominion Voting Systems, which manufactures voting machines used in many states, was “very suspect” and that many voters who pressed the button for “Trump” had their votes counted for Biden. There is no evidence that votes were in any way compromised, and Dominion has said there is no merit to Trump’s claims.


Biden decisively won the election with 306 electoral college votes to Trump’s 232. In the national popular vote, Biden leads with 80.9 million to Trump’s 74 million, a difference of 4.4 percentage points and nearly 7 million votes.


A majority of states already have certified their results ahead of the Dec. 14 meeting of the electoral college to finalize the national result. Those states include Georgia, which delivered Biden one of his narrowest victories and where officials conducted a hand recount that still had Biden winning by about 13,000 votes.
Trump’s video Wednesday represented his most comprehensive remarks yet about the election and came after he has spent the month since the election largely hidden from public view, save for a handful of official appearances and a call-in appearance on Fox News Channel.




Any hope that the president might be slowly coming to grips with his loss and accepting the fact that Biden will be sworn in as president on Jan. 20 was dashed by his combative and emphatic tone, which amounted to a call to arms to his supporters. The fight is paying dividends so far, with Trump’s political operation using a blizzard of misleading appeals to supporters to raise more than $170 million since Election Day on Nov. 3.


As he invariably has throughout his presidency, Trump spun an alternate reality. Although his words actually worked to undermine democracy, he cast himself as the protector of democracy, saying his single greatest achievement as president would be to restore “voter integrity for our nation.”


Trump released a two-minute edited version of the video on Twitter, which the social media company labeled as “disputed,” and included a link to the full 46-minute video on Facebook, where the company applied a label explaining that voting by mail has long been trustworthy and that voter fraud is “extremely rare.”





As Trump released his video, his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was in Michigan making a similar case to state legislators and citizens there. The former New York mayor alleged at a video news conference in Lansing that there were extensive voting irregularities in the state, largely in Detroit, a majority-Black city that voted heavily for Biden. Giuliani claimed a similar pattern of fraud emerged in several other large urban centers with municipal governments controlled by Democrats.




“It was a plan to steal this election,” Giuliani said.
There is no evidence to support this claim. Giuliani cited affidavits that had been used in lawsuits that have so far been rejected in the state.


Giuliani gave a pugilistic exhortation to Trump supporters at the late afternoon press conference.
“We have to fight. The president does not intend to give up,” he said, urging Michigan Republicans to put “pressure on state legislators” to uphold their constitutional obligation to decide state results in a disputed presidential election.


“You have to get them to remember that their oath to the constitution sometimes requires being criticized,” Giuliani added. “It sometimes even requires being threatened. But you don’t back off of an oath because a vote is too hard.”


On Wednesday evening, Giuliani and Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis made similar arguments before a Michigan House panel. In her opening statement, Ellis referred to Trump’s video message and said the state legislature has a constitutional mandate “not to allow a corrupt” election. She said the nation’s founders provided “a tool — state legislators — to combat corruption” in elections.


That interpretation of a constitutional mandate is disputed by many election experts, who nonetheless worry that it could lead some state legislators to attempt to overturn certified election results.


Norm Eisen, a former Obama appointee who serves as counsel to the bipartisan Voter Protection Program, called that interpretation “constitutional disinformation that has no basis in law.”




This activity comes as Trump prepares to visit Georgia on Saturday to hold a campaign rally for Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans facing runoff elections on Jan. 5.


Trump’s baseless allegations of voter fraud in Georgia have roiled the race, with Republicans divided over whether to trust the election system or, as former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell argued, stay home in protest.


Powell led a rally in a northern Atlanta suburb Wednesday in which she exhorted hundreds of the president’s supporters not to participate in the Senate runoffs, in part because she said the state’s voting machines are not trustworthy.


“I would encourage all Georgians to make it known that you will not vote at all unless your vote is secure,” Powell said. “There should not be a runoff. Certainly not on Dominion machines.”




Powell claimed falsely that Dominion machines were rigged to weight Biden’s votes more heavily than Trump’s, that a hand recount was a sham, and that state and local election officials have been destroying ballots and other evidence of fraud. She has presented no proof of her claims.


L. Lin Wood, another Trump ally who helped lead Wednesday’s event, made similarly baseless claims.
“We’re not going to vote on your damn machines made in China,” Wood said. “We’re going to vote on machines made in the USA!”


Wood took aim at just about every state Republican leader in Georgia, including Perdue, Loeffler, Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the state party chair, David Shafer, even though some of them have stood by Trump and echoed his false claims of fraud.


“If they don’t fight for Donald Trump, including Loeffler and Perdue, send them all home!” Wood exclaimed to the crowd. “You are criminals!”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Insane, Trump

Andrea Gabor: We Need Civics Education!

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2020 //
74

Andrea Gabor, the Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York, writes here about the importance of civics education, especially in a time when democracy is under attack by a defeated president and the leadership of the Republican Party.

Put Civics Back in the Classroom, Right Now

Has there ever been a better time to resume lapsed efforts to teach young Americans the structure and purpose of U.S. democracy?


By Andrea Gabor

The presidential election seemed to mark a revival in American civic engagement. A record two-thirds of the electorate voted. Candidates raised at least $3 billion in small-dollar donations, and historic get-out-the-vote efforts had an impact in Nevada, Georgia and elsewhere.


Yet large numbers of Americans appear to believe President Donald Trump’s baseless charges of election fraud. Civic life and discourse have been eroded by the normalization of lying by elected leaders, the dissemination of disinformation via social media and the attempted weaponization of the courts to undermine confidence in voting.
Has there ever been a better time for a revival of civics education? Not your father’s bland civics, with its how-a-bill-becomes-law tedium, but a vigorous set of lessons about American society and government that encourages fact-based exchanges of views and civil debate about controversial topics without taking sides in contemporary disputes about such issues as abortion or immigration policy.

Civics should begin with a common narrative that Americans can agree on, beginning with what the Declaration of Independence and Constitution say about the role and structure of U.S. government. It should explore the definition of citizenship and how it has evolved over the course of 250 years via such documents as the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, the Seneca Falls Declaration on women’s rights, and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It should address the role of the electoral college, how it works, and how votes are counted. And it should examine the prerogatives of state and local governments and their relationship to the federal government.
A foundational civics course must include uncomfortable truths. That would mean delving into the three-fifths compromise of the constitutional convention, which made slaves count toward the congressional representation of slave states without granting them any political rights, along with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Supreme Court’s sanction of Japanese internment during World War II and its 2018 decisionto overturn that precedent. But divisive and complex debatesabout the degree to which slavery shaped American society should be left to more advanced classes.


Civics should also make room for local variations in content and execution. For example, the terms on which Southern states were readmitted to the union following the Civil War might receive more emphasis in the South, and the role of the 1787 Northwest Ordinances in expanding statehood could be stressed in the West.


The refreshing of civics curricula in Illinois and Florida provide a roadmap for how states should approach the topic today. Illinois’s civics mandate, especially a requirement that classes discuss “current and controversial issues,” is especially important. The law passed overwhelmingly in 2015 with bipartisan support — Illinois was among 11 states that previously had no civics mandate — and was signed by former Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican. (While Illinois had long required high schools to teach two years of social studies, including one year of American history, the law now requires that at least one semester be devoted to civics.)


Facilitating constructive discussions of controversial topics requires special teacher training. Illinois offered all civics teachers professional development courses over a three-year period, and created a mentoring program for civics teachers, especially in schools with no previous civics course — as many as 13 percent of the total. The problem is that the state didn’t set aside money for the training, relying instead on philanthropies; a subject as important as civics should have a dedicated funding stream for educators and schools.Nor should the introduction of civics concepts wait until high school. Last year, Illinois added middle school to the grades that must provide civics instruction. Similarly, Florida’s decade-old civics law makes passing a middle-school civics course a requirement for high 
school matriculation.


A well designed middle-school civics test could support fact-based debate and is arguably less onerous than a high-school graduation requirement; students who fail the class (in Florida the test accounts for just 30 percent of the middle-school civics grade) could retake the test and go on to high school. When the coronavirus pandemic recedes, states should consider eliminating all middle-school testing in lieu of a single meaty civics test that might include geography and some economics.


When it comes to civics, states have a lot of ground to make up. For decades, government policies, including state testing mandates and federal initiatives like President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program and President Barack Obama’s support for Common Core, have focused on college and workplace readiness. Civics instruction got short shrift and was often abandoned.

As attacks on democratic institutions picked up steam during the Trump presidency, civics remained an afterthought. As of 2018, only eight states required students to take a yearlong civics and government class. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is considered the nation’s report card, dropped its 4th- and 12th-grade civics and American history exam in 2014.

Few recent state civics efforts succeeded.
Now, as a few states begin to pursue a civics revival, one concern is political interference from the left and right. California Governor Gavin Newsom just vetoed an ethnic studies law that threatened to erode time and effort spent on other subjects, including civics. Last year, Florida’s legislature passed a bill requiring the state to review civics materials, a concern at a time when Republican lawmakers and Governor Ron DeSantis have promoted Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud.


But civics instruction needn’t take sides to promote democratic involvement. Last year, Massachusetts became the first state to require schools to coordinate nonpartisan student-led civics projects. The redesigned Advanced Placement U.S. government and politics course taken by many college-bound students also requires students to work on a civics project, either partisan or not.
States should borrow good ideas from each other, including Florida’s emphasis on middle-school civics and Illinois’s focus on constructive debate. A shared narrative will be stronger if buttressed by productive argument and brought to life by civic action.


Andrea Gabor
Bloomberg Chair of Business Journalism 
Baruch College/CUNY
After the Education Wars (The New Press, June 2018)
www.andreagabor.com

Categories Citizenship, Civics, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Reform

Michigan: The One Republican Who Stood Up to Trump

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2020 //
15

When the Trump team and the president himself pressured Michigan Republican officials to overturn the vote in their state, only one man said no. He said he had to follow the law. He was a hero of democracy.

His name is Aaron Van Langevelde.

“We must not attempt to exercise power we simply don’t have,” declared Van Langevelde, a member of Michigan’s board of state canvassers, the ministerial body with sole authority to make official Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. “As John Adams once said, ‘We are a government of laws, not men.’ This board needs to adhere to that principle here today. This board must do its part to uphold the rule of law and comply with our legal duty to certify this election.”

We need more like him.

Categories Courage, Democracy, Fraud, Michigan, Trump
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