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Elie Honig: What Will Happen to Jack Smith’s Case Against Trump Now?

By dianeravitch
August 23, 2024 //
2

Elie Honig is a former federal prosecutor who writes at a site called Cafe, where he and other legal experts follow and explain Trump’s legal entanglements. In this post, he speculates on how Jack Smith’s effort to hold Trump accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election might fare in the months ahead.. Note that he points out that the investigation was hampered by the very late start of the U.S. Justice Department.

He writes:

Dear Reader,

I remember vividly the first time I lost a key piece of evidence. The NYPD had caught our defendant in Washington Heights with a fake police badge around his neck and a loaded gun in his waistband, and we charged him with federal firearms and armed robbery conspiracy crimes. Better yet (for us on the prosecution side), we flipped a cooperating witness who would testify that he and the defendant had committed two prior armed robberies together by posing as cops and ripping off drug dealers.

A week or so before trial began, the judge held a conference to handle routine pre-trial housekeeping. I confidently laid out the cooperator’s expected testimony. “That’s out,” the judge ruled, nonchalantly. “Too prejudicial.” For those who think that every judicial decision is rendered in scholarly prose, replete with probing analysis and citations to applicable precedent: welcome to the real world.

It was a kick in the gut. “That’s such bullshit. He can’t do that,” I whined afterwards. “Sure he can,” my supervisor responded. “He’s the judge.”

My experience is a tiny-potatoes version of what the U.S. Supreme Court has done to Special Counsel Jack Smith and his 2020 election subversion case against Donald Trump. The Court declared, for the first time in our history, that a president is entitled to criminal immunity for official acts. That part was no surprise; the law has long recognized civil immunity, and the justices during oral argument seemed in no mood to affirm the lower courts’ outright rejection of Trump’s claim.

But the breadth of the Supreme Court’s decision was astonishing. The majority held, for example, that “in dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.” (It remains unclear exactly how a judge is supposed to draw that vital distinction.) And the Court ruled that if conduct is immune, prosecutors can’t base a criminal charge on it – nor can they mention it at all during trial, even as necessary context or background.

Now the case has landed back in trial court, before Judge Tanya Chutkan. She originally wanted the parties back before her today, but Smith asked for a few more weeks to gather his thoughts; he clearly has accepted that there won’t be a pre-election trial, despite his prior dogged efforts. Trump’s counsel, ever intent on slowing things down, happily consented to the prosecution’s request for delay. When Court reconvenes on September 5, it’ll be up to the Judge to pick through the wreckage and figure out what can be salvaged.

On that question, the Supreme Court has offered pointed guidance, and it bodes poorly for the core of Smith’s indictment. Trump’s effort to coerce the Justice Department to gin up proof of non-existent election fraud? Almost certainly an “official act,” and therefore immune and out of the case altogether. Trump’s pressure campaign aimed at his vice president, Mike Pence? Probably out. And Trump’s public statements, including his tweets and January 6 Ellipse speech? Likely toast, too.

The Supreme Court conspicuously reminded Judge Chutkan that it’s unimpressed with her work so far and will be watching her closely. The justices in the majority blasted the lower courts for “the expedition of this case, the lack of factual analysis… and the absence of pertinent briefing by the parties.” Indeed, as we’ve noted here before, Smith, Chutkan, and the intermediate appeals court judges tried to shortcut ordinary process to get Trump tried before the election; the Supreme Court noticed and disapproved. Most importantly on the vital timing issue, the Court has specified that Trump can appeal Judge Chutkan’s decisions about what conduct is (and is not) immune, before trial starts. That means, as a practical matter, there’s a zero-point-zero percent chance this trial happens before the November 2024 election.

If you’ve been hoping that Trump faces accountability for trying to steal the 2020 election before voters head to the polls for the next one, don’t despair – not fully, anyway. (For the record, I’m with you. The real problem is that DOJ took over two-and-a-half years to charge the case.) Judge Chutkan still can – and I believe will – order an evidentiary hearing to enable Smith to air some of his most explosive evidence, before voters head to the polls.

The Judge now must sift through the prosecution’s evidence and determine how much of Trump’s alleged conduct was an official act (and therefore immune), and which conduct can remain in the case. She has some leeway here. The Judge could opt to take “proffers” from both sides – detailed statements by the lawyers about what they expect their evidence to show. That’s a little flat, but it’s also perfectly permissible and efficient. And then there’s the more sensational alternative: the Judge can permit Smith to call live witnesses to expound from the stand on what their trial testimony would be.

I expect Smith to push for door number two, and Judge Chutkan to agree. If that happens, brace for a series of dramatic in-court encounters. We could see Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, take the stand to give his first-ever public accounting of what his boss did (and didn’t do) before and on January 6. And Mike Pence could testify about how Trump begged and eventually threatened him in an effort to get him to throw the election – and how, on January 6, he had to run for his life to avoid the frothing mob.

No, an evidentiary hearing won’t hit nearly as hard as a jury trial and verdict. And we won’t actually see or hear any of it, because federal courts don’t permit cameras or live audio streaming. (Fair enough, given that it’s apparently the year 1892 right now.) We likely already know the most damaging information, as revealed in 2022 during the unforgettable January 6 Select Committee hearings in Congress, and the ensuing 800-plus page report. But, really, imagine: Trump’s own former chief of staff and VP taking the stand in, say, September of an election year, to describe firsthand how their former boss trampled on the Constitution to try to steal an election. Even if we all mostly know the story by now, that simply can’t be good for Trump at the polls, just weeks before voters cast their ballots.

It’s unclear how much of Smith’s case will ultimately survive the Supreme Court’s strafing. He might eventually go to trial on a tattered indictment focused on Trump’s effort to pressure state and local officials, without any of the damning evidence relating to DOJ and the VP and incitement of the rally crowd. Or the wounds inflicted by the Supreme Court might ultimately prove fatal.

But if Smith’s goal is to expose Trump’s conduct to the American public before the election – and let’s face it, that’s plainly been a driving force for the special counsel all along, despite his refusal to acknowledge it – he’ll still have a backdoor path to partial success.

Stay Informed,

Elie

Elie Honig served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8.5 years and as the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice at the Office of Attorney General for the State of New Jersey for 5.5 years. He is currently a legal Analyst for CNN and Executive Director at Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Scandals, Trump

Houston: Enrollment Drops by 9,000

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2024 //
20

Many principals, teachers, parents, and students in Houston are fed up with Mike Miles’ lockstep, scripted curriculum. Miles boasts that test scores are going up, but far more important indicators are in decline, especially morale. After Miles stripped autonomy away from professionals, the district experienced alarming numbers of resignations. Hundreds of uncertified teachers have been hired to replace those who left.

Student enrollment sharply dropped by about 5%.

The Houston Chronicle reported:

Sarah Malik used to think Houston ISD’s Lantrip Elementary School was a great fit for her daughter.

After the departures of the school’s principal and several teachers in the spring, Malik knew they had to go. 

Malik is one of thousands of parents who pulled their child from HISD this year. Several told the Chronicle they were leaving the district due to the stringent reforms, plummeting morale, principal and teacher departures or cookie-cutter lessons that they said did not account for children’s individual learning needs during the previous academic year.

HISD’s enrollment will not be finalized until October, but it appears to be on track to drop below 180,000 students. 

If you read the literature about motivation, you will learn that the most important driver of motivation is a sense of autonomy. Read Edward Deci, Dan Ariely, Daniel Pink. Miles is crushing morale, motivation, and autonomy.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston

Peter Greene: Conservatives Think States Can Support Both Public Schools and “Choice.” They Can’t.

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2024 //
21

Peter Greene critiques the conservative idea that states should support public schools and all sorts of choice. Greene explains why this idea erodes the quality of public schools, which enroll the vast majority of the nation’s students. Conservatives blame teachers’ unions for whatever they dont like about pibkic schools, but Greene denonstrates that they are wrong. Open the link to read the full article.

He writes:

In the National Review, Michael Petrilli, Thomas Fordham Institute honcho and long-time reformster, poses the argument that folks on the right don’t need to choose “between expanding parental options and improving traditional public schools.” Instead, he asserts, they “can and should do both.”

On the one hand, it’s a welcome argument these days when the culture panic crowd has settled on a scorched earth option for public schools. As Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation president, put it in his now-delayed-until-after-it-can’t-hurt-Trump-election-prospects book, “We don’t merely seek an exit from the system; we are coming for the curriculums and classrooms of the remaining public schools, too.” For many on the right, the education policy goal is to obliterate public schools and/or force them to closely resemble the private christianist schools that culture panickers favor. 

Pertrilli is sympathetic to the “let’s just give parents the money and be done with it” crowd. 

We’ve inherited a “system” that is 150 years old and is saddled with layers upon layers of previous reforms, regulations, overlapping and calcified bureaucracies, and a massive power imbalance between employees and constituents, thanks to the almighty teachers unions.

Sigh. Reforms and regulations, sure, though it would be nice for Petrilli to acknowledge that for the last forty-ish years, those have mostly come from his own reformster crowd. And I am deeply tired of the old “almighty teachers unions” trope, which is some serious baloney. But his audience thinks it’s true, so let’s move on. 

Petrilli’s point is that conservatives should not be focusing on “school choice” alone, but should embrace an “all of the above” approach. Petrilli dismisses Democrats as “none of the above” because of their “fealty to the unions,” which is, again, baloney. Democrats have spent a couple of decades as willing collaborators with the GOP ; if they are “none of the above” it’s because they’ve lost both the ability and authority to pretend to be public education supporters. The nomination of Tim Walz has given them a chance to get on the public education team, but let’s wait and see–there’s no ball that the Democratic Party can’t drop.

Petrilli sits on a practical point here (one that Robert Pondiscio has made repeatedly over the years)– public schools are a) beloved by many voters, b) not going away, and c) still educate the vast, vast majority of U.S. students. Therefore, folks should care about the quality of public education.

Petrilli then floats some ideas, all while missing the major obstacle to his idea. There are, he claims, many reforms that haven’t been tried yet, “including in red states where the teachers unions don’t have veto power.” I believe the actual number of states where the union doesn’t have veto power is fifty. But I do appreciate his backhanded acknowledgement that many states have dis-empowered their teachers unions and still haven’t accomplished diddly or squat. It’s almost as if the unions are not the real obstacle to progress.

His ideas? Well, there’s ending teacher tenure, a dog that will neither hunt nor lie down and die. First of all, there is no teacher tenure. What there is is policy that requires school districts to follow a procedure to get rid of bad teachers. Behind every teacher who shouldn’t still have a job is an administrator who isn’t doing theirs. 

Tenure and LIFO (Last In First Out) interfere with the reformster model of Genius CEO school management, in which the Genius CEO should be able to fire anyone he wants to for any reason he conceives of, including having become too expensive or so experienced they start getting uppity. 

The theory behind much of education reform has been that all educational shortfalls have been caused by Bad Teachers, and so the focus has been on catching them (with value-added processing of Big Standardized Test scores), firing them, and replacing them with super-duper teachers from the magical super-duper teacher tree. Meanwhile, other teachers would find this new threatening environment inspirational, and they would suddenly unleash the secrets of student achievement that they always had tucked away in their file cabinet, but simply hadn’t implemented.

This is a bad model, a non-sensical model, a model that has had a few decades to prove itself, and has not. Nor has Petrilli’s other idea– merit pay has been tried, and there are few signs that it even sort of works, particularly since schools can’t do a true merit pay system and also it’s often meant as a cost-saving technique (Let’s lower base pay and let teachers battle each other to win “merit” bonuses that will make up the difference).

Petrilli also argues against increased pay for teacher masters degrees because those degrees “add no value in terms of quality of teaching and learning” aka they don’t make BS Test scores go up. He suggests moving that extra money to create incentives for teachers to move to the toughest schools. 

Petrilli gets well into weeds in his big finish, in which he cites the “wisdom of former Florida governor Jeb Bush” and the golden state of Florida as if it’s a model for all-of-the-above reform and not a state that has steadily degraded and undercut public schools in order to boost charter and private operations, with results that only look great if you squint hard and ignore certain parts(Look at 4th grade scores, but be sure to ignore 8th and 12th grade results). And if you believe that test results are the only true measure of educational excellence.

So, in sum, Petrilli’s notion that GOP state leaders should support public education is a good point. What is working against it?

One is that his list is lacking. Part of the reform movement’s trouble at this point is that many of its original ideas were aimed primarily at discrediting public education. The remaining core– use standardized tests to identify and remove bad teachers– is weak sauce. Even if you believe (wrongly) that the core problem of public education is bad teaching, this is no way to address that issue. 

Beyond bad teachers, the modern reform movement hasn’t had a new idea to offer for a couple of decades. 

Petrilli also overlooks a major challenge in the “all of the above approach,” a challenge that reformsters and choicers have steadfastly ignored for decades.

You cannot run multiple parallel school systems for the same cost as a single system. 

If you want to pay for public schools and charter schools and vouchers, it is going to cost more money. “School choice” is a misnomer, because school choice has always been available. Choicers are not arguing for school choice–they’re arguing for taxpayer funded school choice. That will require more taxpayer funds. 

You can’t have six school systems for the price of one. So legislators have been left with a choice. On the one hand, they can tell taxpayers “We think school choice is so important that we are going to raise your taxes to pay for it.” On the other hand, they can drain money from the public system to pay for charters and vouchers all while making noises about how the public system is totes overfunded and can spare the money easy peasy. 

I can offer a suggestion for conservatives who want to help public schools improve.

Get over your anti-union selves.

Please open the link to finish the article.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, School Choice, Segregation, Unions, Vouchers

Lawrence O’Donnell: Wake Up, Reporters! Do Your Job

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2024 //
24

Lawrence O’Donnell appears nightly on MSNBC at 10 pm EST. I love his show because he is so smart.

This episode is a must-watch.

As a bonus, here is Robert Reich wondering why the media doesn’t report honestly about Trump’s dementia.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Media, Trump

Paul Krugman: Are Immigrants Taking Jobs Away from the Native-Born?

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2024 //
44

Every so often, someone writes in to say that immigrants are hurting the economy, and in particular, they are taking jobs away from native-born workers. Sometimes they quote economist Paul Krugman, who writes a regular column for The New York Times, to make their point. See, they say, even Paul Krugman agrees with me.

But not so fast. Krugman recently wrote this column, where he takes the opposite view.

He wrote:

On the eve of the 2020 election Donald Trump, in a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter, told voters that “This election is a choice between a TRUMP RECOVERY or a BIDEN DEPRESSION.” Not quite. Since President Biden took office, the United States has gained 15.7 million jobs.

Trump, however, has been dismissing the good news on employment, claiming that all the job gains are going to illegal immigrants. In my most recent column I addressed his further claim that immigration has had a devastating effect on Black workers. (It hasn’t.)

What is true, however, is that a lot of recent employment growth has involved immigrants. But have their job gains come at the expense of the native-born?

No. But how do we know that? And how should we think about the effect of recent immigration on jobs?

Before I present numbers, there are three qualifications to consider.

First, while we have monthly estimates for employment that distinguish between native-born and foreign-born workers (although they don’t separate out the undocumented), these numbers aren’t adjusted for seasonal variation. Rather than try to roll my own seasonal adjustment, I’ll just use 12-month averages, which are good enough for current purposes.

Second, many experts believe that the standard numbers, based on the Current Population Survey, underestimate the recent surge in immigration. I’ll note where this makes a difference, but it doesn’t change the overall picture.

Finally, when you’re looking at recent job growth, it matters what you choose as your starting point. Biden inherited an economy still depressed by the effects of Covid-19, and some of the job growth on his watch reflected a recovery from that depressed state. It arguably makes more sense to compare the current economy with the economy on the eve of Covid. I’ll do it both ways, looking at both job growth since 2020 and job growth from the prepandemic year 2019.

OK, here we go. First, let’s compare average employment in the 12 months ending in June 2024 with employment in 2019 and employment in the pandemic year 2020.

Since 2020 there have been large increases in employment of both native- and foreign-born workers, but much of that reflected recovery from the pandemic slump. Compared with the prepandemic economy, job gains have been much smaller, especially for the native-born. So immigrants have accounted for most job growth — perhaps more than the chart says, if immigration has been understated — although not all of it.

The question, however, is whether the jobs immigrants have taken would have gone to native-born workers if immigration had been lower.

Well, if immigrants were stealing our jobs, we’d expect to see a sharp rise in unemployment among the native-born. We don’t. The unemployment rate among native-born workers is near a historic low.

But some anti-immigrant crusaders argue that unemployment is only low because immigrants have driven native-born Americans entirely out of the labor force; you’re only counted as unemployed if you’re actively seeking a job.

Indeed, the share of native-born adults in the labor force — employed or unemployed — has fallen slightly since 2019.

But this was both predictable and predicted, not because of immigration but as a result of the aging of the native-born population. Congressional Budget Office projections published in January 2020 — when nobody knew that either the pandemic or the immigration surge were coming — had already forecast a decline in the labor force participation rate as baby boomers retired.

So the near stagnation of native-born employment isn’t a demand-side issue, in which people aren’t working because they can’t find jobs. It is instead a supply-side issue, in which people aren’t working because they’ve reached retirement age. We’ve been able to achieve large increases in overall employment only because working-age immigrants have been coming to America. If we didn’t have the immigrants, we wouldn’t have the jobs.

What about the impact of immigration on wages? A few decades ago many economists, myself included, believed that immigrants with low levels of formal education were in effect competing with native-born workers who also lacked degrees. But most labor economists now believe that immigrants don’t do much head-to-head competition with native-born workers; they bring different skills and take different jobs. And the past few years, with elevated immigration, have also been an era of exceptional growth in wages for the worst paid.

So none of these negative claims about the effects of immigration hold up. But are there important positive effects? (Aside from the benefits to the immigrants themselves, which can be really large — I am very glad, for multiple reasons, that my grandparents left the Russian Empire.)

There’s a good although not ironclad case that immigration has helped limit inflation in recent years. Normally, as Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, recently noted, immigration is more or less neutral in its effects on inflation: Immigrants expand supply, but they also contribute to demand. In the aftermath of the pandemic, however, the huge sums spent on aid pumped up demand; this burst of demand was easier to accommodate without sustained inflation because immigration made it possible to achieve rapid growth in employment.

In the longer run, the big story is fiscal. Adult immigrants tend to be working age, which means that they will spend years paying taxes before they become eligible for Medicare and Social Security, which constitute a large part of federal spending. And while this point is a bit brutal, undocumented immigrants are especially good for the budget, because they pay payroll taxes (which are collected by employers) without being eligible for future benefits.

So, no, immigrants aren’t taking our jobs. Everything that happens in the economy hurts someone: There are no doubt some places where immigrants have driven up housing costs, or where native-born Americans or legal immigrants have faced increased job competition. But the scare stories don’t match the facts.

To see Krugman’s nifty graphics, taken from the Buteau of Labor Statistics, please open the link.

Categories Disruption, Economy, Immigration

New Hampshire: Voucher Program Aims to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2024 //
12

Veteran journalist Garry Rayno wrote a passionate editorial about the destructive voucher program in New Hampshire, promoted by out-of-state billionaires. Ninety percent of the students in the state attend public schools, but Republicans have diverted taxpayer dollars to private and religious schools. Their goal is a universal voucher program, where every student in the state is eligible for a voucher, with no income limits.

Rayno wrote at InDepthNH.org:

America’s traditional institutions, the foundation for the greatest political experiment in history, are under attack from the social safety net to food regulations, and from the court system to environmental protection.

The drive to create doubt and even rejection of these long-standing pillars of our society is to eventually destroy the underpinnings of government to create a new order where the rich will flourish even more with all the advantages, while everyone else will fight over the crumbs of the plutocrats.

The current large target in this fight to turn democracy into an oligarchy is the public school system.

The first blow to the public school system in New Hampshire was the push for charter schools, which are still public schools but without the regulations and requirements traditional public schools must meet.

Charter schools have had to ask the state for more and more per pupil money to stay afloat, about double the per pupil adequacy grant amount for traditional schools.

The charter schools that found a niche have been successful, but many have fallen by the wayside over the years even with federal grant money approved during the Trump administration for start-ups and expansions.

And until recently, they have not strayed into the Christian Nationalist area that has been widely promoted by Hinsdale College in Michigan and adopted by some states.

Then came the voucher push sold as a way of helping low-income families find a more suitable education environment for students who do not do well in the public-school setting.

After several unsuccessful attempts, proponents, who include Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut and State School Board Chairman Drew Cline, lawmakers successfully approved the Education Freedom Account program as a rider to the 2022-2023 biennial operating budget after it failed to pass the House and was retained.

Since then attempts to expand the eligibility of parents by raising the income cap passed two sessions ago, but failed in the recently completed session.

Instead of helping the low-income families with educational options the program has largely been a subsidy program for parents with children who were already in religious or private schools and homeschooling. 

Only about 10 to 15 percent of the increasingly expensive draw on the Education Trust Fund have left public schools for alternative education programs.

What proponents ultimately seek is a “universal program” which would be open to any New Hampshire student regardless of his or her parents’ income, although a similar program has nearly bankrupted Arizona and put public education at risk in Ohio, where it is being litigated.

New Hampshire is not alone in the push to do away with public education as we know it.

A letter from many national figures seeking to privatize education like Betsy DeVos and Edward Bennett; the CEOs of organizations pushing for privatization; former federal and state governors; sitting governors from almost all southern states; two state education commissioners including Edelblut, and state elected officials most from Republican controlled states was sent to Republican Congressional leaders saying, “The task before the next Congress is clear and unambiguous: bring education freedom to millions of students across America who desperately need it!”

The letter also touts the GOP’s platform approved at its recent national convention “to cultivate great K-12 schools, ensure safe learning environments free from political meddling, and restore Parental Rights. We commit to an Education System that empowers students, supports families, and promotes American Values… Republicans believe families should be empowered to choose the best Education for their children. We support Universal School Choice in every State in America.”

The political meddling the platform contends is that “Lessons about American values have been displaced by political or cultural trends of the day,” without noting several states have recently required the Bible be taught in public schools. 

Children whose faith is Muslim or Buddhism or are Native Americans may believe those state’s Biblical requirement is political meddling.

What the proponents of universal vouchers seek is to have Congress do what some state legislators, including Texas, have failed to do and that is approve universal private or religious education on the public’s dime.

This push to do away with public education has attempted to tarnish what has always been the great equalizer, by saying schools are failing, teachers are indoctrinating students and withholding information from parents. 

You would think public schools are a far-reaching conspiracy to destroy family values, while ignoring the fact that 90 percent of students are in public schools and many are very successful.

New Hampshire public schools ranked sixth in the nation this year, down from the number two spots five years ago.

The number ranking was before the push to privatize education became successful with the help of Gov. Chris Sununu who put both Edelblut and Cline where they are, in charge of the public education system in the state, although both seek to diminish its reach.

Edelblut focuses on the learning disparity between well to do school districts and the poorly performing ones that lack the property values to support schools in the same way property wealthy communities do as the reason to seek alternatives.

Yet when the state education funding system is raised as a possible culprit for the disparity, Edelblut is quick to dismiss that as a different issue when it isn’t.

One of the major concerns about the Education Freedom Program, the Business Tax Scholarship Program and charter schools, is the lack of accountability.

How do taxpayers know their money is being used wisely if there is no way to determine those students are receiving “an adequate education,” as the state Supreme Court ruled?
Attempts to bring more accountability have failed in the Republican controlled legislature.

At the same time, Cline this week in his column “The Broadside” touts the state as doing pretty well for educational entrepreneurs according to a recent ranking.

“There’s more that can be done to make New Hampshire a freer state for education entrepreneurs looking to start small, decentralized, and unconventional educational environments, but so far the state is doing better than most,” according to Cline.

He cites the Education Entrepreneur Freedom Index released by the yes.every kid.foundation for the ranking.

It shouldn’t be surprising that according to Wikipedia,  “Yes. every kid. (YEK) is a 501(c)(4) advocacy group that is a part of the Koch Network. Launched by the Charles Koch-funded Stand Together in June of 2019, YEK supports the privatization of education. The organization is a proponent of the school choice movement, advocating for subsidized private school vouchers and charter schools.”
The Koch Foundation has long advocated for ending public education and installing a private education system where you pay for what you get. Not exactly the great equalizer.

Cline argues New Hampshire should be looking to encourage more private education.

“States with more relaxed homeschool and nonpublic school laws/regulations score higher, as entrepreneurs have an easier time getting started in these states,” he notes.

Cline and the Koch organization suggest relaxing state requirements for non-public schools and also zoning regulations to make it easier to locate educational facilities including child care businesses by allowing education in all zoning districts in a municipality.

“Though New Hampshire lost a point for rules requiring state approval for non-public schools, the state could become much more friendly to education entrepreneurs, the study’s authors conclude, primarily by relaxing some child-care rules and local regulations,” Cline writes.

Supporters of Education Freedom Accounts are fond of saying the best accountability is if parents are satisfied with the education their children receive, which you would hope is the case or why would you leave your child in an unsatisfactory educational environment?

But that is not what the state Supreme Court said in its Claremont I decision. It said the state has a responsibility to provide an adequate education to every student in the state and to pay for it. Parents have choices but the state defines an adequate education.

The state legislature has yet to live up to its responsibility and allowing a bypass through religious and private schools and homeschooling is not constitutionally fair to those children.

If you believe public education is failing in this state, you should begin looking at the top: the governor, the commissioner and to the state board of education chair.

Their priority is not public education.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Inequity, New Hampshire, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Can’t Escape Project 2025

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2024 //
30

Ever since the general public began hearing Project 2025, the document scared those who listened. Although it was described by its authors as the agenda for Trump’s second term and it was written by veterans of the Trump administration, Trump pretended he knew nothing about it. Who wrote it? What does it say? Never heard of it.

For sure, very few people have read its 900+ pages. I read the section on education. Eliminate the Department of Education. Voucherize programs like Title 1, Headstart, special education funding, with no federal regulations attached to the money. Promote funding for religious and private schools. Ditch separation of church and state.

It also calls for a national ban on abortion and for eliminating the Civil Service and replacing career government employees with people loyal to Trump. It is the document that describes—department by department, agency by agency—how to destroy “the administrative state.”

There’s a saying that comes to mind: “When an authoritarian tells you what he plans to do, believe him.”

Heather Cox Richardson wrote about Trump’s clumsy efforts to distance himself from an agenda written by senior officials in his administration:

On Friday, speaking to Christians at the Turning Point Action Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump begged the members of the audience to “vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine…. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”

The comment drew a lot of attention, and on Monday, Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham gave him a chance to walk the statement back. Instead, he said: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true.” “Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on November 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore, because frankly we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK.”

Trump’s refusal to disavow the idea that putting him back into power will mean the end of a need for elections is chilling and must be viewed against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024, decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States. In that decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court’s right-wing majority said that presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties” and that presidents should have a presumption of immunity for other presidential actions. 

John Roberts defends the idea of a strong executive and has fought against the expansion of voting rights made possible by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The idea that it is dangerous to permit minorities and women to vote suggests that there are certain people who should run the country. That tracks with a recently unearthed video in which Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance calls childless people “psychotic” and “deranged,” and refers unselfconsciously to “America’s leadership class.” 

The idea that democracy must be overturned in order to enable a small group of leaders to restore virtue to a nation is at the center of the “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy” championed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán’s imposition of an authoritarian Christian nationalism on a former democracy, in turn, has inspired the far-right figures that are currently in charge of the Republican Party. As Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts put it: “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

Kevin Roberts has called for “institutionalizing Trumpism” and pulled together dozens of right-wing institutions behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 to create a blueprint for a second Trump term. Those who created Project 2025 are closely connected to the Trump team, and Trump praised its creators and its ideas. 

Today, The New Republic published the foreword Vance wrote for Kevin Roberts’s forthcoming book. Vance makes it clear he sees Kevin Roberts and himself as working together to create “a fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics.” Like others on the Christian right, Vance argues that “the Left” has captured the country’s institutions and that those institutions must be uprooted and those in them replaced with right-wing Christians in order to restore what they see—inaccurately—as traditional America.  

That determination to disrupt American institutions fits neatly with the technology entrepreneurs who seem to believe that they are the ones who should control the nation’s future. Vance is backed by Silicon Valley libertarian Peter Thiel, who put more than $10 million behind Vance’s election to the Senate. In 2009, Thiel wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” 

“The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics,” he wrote. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.” 

Thiel set Vance up to invest in companies that made him wealthy and touted Vance for the vice presidential slot, and in turn, the Silicon Valley set are expecting Vance to help get rid of the regulation imposed by the Biden administration and to push cryptocurrency. Trump appears to be getting on board with comments about how the tech donors are “geniuses,” praising investor Elon Musk and saying, “We have to make life good for our smart people.” In a piece that came out Sunday, Washington Post reporters Elizabeth Dwoskin, Cat Zakrzewski, Nitasha Tiku, and Josh Dawsey credited the influence of Thiel and other tech leaders for turning Vance from a Never-Trumper to a MAGA Republican. 

Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that the cryptocurrency industry is investing heavily in the 2024 election, with its main super PAC raising $202 million in this cycle. Three large cryptocurrency companies are investing about $150 million in pro-crypto congressional candidates. 

On Saturday, Trump said he would make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet and the Bitcoin superpower of the world.” He promised to end regulations on cryptocurrency, which, because it is not overseen by governments, is prone to use by criminals and rogue states. That regulation is “a part of a much larger pattern that’s being carried out by the same left-wing fascists to weaponize government against any threat to their power,” Trump said. “They’ve done it to me.”

But the problem that those trying to get rid of the modern administrative state continue to run up against is that voters actually like a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights. In recent days, Minnesota governor Tim Walz has been articulating how popular that government is as he makes the television rounds.

On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper listed some of Walz’s policies—he passed background checks for guns, expanded LGBTQ protections, instituted free breakfast and lunch for school kids—and asked if they made Walz vulnerable to Trump calling him a “big government liberal.” Walz joked that he was, indeed, a “monster.” 

“Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness…. The fact of the matter is,” where Democratic policies are implemented, “quality of life is higher, the economies are better…educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you’re going to have a chance to go to college, and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we’re working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you’re going to have health insurance. So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.” 

The extremes of Project 2025 have made it clear that the Republicans intend to destroy the kind of government Walz is defending and replace it with an authoritarian president imposing Christian nationalism. And when Americans hear what’s in Project 2025, they overwhelmingly oppose it. Trump has tried without success to distance himself from the document. 

He and his team have also hammered on the Heritage Foundation for their public revelations of their plans, and today the director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, stepped down. The Trump campaign issued a statement reiterating—in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary—that Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025 and adding: “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should service as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign—it will not end well for you.” 

The Harris campaign responded to the news by saying that “Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country. Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real—in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.” 

The reasoning behind the idea of a strong executive, or a “leadership class” that does not have to answer to voters, is that an extremist minority needs to take control of the American government away from the American people because the majority doesn’t like the policies the extremists want. 

When Trump begs right-wing Christians to turn out for just one more election, he is promising that if only we will put him into the White House once and for all, we will never again have to worry about having a say in our government. As Trump put it: “The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Gender, Trump

President Joe Biden Recommends Reform of Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2024 //
41

In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, President Joe Biden proposed important reforms to the U.S. Supreme Court. He recommended a term limit of 18 years and an ethics code for Justices of the Supreme Court. Public opinion of the Court is at its lowest since polling began in 1987. This may be in response to ethical and partisan scandals associated with the Court, as well as politically-motivated decisions.

During Trump’s single term, he was able to add three justices to the Court, stacking it with a 6-3 hard-right majority (thanks to the Federalist Society, its leader Leonard Leo, President Trump, and the canny Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).

The Court first showed its radicalism by overturning Roe v. Wade, then followed with several other extremist decisions, giving the President “absolute immunity” for any crimes he commits while in office (Trump v. U.S.), sharply reducing the powers of regulatory agencies (the “Chevron Doctrine”), eroding the line between church and state (Carson v. Makin)), and more. You might reasonably wonder why President Biden didn’t push these goals sooner. As an institutionalist, he was loath to breach the separation of powers, and he knew he did not have the votes in Congress to win. Nonetheless, he is laying out important aims for the future.

President Biden wrote:

This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.

But the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on July 1 to grant presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. The only limits will be those that are self-imposed by the person occupying the Oval Office.

If a future president incites a violent mob to storm the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power — like we saw on Jan. 6, 2021 — there may be no legal consequences.
And that’s only the beginning.

On top of dangerous and extreme decisions that overturn settled legal precedents — including Roe v. Wade — the court is mired in a crisis of ethics. Scandals involving several justices have caused the public to question the court’s fairness and independence, which are essential to faithfully carrying out its mission of equal justice under the law. For example, undisclosed gifts to justices from individuals with interests in cases before the court, as well as conflicts of interest connected with Jan. 6 insurrectionists, raise legitimate questions about the court’s impartiality.

I served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today. I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers.

What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.

That’s why — in the face of increasing threats to America’s democratic institutions — I am calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy.
First, I am calling for a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It would make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office. I share our Founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators.

Second, we have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years. We should have the same for Supreme Court justices. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court. Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary. It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come. I support a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.

Third, I’m calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. This is common sense. The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced. Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt.

All three of these reforms are supported by a majority of Americans — as well as conservative and liberal constitutional scholars. And I want to thank the bipartisan Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States for its insightful analysis, which informed some of these proposals.

We can and must prevent the abuse of presidential power. We can and must restore the public’s faith in the Supreme Court. We can and must strengthen the guardrails of democracy.
In America, no one is above the law. In America, the people rule.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice

Umair Haque: Code Red for Democracy!

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2024 //
21

Umair Haque, an economist, warns us that democracy is in deep trouble and only one force can save it. We the people.

He writes:

Code Red for American Democracy

The last week or two’s felt like a lifetime. It’s been body blow after body blow for democracy in America.

The Supreme Court ruled Trump was effectively already something like a dictator, enjoying “presumptive immunity.” A lunatic tried to assassinate Trump, and the far right promptly blamed it on the center and left, despite the assassin being a Republican. Meanwhile, Trump announced Vance as Vice Presidential pick. And all that came on the heels of the media carrying water for Trump, while trying their very best, it seemed, to take down Joe Biden, time and again, this time with character assassination of every stripe and form.

A lifetime.

So what does all this add up to? 

Code red. 

If this moment feel severe, historic, let me assure that it is.

Democracies rarely and barely face as much and as many troubles as all this.

Let’s now simplify some of the above. The range of forces arrayed against democracy by now includes: billionaires, a supine press, lunatics, crackpots, pundits, the judiciary. And even that’s an incomplete list. That is a long and powerful list of forces inimical to democracy.

And on the other side awaits what we can all now openly call fascism.

Are These the Final Stages of American Collapse?

It’s been a decade or so since I began predicting American collapse. And we went through a familiar cycle, many of you right along with me. I’d bet that even many of you who are long time readers might have been skeptical, then grudgingly accepting, and by now, your hair’s on fire.

By now, it’s hard to deny.

My prediction, in other words, was all too prescient, and I take no comfort from that. I warned precisely because I didn’t want this to happen.

But you might wonder: what happens next? Where are we, precisely?

America’s now in a very bad place.

Let’s now put some of the above even more formally. 

  • The Supreme Court’s mounting what amounts to a rolling judicial coup, assigning the Presidency unassailable powers.
  • The press appears uninterested in providing people facts, information, or basic knowledge with which to make informed decisions, focusing on personal attacks on Biden and other forms of tabloid journalism.
  • The GOP’s effectively been transformed into an instrument of Trumpism.
  • Project 2025 is its agenda, and it involves essentially creating a totalitarian state, or at least the beginnings of one. Who’s going to check, after all, that people are obeying all these new rules which cause them to lose their basic freedoms? 

I could go on, but the point should already be clear.

All these are forms of institutional collapse. Pretty advanced and severe institutional collapse. Democracy’s a fragile thing, and each of its institutions must work in tandem to provide it the sustenance and support it needs. Those institutions, at their most basic level, are the rule of law, the press, political “sides” not being against openly authoritarian, their bases accepting basic democratic norms of peace and consent and the transfer of power and so forth, aka civil society, and of course, leaders not openly aspiring to dictatorship.

You can think of all that as kind of a checklist for the basic health of a democracy.

And the frightening thing in America right now is that almost none of that checklist can be ticked off anymore. Almost none of democracy’s institutions work anymore. Some work partially, some barely, and many, not at all.

Worse, you can see the sort of degeneration before your eyes. Take the example of the press. A few weeks or months ago, even, its behavior today would have been unthinkable to many. Hundreds of articles attacking Biden, while portraying Trump as a hero, a martyr, a glorious and noble figure? Today, as we’ve discussed, the media’s enabling the strongman myth before our eyes, perhaps “obeying in advance,” as Timothy Snyder, the scholar, calls it.

The point is that the rate, scale, and pace of collapse is increasing swiftly. Institutions which are fundamental to democracy’s functioning are simply ceasing to function before our very eyes.

Democracy’s Last institution, and Why It’s the One Which Matters Most

All of that leaves us with one remaining institution. Have you guessed it yet?

The people.

This isn’t some kind of idealistic paean. I’m just going to tell it like it is, as a scholar and survivor of social collapse.

When the people are united, all those other institutions can fail, and democracy, in the end, can still survive. We’ve seen recent examples of just such a thing, in Poland, for example, and arguably, a very close call in other parts of Europe.

All of that brings us to Biden. Should he drop out? Shouldn’t he? This is politics as sport. Don’t fall for it. The truth is that it doesn’t matter very much. Whomever comes next? They’ll face precisely the same brutal abuse and hazing by media as Biden has, and most likely, even worse, since they’ve done it to everyone from Carter to Hillary to Al Gore and beyond.

The point isn’t the candidate. It’s the people.

Right now, America’s in a very perilous—and very singular—place. If those who are sane, and thoughtful, and on the side of democracy unite in its defense, then they will win. They’ll win decisively, in fact. At 60% turnout, it’s an easy victory, at 70%, it’s a landslide. The numbers are clear. 

The questions are unity, and motivation. In that sense, you might say, the candidate counts, but that’s an evasion. Like I said, whomever the candidate is—they’ll be portrayed as weak by a media that’s now dismally attached to the strongman myth. Weak, feminine, incompetent, inexperienced (never mind Trump being a reality TV star), shallow, inept, not an orator to rival Cicero, not as fearless as Alexander the Great, not as wise as Sun Tzu, and so on. 

The candidate counts, but only in a weak sense. And that weak sense is: are Americans willing to grit their teeth, roll up their sleeves, and unify, whomever the candidate is? Enough of them, on the side of democracy and sanity? If they’re not, then it’ll be always and altogether too easy to divide them—there’ll always be some kind of foolish myth, some kind of fatal flaw, that the press, pundits, and the enemies of democracy will cook up, and spit out, over and over again.

So are Americans on the side of democracy willing to stop playing this game of fatal flaws? And say enough is enough: whomever the candidate is, we back them? In European politics, we call this, simply, voting for your party. The GOP, by the way, excels at it, too. The Democrats, never having built a party of great solidarity, or a modern party organization, rich in networks and communities, are poor at it. So people in America, on the center and left, don’t vote for the party. They look down on it, in fact. But there is nothing to be contemptuous of here: this is precisely how Europe and Canada built social democracies to begin with.

The Myth of the Fatal Flaw, or Democracy’s Greatest Test

In other words, this is democracy’s greatest test.

It goes like this.

When the chips are down—this down—and every institution has failed, welcoming fascism with open arms, every institution save one, will the people themselves remember they are that crucial institution?

You see, this is what fascism hopes to terrorize people away from realizing. To give up on their power, and instead succumb to fatalism—that’s why it’s so loud, explosive, violent, threatening, always intimidating, never shutting up, always promising the worst. Because it’s trying to terrorize the people into submission, giving up on their own unity and togetherness, and thus ceding it all in advance. We’ll discuss all that more tomorrow.

This is democracy’s greatest test. On the one side, fascism. Now behind it, every institution that should be preserving democracy. Save one, the people. And the people, in situations like this, find themselves easily divided, because all this is frightening, upsetting, destabilizing, even terrifying. Finding themselves demoralized, the people give up, focusing on the very Fatal Flaws that a failed media and those in league with the fascists trumpet over and over again.

But in truth none of these are Fatal Flaws. Sure, Biden’s old. Would you rather have an old guy or a dictator? Easy choice—if you’re thinking rationally and sanely. But if you’re scared out of your wits, then maybe, suddenly, all that clear thinking goes foggy. 

The next Fatal Flaw? Let’s rewind, so you really understand this. Al Gore wasn’t “likable.” Hillary was “difficult.” Carter wasn’t manly enough. Howard Dean was a “weirdo.”  Doesn’t matter—do you get the point yet? There’ll always—always—be a fatal flaw.

In fact, I can point out plenty in advance, and you should be able to, too, now that I’ve taught you how to think about all this. Kamala will probably be “unlikable,” too, like “Al Gore,” or “distant,” or even more “difficult” than Hillary. Gavin Newsom will be “slick” or too “polished” or not enough a “man of the people.” Anyone remotely to their left will be a socialist, etcetera. See how simple this is once you get the hang of it?

So this test of democracy, the greatest one of all? It’s never really about the candidates. Because nobody is perfect. Least of all politicians. This test is about the people, who must be willing to brook some degree of imperfection, and come to their senses, instead of being frightened into searching for an unattainable degree of perfection because…

That’s The Only Thing That Can Win.

That’s the reason we’re told to search for Unattainable Perfection, isn’t it? Anything less is Doomed to Lose. And yet the fact—the fact—is that united, the people can’t be defeated. That sounds trite, but let me remind you, we’re talking about statistical realities. Even in the most extreme social collapses, the majority never support the extremists, which is why they are extremists. Hitler had to seize power, the Bolsheviks had to revolt, Mao had to “re-educate” a society, and so on. The people united cannot be defeated.

But that unity is hard—incredibly hard—to come by. Because the more destabilized a society gets, the less of it it has. And so a kind of vicious cycle sets in, what in complexity theory we call an dynamic system: destabilization destroys unity, which intensifies destabilization.

That is how extreme minorities collapse societies. And it’s why despite the majority not backing the fanatics and lunatics even in the most extreme social collapses, we see social collapses. Because the unity of the majority in the thinking, sane center doesn’t hold.

So. This is democracy’s greatest test of all. When the chips are this down, so far they’re in the abyss, can the people remember that united, they can’t be defeated? That through unity, the preservation of democracy is assured—but in its absence, all history’s horrors and follies recur, like a waking nightmare?

Understand my words, my friends. I say none of this lightly. I predicted American collapse. I can tell you what happens next. But that’s not the part you need to know. It’s that you still have the power to change it.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Citizenship, Civics, Courage, Democracy, Discipline, Disruption, Education Reform, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Funding, Home Schooling, Propaganda

Project 2025: A Recipe for Disaster!

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2024 //
41

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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