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Thom Hartmann: The Fascists Start with Threats of Violence

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2024 //
68

I am a fan girl of Thom Hartmann. I don’t know how he manages to produce deeply thoughtful, deeply researched articles at a fast clip. This is another great one, about the use of threats, intimidation and violence to achieve rightwing goals.

He writes:

How would you react if one day you were sitting at home and the phone rang and when you picked it up you heard a man shout:

“Kill yourself now so we can save ammo!”

Moments later, an email arrives that says:

“I hope the Federal government hangs you and your daughter from the Capitol dome, you treasonous piece of shit! I pray that I will be sitting close enough to hear your necks snap.”

This is what happened to “Shaye” Moss and Ruby Freeman when Trump and Giuliani decided to blame Trump’s loss in Georgia on them, incorrectly claiming they were stuffing ballots for Biden. Just a few hours later, a mob with torches and a bullhorn showed up at Freeman’s house, although she’d already left after being warned by the FBI that she was on the “kill list” of a January 6th defendant they’d just arrested.

Mitt Romney, speaking with writer McKay Coppins for his book “Romney: A Reckoning,” told him the story of multiple Republican senators who were so terrified of violence at the hands of Trump’s fascist followers that they set aside their consciences and voted against convicting him of trying to blackmail Zelenskyy and, later, trying to overthrow the government of the United States.

“One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him — why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome?

“Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.”

I know liberals and regular reporters in the media who are quite happy trash-talking Biden but are frankly terrified of the possibility that Trump or one of his high-profile followers might sic Trump’s fascist fan boys on them. As a result, they self-censor.

Similarly, multiple judges in the past few months have been given the chance to take Trump off the ticket because of his clear violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment by inciting and supporting an insurrection. Each one whiffed, and their legal logic was so thin it’s reasonable to conclude they’re also unwilling to have their families suffer the death threats and harassment that comes with being an “enemy of Trump.”

When the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court finally found the spine to vote him off the ballot, within hours the threats began. Now they’re having to pay for security for themselves and their family members, and go to sleep every night dreading the possibility that a lone wolf Trump supporter — like the one who broke into Paul Pelosi’s home and attacked him with a hammer — may be looking for them, too.

As NBC News reported, Trump’s followers reacted to the Colorado justices with predictable ferocity:

“’This ends when we kill these f–kers,’ a user wrote on a pro-Trump forum that was used by several Jan. 6 rioters.

“’Kill judges. Behead judges. Roundhouse kick a judge into the concrete,’ read a post on a fringe website. ‘Slam dunk a judge’s baby into the trashcan.’”

NBC’s Ryan Reilly added:

“The threats fit into a predictable and familiar pattern, seen time and time again after legal developments against Trump.” 

Thus, Jack Smith was unable to find even four Supreme Court justices who were willing to grant cert to hear his challenge to Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution; terrified, they left the case with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in the hope those judges will draw Trump’s ire — and his followers’ fire — thus diluting their own risk.

This is how fascism takes over a nation from within: with violence and the fear of violence.

I’ve been doing what is now the nation’s largest progressive radio/TV show for 20 years, reaching an estimated audience of 6 million a week. My writings here on HartmannReport.com are frequently reprinted by other progressive media. 

The result is that I regularly get threats, although this is not a phenomenon shared by my rightwing colleagues. When I asked a couple of rightwing radio hosts I’ve known for years if they get threats of violence or death, each said, “No.”

There is no movement advocating political violence on either the American left or in the center. It is entirely confined to the American right, and the media needs to admit that and the FBI needs to recalibrate their efforts.

As fascism expert and historian Emilio Gentile noted about how fascist movements start and gain power:

“In the beginning there was violence.”

Violence and the threats of violence are the key to understanding fascists like Trump and the movements they inspire.

As any professional interrogator can tell you, deep down inside, all of us humans are really just scared little kids. The more we’re broken down by the circumstances of life or government policy, the less secure we feel, the harder it is to get by in life, and the more scared we become.

And, for many people, out of that fear comes the willingness — hell, the enthusiasm — to embrace “big daddy” in the form of a tough guy leader who promises to “restore” those who feel the fear back to their previous (or imagined future) positions of power, wealth, and authority.

This becomes particularly easy for fascist leaders when their followers are convinced that the nation’s government has become hopelessly corrupt, a project rightwing fossil fuel billionaires, rightwing media, and Republican politicians have been promoting here in the US for decades.

Ever since the Reagan Revolution, in their zeal to cut their own taxes and stop regulation of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries, they’ve been hammering the message that our government has been seized by “deep state socialists” bent on destroying our country. 

Republicans and the billionaires who own them have repeated this conspiracy theory so often for the last few decades that an entire religion, Qanon, as arisen around it.

This belief, that much of what our government does is illegitimate or even malicious, makes it easy for low-information voters to bind themselves to a fascist “reform movement” that promises better times ahead.

As fascist followers act out their violent threats against their leaders’ perceived enemies, they get an inner sense of strength and the feeling that they’ve joined a community: that diminishes their own fear for a short while. 

The more an “other” — political enemies; racial, religious, and gender minorities; women — are blamed for the ills of the nation, the more vigilante-style violence against them is justified and the more violent the future becomes.

When the state pushes back against that violence, as America did after January 6th, the calls for increased violence become even louder. Trump is practically shouting “kill them!” with a bullhorn and even our court system is afraid to stop him by throwing him into jail as they would have any other common criminal who encouraged such violence against judges, juries, witnesses, court officials, and their families.

Calling people to violence by denouncing those being scapegoated is central to fascist politics. 

Mussolini used to feature Italian “whistleblowers” who, like Joe McCarthy here back in the day, would call out “corrupt” government officials whose only real crime was not supporting him. Hitler had every radio station in Germany play phone calls from local citizens who denounced their neighbors for sympathizing with Jews, socialists, or trade union organizers.

Once publicly targeted in these ways, mobs or lone-wolf assassins would descend on these people’s homes. After a few well-publicized beatings and killings, everybody from media figures to politicians to judges backed away from trying to stop fascists or even hold them accountable.

When he was rising to power in Hungary, for example, Victor Orbàn’s right-hand-man led a torchlight march into a Budapest Roma neighborhood threatening to burn the “gypsies” — who fled in terror — out of their homes. More recently, Orbán started arresting people who “defamed” him on social media.

Soon, nobody in or out of the government is willing to stand up to the fascists; it’s too dangerous and too exhausting. Being the object of regular threats of violence or death is not something anybody would volunteer for unless they saw the stakes as being very, very important.

This is what Trump and the GOP he’s captured are working toward: the silencing of dissent and accountability, replacing them with fear and a guilty complicity. Just take a look at the state of social media today, particularly Xitter and Facebook, which have dialed back on their content moderation and thus loosed the fascists on anybody who dares criticize Trump or the GOP.

As Michael Ebner wrote in his book “Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy”:

“The Fascist state ruled Italy violently, projecting its coercive power deeply and diffusely into society through confinement, imprisonment, low-level physical assaults, economic deprivations, intimidation, discrimination and other quotidian forms of coercion. 

“Moreover, by promoting denunciatory practices, the regime cemented the loyalties of ‘upstanding’ citizens while suppressing opponents, dissenters and social outsiders.”

Trump is telling us right up right now that he intends to rule as a fascist if he’s able to either win or seize power through other means in 2024. Informally, his militia followers will be showing up at polling places next fall to intimidate voters; they see themselves as the shock troops of the new GOP. 

Formally, he’s planning on ending your and my protections against state-sponsored police violence, which he openly intends to deploy against anybody who opposes him and his regime:

“I am also going to indemnify our police officers. This is a big thing, and it’s a brand-new thing, and I think it’s so important. I’m going to indemnify, through the federal government, all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout the United States from being destroyed by the radical left for taking strong actions against crime.”

When Trump says “crime,” of course, he’s using the same fascist-speak that Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, and Orbán use that means “minorities” and “political enemies.”

And his followers are listening and acting. 

The Anti-Defamation League published a report finding there have been more than 170 murders committed by rightwing (and, I’d add, therefore probably Trump-aligned) extremists over the past five years; only 3 deaths could be attributed to people “on the left.” None of the victims were “criminals.”

So, how does a nation deal with an epidemic of violent rhetoric and actual violent attempts?

Fascists are always a minority when they rise to power in a country. They’re experts at manipulating democratic systems — particularly through things like voter suppression, gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and voter intimidation — to seize power, and then corrupting the existing systems and laws in ways that keep them in power.

At the moment, the fascist movement in the US is very much confined within the GOP and aligned with fringe militia and fundamentalist religious factions.

Merrick Garland should have come down on them hard as soon as he assumed his job as Attorney General; because he dithered for two full years until he was shamed into appointing Jack Smith by the January 6th Committee, Trump’s fascist followers have gained considerable momentum.

By continuing to refuse to investigate or prosecute the people who are still in power and conspired with Trump to overthrow our government, Garland further empowers America’s homegrown fascist movement. This must stop, and news that the FBI has finally acquired some of the content of Congressman Scott Perry’s phone is a positive sign, albeit too little and too late.

But the ultimate victory over fascism in America has to be in the ballot box rather than the courthouse. Americans who believe in democracy and reject strongman oligarchy must turn out next November in overwhelming numbers and so shatter the GOP that the party will be forced to reinvent itself in a way that includes purging itself of its fascist-supporting members.

And we damn well better succeed, because fascists never give you a second chance to defeat them or hold them to account. If we try to stop them and fail, Trump has already told us he’ll have a nice cold cell waiting for you and me in the concentration camps he promises to build to hold “millions.”

There is pretty much nothing more important now than waking up our friends and neighbors to this threat…

Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Yes! The Supreme Court Should Disqualify Trump from Appearing on the Ballot

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2024 //
36

I wrote a few days ago that Trump should not be removed from the ballot even though he unequivocally plotted to overturn the election he lost and provoked an insurrection against the orderly transfer of power. I was wrong. For me, it was a close call: I wanted him to lose convincingly at the hands of the voters; I predicted he would lose by 10 million votes in 2024.

But it should not have been a close call. Trump should not be allowed to run again. He violated his oath of office. I was persuaded I was wrong by the many comments by readers on this blog, by reading the new insider books by Liz Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson, and by continuing to read other opinions, like that of Jamelle Bouie, whose columns will follow this one today.

Trump was exactly the kind of office-holder described in Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

In the lower federal court in Colorado, Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled that Trump engaged in insurrection on January 6, 2021, but concluded that the President of the U.S. was not an “officer” as defined in the amendment. This was a bizarre conclusion, and the Supreme Court of Colorado ruled by a vote of 4-3 that Trump should not be allowed to run for President because he did take an oath to support the Constitution, he served as the highest officer of the nation, and he did engage in an insurrection against the Constitution to which he swore an oath. It’s no more complicated than that.

The Supreme Court will review that decision.

Trump continues to tell the Big Lie. Despite the fact that he lost 60 court decisions, including decisions by judges he appointed, including two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court; despite the fact that his own Attorney General and his White House Counsel told him he lost, he continues to lie.

Trump continues to praise the insurrectionists. He has promised to pardon all of them who were convicted and sent to prison. He calls them “patriots” even though they defiled the U.S. Capitol, the seat of our government, and threatened the lives of Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence and the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and violently attacked police officers.

The members of Congress escaped the chamber where they were counting the electoral vote only minutes before Trump’s devoted followers broke through the doors. Had they broken through only five minutes sooner, there might have been a bloodbath, a massacre of our elected representatives. Some “patriots”!

Judges should not reach a decision based on fear of Trump’s mob.

Either the Constitution means what it says or it means whatever a politically appointed group of justices decide it says in contravention of the words themselves.

Either “no man is above the law” or only one man—named Donald Trump—is above the law.

Trump betrayed Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. He betrayed his oath of office. He incited, provoked, and engaged in an insurrection against the Constitution and the government that he swore to support.

Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Justice, Lies, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

Peter Greene: Is Ryan Walters the Worst State Chief in the Nation?

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2024 //
3

Funnily enough, both John Thompson and Peter Greene wrote about Oklahoma’s education chief, Ryan Walters. He seems to be in the news a lot.

Peter Greene wrote:

Education Dudebro Ryan Walters has been subpoenaed by House members of his own party to explain what the hell is going on in the department of education under his leadership.

Once upon a time, Walters was a history teacher, and pretty good it by many accounts. But his trek to the higher levels of Oklahoma politics has been accompanied by lurch into MAGAville, where he somehow became a chosen buddy of Governor Stitt. That’s despite the fact that he mismanaged a bunch of federal relief funds in an attempt to boost vouchers. He tried to make an example out of a school librarian who let students, you know, read books.

Once Walters was elected to the State Superintendent spot, he made it clear that his brand would be culture war baloney; one of his first acts was to take down the Oklahoma Educators Hall of Fame pictures, and when folks protested, he offered a statement:

“All the photographs will be sent to the local teachers’ unions. When my administration is over, the unions can use donor money and their lobbyists to take down photographs of students and parents and reinstall the photographs of administrators and bureaucrats.”

Walters drew headlines for moves like explaining that the Tulsa Race Massacre was not about race. He called the teachers union a “terrorist organization.” He also proposed a host of rules for restricting reading, mandatory outing of students, searching out the dread CRT, and backing it all up with threats to take away a district’s accreditation if they dared to defy him.

By February, Rep. Mark McBride of the Education Committee was ready to “put this gentleman in a box” and “focus on public education and not his crazy destruction of public education.”

Things have not improved since. Walters has tried to push school prayers, the proposed religious charter school, and a variety of other hard right christianist supremacy noises.

But while Walters’ ideological activism may draw the headlines, there also seems to be a problem with basic competence in the job.

Employees have been fleeing the department–80 gone by September. In May, one departed whistleblower said that Walters office had simply failed to follow through on millions of dollars in federal grant money. Terri Grissom estimated between $35 and $40 million hasn’t been given to districts to spend, and uncounted other millions hadn’t been applied for at all. And Grissom says that Walters simply lied to legislators about the state of grants. This fall, districts have discovered that Walters’ office has somehow gummed up the works so badly that millions in federal grants are not getting to the schools where they could do some good.

Another resignation came from Pamela Smith-Gordon, a handpicked Walters ally who left out of frustration with the lack of leadership. She sent an angry letter that said in part:

While desperately wanting to support you, the lack of leadership and availability within our own OSDE is impossible to ignore. If your physical presence is not required for leadership, then the question arises as to why the position exists with a salary attached to it.

The lack of Walters physical presence in the office has been a recurring theme. Reported Rep. Jacob Rosencrans

We’re hearing from folks that are looking in and they’re all saying the same thing. Ryan Walters isn’t there. I talked to someone who is a constituent of mine who said that he is not a mean guy. He is always there with a handshake and a smile, but he is never there, literally.

In response to Smith-Gordon’s departure, McBride (who is an actual Republican) said, “I really don’t know what’s going on over there. Nobody does. There is some lack of transparency.”

Walters’ department, which regularly cranks out Trump-style PR about how Walters is “driving change in education for Oklahoma students like never before” doesn’t just stonewall the legislature–they thumb their nose at it. When McBride made a second request for certain basic information from the department, Walters’ top advisor Matt Langston sent a note–which someone slipped under McBride’s office doors–saying “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” (Fun fact: Langston allegedly lives in Texas.) In another response was a letter from Langston, on OSDE letterhead, calling McBride a “whiny Democrat.“

In response to this petty dickishness, House Demnocrat Mickey Dollens proposed the “Do Your Job Act” aimed directly at Walters and his department. Well, he’s a Democrat, and angry at that.

But McBride and House Speaker Charles McCall and Rep. Rhonda Baker are GOP, and they signed off on the subpoena to get Walters to show up and answer some questions, including details –but not to the legislature. In interviews, McBride just sounds tired and frustrated.

“If there’s nothing there, show me,” said Rep. Mark McBride, ( R) House Education Budget and Appropriations Chair. “There’s no ‘I gotcha’ question’ here. It’s just questions about public education that any appropriator would ask.”

McBride says he tried to work with Walters and his chief policy advisor Matt Langston, but after many requests for basic information were left unmet, he says he had no other option but to issue the subpoena.

And McBride’s more formal statements don’t seem aimed at grinding axes.

As Chairman of the Appropriations and Budget Education Subcommittee, I am constitutionally bound to ask questions and statutorily entitled to have them answered of the leadership of the legislatively appropriated OSDE. As those questions have not been answered, and no voluntary answer is forthcoming, I have exercised my power as chairman to subpoena the superintendent to produce the records and communications requested by the committee. Where taxpayer money is concerned we must be diligent. The time for playing political games is over, and the time for answers is at hand.

Walters’ office has responded with its usual grace. Langston has called McBride a liar. And after initially not responding to the subpoena, Walters decided to give an “exclusive” to Fix affiliate Fox23, in which he said stuff like this:

It’s disappointing to see some folks in my own party decided to sell their souls for 30 pieces of silver from the teachers union, but I’m never going to stop or back down. I’m going to keep fighting for the parents of Oklahoma [and] the tax payers of Oklahoma. Your kids are too important. The future of this state is too important,

He also claims that his has been the “most transparent” administration. And he touts his “town halls,” some of which have been pretty contentious. And while Walters has often pointed to his meetings with superintendents around the state as a sign of his outreach and transparency,a survey of superintendents found that 150 of the 190 who responded had met with him exactly zero minutes. A touted Zoom meeting was about 15 minutes long, superintendents were not allowed to speak, and no questions were answered. They reported a “continued silence.” And they report that Walters’ culture war concerns do not reflect the day to day issues they actually deal with in the real world. From an NPR story:

Matt Riggs is the superintendent of the small, rural district of Macomb. He said Walters’ portrayal of schools is like a “caricature… so far outside of what is real.”

“What he has done through his entire approach to public life, from what I’ve seen, is create dragons for himself to slay,” Riggs said. “Do we have students here that, you know, some may identify in different ways? I’m sure we do. But our charge is to try to make those students’ lives better. Our charge is not to make them part of some kind of political conversation.”

Riggs said those dragons — leftist indoctrination, pornography pushing, terrorist teachers’ unions — just don’t exist. In a high-poverty area like Macomb, there are real problems, but Riggs says he doesn’t see a point in bringing those issues to Walters.

But the legislature sees a point in bringing Walters to address those issues. He might even have to explain his desire to slay his imaginary dragons instead of getting school districts the support they need and that their taxpayers deserve.

In the end, the worst thing about Walters may not be his Trumpian bombast, his thirst for media attention, his obsession with culture wars, or his ideological certainty that he need answer to nobody. The worst thing about Walters may be that he won’t actually do the job for which he campaigned so hard. Is incompetence worse than intolerance? I’m not sure even a legislative hearing can determine that one, but Walters is both, and that’s bad news for the children of Oklahoma.

Walters has till January 5 to answer the subpoena. Mark your calendar.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Disruption, Education Industry, Oklahoma

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Wants to Destroy Tulsa Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2024 //
9

Ryan Walters of Oklahoma may be the worst state superintendent in the nation. Read John Thompson’s latest report on Walters’s plans for the Tulsa public schools and see if you agree.

Thompson writes:

The Tulsa World reported that the Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) “is zeroing in on 6,200 students in grades four to eight who must improve on state tests to help the district avoid a state takeover.” Given the threats State Superintendent Ryan Walters has thrown at the district, I understand why the TPS is undertaking a probably doomed-to-fail intervention. By appeasing Walters (who now supports the Tulsa plan), they might save the school system from Walter’s most destructive attacks. But that shouldn’t be the issue.

The question we should be asking is: Will their rushed effort to increase test scores help the 18% of the district’s students who are targeted or will it do them more harm? This experiment will inevitably teach students a lot of things – including destructive lessons rooted in worksheet-driven malpractice. The question should be: Would the supposed gains justify the likely damage that will be done to those students? If history is the guide, it seems inevitable that the tragedies of No Child Left Behind and ESSA will be repeated, especially for the most-disadvantaged students. For instance: What are the chances that the $360,000 spent on state test-aligned test preparation materials will result in a drill-and-kill mindset which is antithetical to the meaningful learning students need?

One of many examples of research on why programs like Walters’ demands have failed is National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s 2011 study, Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education. It found:

Test-based incentive programs, as designed and implemented in the programs that have been carefully studied, have not increased student achievement enough to bring the United States close to the levels of the highest achieving countries. When evaluated using relevant low-stakes tests, which are less likely to be inflated by the incentives themselves, the overall effects on achievement tend to be small and are effectively zero for a number.

I was attending a rally of teachers when Walters announced his latest assaults on Tulsa schools, and the district’s response was outlined. On one hand, the conversations with Tulsa and Oklahoma City teachers were stimulating. I was impressed by their emphasis on trusting and loving relationships, and supporting students who face so many obstacles. I was inspired by the embraces of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), and how overworked and stressed out teachers remained devoted to their kids. I was told about successful efforts in some schools to restore holistic and meaningful learning, as well as other schools where test prep was still dominant.

Moreover, I was consistently told about the exhaustion and anxiety the educators face, and how Walters’ attacks will force schools to ramp up test prep. These conversations brought me back to the first decade of the 21st century when low-performing schools were the primary focus of drill-and-kill, and where recess, field trips, arts, and music were taken away.

Then, I was brought back to the second decade when almost every student and educator was targeted for reward-and-punish accountability. Just as the Race-to-the Top (RttT) was doubly devastating because NCLB had already broken the resistance to test-driven accountability, today’s mandates are likely to be doubly dangerous because they follow Walters’ and the Moms for Liberty’s campaigns for Prager’s false, rightwing curriculum, attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), LGBTQ and trans students, and public education’s principles.

By the way, who are the students TPS needs to immediately move up at least one achievement level from “below basic” on state tests? The World reports they are 92% are economically disadvantaged, 20% require special education services, 43% are multilingual learners. They will be the ones who will likely suffer the stress, the drill-and-kill instructional malpractice, and lower graduation rates that typically result from Walters-styled mandates. This raises the question: Wouldn’t they benefit more from properly funded social and emotional supports, equitable spending on holistic instruction, diversity, and inclusiveness?

Instead of asking those questions, as the Voice reports, Walters said he will be proposing a rule which says “sexual activity in public targeted towards kids” is inappropriate. He said “the rule is a direct result of a district hiring an administrator who dresses as a drag queen during non-work hours.” Walters said he would respond to out-of-state groups that oppose prayer in school by introducing “a rule that protects prayer in schools.”

Moreover, the TPS will be required to make “midyear changes in principal assignments and reassigning central office staff to support the Tulsa schools needing Most Rigorous Intervention, or MRI, based on federal education standards.” It will also need to restructure “the district’s leadership team, and aligning leadership priorities and strategic planning to the state’s demands.”

Even if Walters’ priorities and plans made sense, how could the TPS effectively implement them is such a rushed manner? While I’m not optimistic that the TPS will dare to heed research on why the federal School Improvement Grants largely failed, I hope it will not ignore (like many reformers have) the reasons why the billions of dollars invested in turnaround and transformation schools didn’t improve student outcomes.

I must emphasize a key difference, however, between the hurried transformations that backfired so badly over the last two decades, and those that Walters is coercing Tulsa into adopting. I spent hundreds of hours trying to explain to researchers and funders who hurriedly devised the previous turnaround attempts. Even though they were extremely smart, they didn’t know what they didn’t know about public schools. These venture philanthropists and their staff sought to “blow up” the status quo so that innovators could reinvent schools.

Walters is even more aggressive in trying to blow up public education, and he’s shown no interest in improving schools. He might be able to intimidate Tulsa into “knocking down the barn” but, even if he was interested in the welfare of students, there’s no way he would be interested in rebuilding public schools.

Categories Cruelty, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Oklahoma

Why the Supreme Court Should Let Trump Stay on the Ballot

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2024 //
174

Two states, Colorado and Maine, have ruled that Donald Trump is disqualified to appear on their state ballot for President because of Section Three of the 14th Amendment.

That section, written after the Civil War, says:

Section 3 Disqualification from Holding Office

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Trump did take an oath “to support the Constitution of the United States” and he did incite and encourage a mob to invade the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the counting of the electoral votes and thereby “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution. In addition, he spent months trying to block the orderly transition of power from himself to Joseph Biden, who won the Presidential election of 2020.

His speech on January 6 was incendiary. Just as bad were his efforts to pressure state officials to change the results in their states and to create slates of fake electors. All of his actions were aimed at remaining in power despite the fact that he lost both the popular vote and the vote of the electoral college. Because he is a SORE LOSER, he summoned a mob to Washington, D.C. on January 6 and urged them to “fight like hell” to overturn the election and to march on the Capitol and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

Nothing like this happened before in the history of the United States.

All of these facts, including the video footage of the horrific events of January 6, are evidence that he should be disqualified from the ballot.

The Supreme Court is dominated by conservative jurists who claim to be Originalists, who read the Constitution in light of its original intent. The original intent of Section Three of the 14th Amendment is unambiguous. Trump disqualified himself.

Somehow, I expect, the Court will find a way to avoid ruling against Trump. They might say that the case involves politics and is not in the judicial realm, as some state courts have ruled. That is an evasion, of course, but it may suffice to get them off the hook. How many judges want death threats, a frequent tactic of the Trump mob?

But I disagree. I want Trump on the ballot.

My reason for wanting Trump ON the ballot has nothing to do with the Constitution. I believe that his role in the insurrection is indisputable. The Biden campaign should run ads featuring the mob overrunning the Capitol and attacking police officers again and again. They should remind the public that Trump did nothing for three hours while the seat of our government was ransacked.

I want him to be defeated by vote of the American people. I believe he will lose in 2024. I can’t be certain. But if he is taken off the ballot, a significant part of the population will believe that he was removed for partisan reasons.

For the rest of his life, he will rail about the “rigged” election and how he was cheated.

I want him to be beaten fair and square as he was in 2020.

I do not believe that the American people will again vote into the presidency a man of no character, a man facing multiple indictments, a man whose motive for running is to pardon himself of federal crimes and to wreak vengeance on his critics, , a man who has no respect for the Constitution, a man who can’t be trusted to leave office ever.

He lost the popular vote by almost three million in 2016. He lost it by 7 million votes in 2024, along with a decisive defeat in the Electoral College. His behavior since he lost in 2020 has been undignified and loathsome. I predict he will lose by 10 million votes in 2024.

Let him run.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Trump

South Carolina: Moms for Liberty Will Open Their Own Charter School in Affluent Neighborhood

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2024 //
107

Steve Bailey, an opinion writer for the Charleston Post and Courier, wrote recently about the new charter school that will open in an affluent neighborhood in Charleston. It will use the Hillsdale College curriculum. The Moms predict it will be the highest performing school in the area. With the freedom to choose its students and to oust the ones who are problematic, it’s sure to get high gest scores.

He writes:

The leaders of Moms for Liberty, who have made a fine mess of the Charleston County School District, have a new project: starting a “classical” — read conservative — kindergarten through 12th grade charter school, preferably in Mount Pleasant. And the Moms’ kids will be at the front of the line for seats in their new school.

Ashley River Classical Academy has partnered with Hillsdale College, a tiny Michigan school that has become the go-to provider for conservatives like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis looking to overhaul curriculums to counter “leftist academies.” The Christian college has helped open 23 charter schools in 14 states — and many more are on the way. Ashley River would be its first in South Carolina.

Hillsdale, with about 1,570 students, has expanded its influence by providing and helping implement a free, off-the-shelf product for conservatives. Its 1776 Curriculum focuses on Western civilization and American exceptionalism, phonics, Latin, classic literature and traditional teaching methods, not “shiny and new” technology and instruction. It emphasizes “moral character and civic virtue,” Ashley River said in its charter school application.

“ARA is poised to become one of the highest achieving schools in South Carolina,” it predicts.

The school started accepting pre-enrollment applications this month and is scheduled to begin kindergarten through fifth grade classes in August. The six-member board of directors includes Tara Wood, the chair of the Charleston Moms for Liberty chapter; Janine Nagrodsky, the treasurer; and Nicole McCarthy, who heads the Moms’ education committee. The all-white board has hired an African American principal, Alexandria Spry, who previously ran a Hillsdale school in Jacksonville, Fla.

The student body “will be diverse in every way,” the charter application promises. “We want all kids to come to the school,” says Spry.

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run, are often promoted as offering parents an alternative to low-performing schools in urban areas. That hardly describes this school’s preferred home: affluent Mount Pleasant, where the town’s explosive growth has been fueled in part by some of the best public schools in the region. The $104 million Lucy Beckham High School opened there three years ago.

But that is where the founders would like to open Ashley River Classical Academy. Coincidentally or not, Mount Pleasant is also ground zero of the Charleston chapter of Moms for Liberty. Half the school’s board lives there. Their kids, and those of school employees, will get preference in admissions, according to the school website.

“The school is not a political project,” Spry tells me. “We are just trying to provide the best education we can.”

Finding a site has been a struggle. Ashley River Classical is looking for a 10-acre campus to build a 50,000-square-foot school that eventually could accommodate 690 students, kindergarten through 12th grade. The school originally looked at five sites in Mount Pleasant, none of which panned out. It’s now looking at a temporary site in North Charleston, near Daniel Island, with plans to eventually build in Mount Pleasant, according to the school’s website.

A location is expected to be announced this month, Spry said. But both she and Tom Drummond, the board chairman, declined to comment further on a site.

Ashley River is one of more than two dozen South Carolina charters sponsored by Erskine College, a small Christian school in Due West. Nashville-based American Classical Education Foundation has committed to help finance the school’s start-up costs.

It was just a year ago that Moms-backed candidates won a majority on the Charleston County School Board, kicking off a chaotic year that included the hiring and departure of a superintendent in a matter of months. Now the Moms and their like-minded supporters will have a chance to implement their own ideas in their own school for their own kids. Tuition-free, thanks to taxpayers.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Segregation, South Carolina

Documented: The Secret Plot to Destroy Public Education, Revealed

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2024 //
28

The Network for Public Education has worked recently with “Documented,” an organization that defends democracy. Its executive director Nick Surgey led a panel at our 10th conference in D.C. in October. Nick and his colleagues described their very well documented work to expose the plot to destroy public education. As I left the room, David Berliner said to me, “That was a terrifying hour.”

Here is the video. Please take the time to watch.

Nick is an expert on the extremist Alliance Defending Freedom, which has led attacks on public schools and on abortion rights. The Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was a lawyer for ADF.

Please read the Documented brief describing their work.

It will open your eyes to a well-funded plot to destroy our public schools.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers

Timothy Snyder: Why We Must Not Abandon Ukraine

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2023 //
28

The MAGA faction of the Republican Party has made clear that it does not want to defend Ukraine. It does not see the point of helping Ukraine resist a Russian takeover. As foreign policy expert and national security specialist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said, “Ukraine is not our 51st state.” Like Trump, the “Freedom Caucus” does not want to pay to repel Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Trump thinks that Putin might be our ally if only we give him whatever he wants. (He has said he wants to restore the USSR.). You need only look at any photo of Trump and Putin together to see how Trump looks at Putin with a deferential and adoring expression.

Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University, published this powerful article in the Kyiv Post. He should have published it in The Washington Post.

He writes:

Imagine that freedom was in decline around the world. Imagine that things had gotten so bad that a dictatorship actually invaded a democracy with the express goal of destroying its freedoms and its people. And yet… imagine that this people fought back. Imagine that their leaders stayed in the country. Imagine that this people got themselves together, supported and joined their armed forces, held back an invasion of what seemed like overwhelming force. Imagine that their resistance is a bright moment in the history of democracy this whole century. We don’t have to imagine: that attack came from Russia and those people are the Ukrainians. Would you sell them out?

Americans have an alliance in North America and Europe which has existed for more than seventy years, with the goal of preventing an attack from the Soviet Union and then from Russia. Imagine that, when the Russian attack came, the hammer fell on a country excluded from that alliance. Ukraine indeed took the entire brunt of the invasion, resisted, and turned the tide: a task assigned to countries whose economies, taken together, are two hundred fifty times larger than Ukraine’s. In so doing, Ukraine destroyed so much Russian equipment that a Russian attack on NATO became highly improbable. With the blood of tens of thousands of its soldiers, Ukrainians defended every member of that alliance, making it far less likely that Americans would have to go to war in Europe. Would you sell them out?

(If there is anyone out there who still thinks that NATO had anything to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, consider this: invading Ukraine made Russia far more vulnerable. If Russia actually feared NATO, invading Ukraine would be the last thing it would do. Russian leaders are perfectly aware that NATO will not invade Russia, which is why they can pull troops away from the borders of NATO members Norway and Finland and send them to kill Ukrainians.)

For this whole century, American politicians and strategists of all political orientations have agreed that the greatest threat for a global war comes from China. The scenario for this dreadful conflict, in which hundreds of thousands of American soldiers could fight and die, is a Chinese offensive against Taiwan. And now imagine that this can defused at no cost and with no risk. The offensive operation the Chinese leadership is watching right now is that of Russia against Ukraine. Ukrainian resistance has demonstrated how difficult a Chinese offensive operation in the Pacific would be. The best China policy is a good Ukraine policy. Will we toss away the tremendous and unanticipated geopolitical gain that has been handed to us by Ukraine? There is nothing that we could have done on our own to so effectively deter China as what the Ukrainians are doing, and what the Ukrainians are doing is in no way hostile towards China. Ukrainians are keeping us safe in this as in other ways. Would you sell them out?

Imagine, because it’s true, that the whole world is watching the war in Ukraine. From everyone else’s point of view, whether they like us, hate us, or don’t care about us, Ukraine seems like an obvious ally and an easy win for the United States. Anyone around the world, regardless of their own ideology, knows that Ukraine is a democracy and America is supposed to support democracies. Anyone around the world, regardless of the state of their own economy, knows that our economy is enormous, far larger than Russia’s, and that economic strength wins wars. Anyone around the world can easily see that Americans are not at risk in Ukraine, and that Americans draw extraordinary moral and geopolitical gains from Ukrainian resistance. From the point of view of all observers, in other words, defunding Ukraine would demonstrate enormous American weakness. Is that the face we want to show the world? Do we want to tell everyone that we are unreliable and unaware of our own interests? Ukrainians, with American help, make Americans look sensible and strong. Would you sell them out?

Imagine that this is a winnable war, because it is. Russia’s main strategic objective, the seizure of Kyiv, was not achieved. Ukraine won the Battle of Kyiv. Russia was forced to retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts. Imagine the Russia’s campaign to take Kharkiv failed. Ukraine won the Battle of Kharkiv. Imagine that Kherson, the one regional capital Russia has taken in this war, was taken back by Ukraine. Ukraine won the Battle of Kherson. Snake Island, lost early in the war, has been taken back by Ukraine. Ukraine has taken back more than half of the territory seized by Russia in this invasion. Knowing that all is this is true, imagine that Putin knows it too. Russia’s main offensive instrument, the paramilitary Wagner Group, staged a coup against Putin and that Putin had to kill its leader. Imagine that Putin knows he cannot really take much more Ukrainian land — not without American help, anyway. Ukraine has a theory of victory that involves gains on the battlefield. Putin has a theory of victory that involves votes in the US Congress. Putin thinks that he has a better chance in the Capitol than he has in Kyiv. Should we prove him right?

Imagine a world food system with Ukraine as a major node. In normal times Ukraine can feed four hundred million people, and usually the UN World Food Program depends upon Ukraine. Ukrainian exports feed some of the most sensitive parts of the Middle East and Africa. Much of the instability in those regions is related to shortages of food. Russia has destroyed a major dam to destroy Ukrainian farmland. And mined Ukrainian farms on a huge scale. Russia targets ports and grain storage facilities with its missiles, and claims the piratical right to stop all shipping on the Black Sea with its navy. And yet… Imagine that Ukrainians resist here as well. Ukrainians farmers are hard at work. Ukraine still supplies food to the World Food Program. Ukrainians, through their own innovative weapons and clever tactics, managed to intimidate the Black Sea Fleet and open a lane for commercial shipping. That they are feeding the people who needed to be fed. Would you sell them out?

Imagine that we were a country that cared about war crimes. And imagine that there was a law, an international genocide convention, that defined five actions that constitute genocide, and that Russians have committed every one of these crimes in Ukraine. I cannot keep on writing about “imagining” when I have seen some of the death pits myself. I cannot say “imagine” when writers I know have been murdered because they represent Ukrainian culture. I cannot stay with my device when I read that the Russian state boasts of having taken 700,000 Ukrainian children to be russified, when every day Russian propagandists make clear that Russian war aims are exterminationist. And yet Ukrainians resist and persist. This is a genocide that can be stopped, that is being stopped. We are living within the scenario, the one we say that we have been waiting for, when American actions can stop a genocide, simply by helping the people who have been targeted, simply by paying their taxes. Whenever the Ukrainians take back land, they rescue people. This is how they think of their liberated territories: as places where no more children will be kidnaped, no more civilians will tortured, no more local leaders will be murdered. Would you sell out a people to a genocidal occupation? A people that has done nothing but good for you?

I have heard the excuse that Americans are “fatigued.” I have been in Ukraine three times since the war began. I have been in the capital and in the provinces. I have seen almost no Americans, fatigued or otherwise, in the country. And that is for the simple reason that we are not in Ukraine. How can we be fatigued by a war we are not fighting? When we are not even present? This makes no sense. It causes no fatigue to give money to the right cause, which is all that we are doing. It feels good to help other people help themselves in a good cause.

If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about “fatigue” because we will all be talking about disaster: across all of these dimensions: food supply, war crimes, international instability, expanding war, collapsing democracies. Everything that the Ukrainians are doing for us can be reversed if we give up. Why would lawmakers even contemplate doing so?

If you happened to know lots of Ukrainians, as I do, you would know people who have been wounded or who have been killed. You would know people who get through their days with dark circles around their eyes, because everyone has dark circles around their eyes. You would know people who have lost someone, because everyone has lost someone. You would know people who are grieving and yet who are nevertheless doing what they can do. You would not know anyone in Ukraine who believes that fatigue is a reason to give up. Would you sell such people out?

I have heard the other excuse: that we need to audit the weapons we send to Ukraine. The expenses are minimal and the gains are great: a nickel on our defense dollar, achieving what we cannot ourselves do with all the rest. And here’s the thing: the weapons we send to Ukraine are the only ones in our stockpiles that are being audited. They are being audited not by accountants in suits and ties but by men and women in camouflage. They are being used and used well by people whose lives are at stake and whose country’s future is at stake. Ukrainians have used American air defense more effectively than anyone knew that it could be used.

Ukrainians are using American missiles that we consider outdated to destroy the most advanced Russian assets. Ukrainians are taking American weapons built in the last century and using them to defend themselves and the rest of us in this one. In large measure they are literally using arms that we would otherwise be paying to disassemble because we regard them as obsolete.

If that battlefield audit done by the Ukrainian army is not good enough: well, then, by all means, American lawmakers, come and visit Ukraine and see for yourself. You and your staffers would be very welcome. Ukrainians want you to come. It would be a very good thing if more of us visited Ukraine.

I will tell you what I witnessed in Ukraine: when Ukrainians see American weapons systems, they applaud. Would you sell them out?

Reprinted from @tashecon blog. See the original here.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, International

New Republic: Elon Musk is the Biggest Scoundrel of 2023

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2023 //
27

The New Republic has named Elon Musk its scoundrel of the year. Forbes Magazine just named him as the richest man in the world, with assets of more than $250 billion. Just goes to show, I suppose, that you can’t buy respect, although he could easily buy The New Republic and make Mark Zuckerberg the biggest scoundrel next year. Musk has welcomed all previously banned characters back to Twitter, be they fascists, Neo-Nazis, bigots, election-deniers, or COVID liars. So go to Twitter to read the latest thoughts of Alec Jones or Mr. MAGA. However, I will note with protest that my brother was banned from Twitter five years ago for writing an offensive tweet about Trump. When he read that Musk was allowing everyone back, he appealed to have his Twitter account restored, he was rejected. Alec Jones, ok; Donald Trump, ok; my brother, Sandy S., rejected.

Alex Shephard wrote in The New Republic:

In one sense, Elon Musk has gotten exactly what he wanted. For all his talk about free speech, his primary motivation for sinking $44 billion into buying Twitter last year was clearly an unquenchable desire to be the center of attention. After Donald Trump’s defenestration in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, there was a main-character-size hole on the social network: Enter Musk and his infantile need for validation.

That Twitter—now renamed X, for reasons only Musk really understands—is now teetering on the brink of collapse and worth less than half what the world’s second-richest man paid for it is funny. It elicits deserved schadenfreude. Musk entered Twitter’s office carrying a sink—a terrible joke, and one of his better ones—last fall and has subsequently made countless decisions, big and small, all of which have made the platform significantly less viable and less worth spending any amount of time on. It is hard to think of a billionaire who has done more to damage their own reputation in such a short period of time.

Not so long ago, Musk was seen by many as a good tech billionaire, if not the good tech billionaire. While others like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg built digital trinkets that actively made the world a worse place, Musk was something different: a visionary intent on building real things, whether they be electric cars or rockets, that were aimed at accelerating a Jetsons-like vision of the future. While rivals at Google and Facebook—and, for that matter, Twitter—were hauled before Congress to testify about the deleterious effects of their creations, Musk remained relatively unscathed. Now it is clear that he is not just more villainous than all of them but that he is also a deeply stupid and unserious person.

Elon Musk is evil. While he has mostly made headlines for his incompetence, he has unleashed and legitimized truly heinous forces on Twitter: He has welcomed back some of the world’s most toxic people—Alex Jones, Donald Trump, innumerable Nazis and bigots—and has gone out of his way, again and again, to validate them. That Musk would endorse a heinous antisemitic conspiracy theory, as he did last month, is both unsurprising and reprehensible. It is, more than anything else, a reflection of who he is: He may be fantastically wealthy, but he is also deeply hateful, someone who has decided to devote his fortune and his time to attacking diversity and progress on nearly every front.

Musk has insisted again that he bought Twitter to save it from itself—that the platform had become too restrictive and that, to become a true “digital town square” where the best ideas rise to the top, it needed to welcome everyone. It is now abundantly clear that Musk’s real intention is and always has been to put his thumb on the scale: to elevate his own hateful views about, in no particular order: liberals; the media; diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; trans people; and liberal Jews. He sees Twitter as a weapon, a way to not only push his agenda but to sic his army of loyalist losers on anyone he deems an enemy.

For all of the talk about Musk being a “real life Tony Stark,” he has always been a deeply uncool person’s idea of a cool person: He is, in many ways, a sentient m’lady Reddit postcirca 2011. It’s hard to think of a more pathetic figure now: someone scraping the internet for conspiracy theories and “jokes” aimed at affirming his status and influence. He has, again and again, done the opposite: Far from showing himself as a swaggering, popular figure, he has revealed himself to be a venal, thin-skinned moron. He may very well be the most unfunny person alive, a fact reified dozens of times a day.

This was most apparent late last month, when Musk appeared at The New York Times’ glitzy annual DealBook conference and delivered a near-perfect encapsulation of the particularly toxic mixture of megalomania and neediness that has defined nearly everything he does. Asked by Andrew Ross Sorkin about a wave of advertiser defections in the wake of Musk’s embrace of an antisemitic conspiracy theory—via a post on X, of course—that suggested that Jews were secretly working to bring in troves of minorities to dilute America’s white population, Musk recoiled.

Bob Iger, the chairman of Disney—one of many companies to cease advertising on X in the wake of Musk’s comments—could “go fuck himself,” Musk said. It was clearly a pre-planned moment: an instant that Musk thought would bring him a wave of adulation and support that would force Disney back to his precious platform. Iger would be faced with the massive mistake he was making and come crawling back. Instead, there were a few awkward laughs and audible rustling. This was not a triumphant moment but a sign of a meltdown: a fabulously wealthy adult behaving like a toddler. Musk responded by telling Iger to go fuck himself again—as if it would somehow work this time. It hasn’t. Of course it hasn’t: Musk may have immense wealth, but his time at Twitter is a reminder that even that has its limits. Iger is also very rich; Disney is worth nearly 10 times what X is. Disney doesn’t need X. It certainly doesn’t need Elon Musk. X and Elon Musk need Disney.

Twitter, for all of its many flaws, was once a vital breaking news service. It is not that now. It’s not entirely clear what it is, beyond a toxic cesspool increasingly made in the twisted image of its deeply unwell owner. Changes to its verified user system, Musk’s decision to open the floodgates to bigots and trolls, and his own presence on the site have destroyed any utility it once had. It is now a source of endless misinformation and propaganda, a place where a pro-Putin conspiracy theorist can become a widely read source for information on the Israel-Hamas war, and where Alex Jones can spew lies about children murdered in schools. This is by design. Musk hates the media, but he also hates the truth and would rather live in a fantasy world in which his many enemies are destroying the world around him. It is, it practically goes without saying, actually Musk who is making the world worse in innumerable ways.

X is hanging on by a thread. After waves of layoffs, there is seemingly almost no one left minding the store. Musk dismantled Twitter’s Trust and Safety team almost immediately. As a result, hateful content often stays up for days, if not longer. The wave of advertiser defections means that the platform is also peppered with advertisements for ridiculous companies and scams. If Musk is still in charge of the platform in a year, it would be a shock. If it exists in a year at all, it would be a surprise.

X features heavily in Musk’s year in review, if only because he has successfully used it as a vehicle to make himself inescapable. But it is not his only venture, and it is not the only reminder that he is actually a deeply stupid and incompetent person. Tesla, his main business, just recalled nearly all of its vehicles because its much-hyped self-driving feature keeps causing cars to crash into people and things. Its much-hyped Cybertruck is unbelievably dumb-lookingand pointless: It is bulletproof, for some reason—exactly the kind of silly detail on which Musk would fixate to look cool, even as his cars … keep killing people. The rockets from his rocket company, SpaceX, keep exploding. (Musk says this is a good thing.) Everywhere you look, there is more evidence that Elon Musk is an idiot.

Behind all of the bloviating and attention-seeking is a small man who is simply not very good at anything. Musk has long wanted to present himself as a world-historical genius—and was recently minted as such by world-historical genius-minter (and world-historical toady) Walter Isaacson—but the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. Musk was able to parlay early wealth (via a disastrous tenure at PayPal) and, perhaps more importantly, fantastically low interest rates, into seed capital for lots of silly ideas. But the bill came due in 2023. Musk’s self-image is in tatters. What’s left is what we saw at the DealBook conference: a puffy, pathetic man increasingly untethered from reality. This is funny, in many ways. It is certainly funnier than anything Musk has ever tweeted.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Disruption, Economy, Extremism

The Republican Crack-Up

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2023 //
20

Amber Phillips of The Washington Post wrote about the fissures within the Republican Party, which have made incapable of putting forth a coherent agenda or passing any significant legislation. The heart of their disunity is the split between a dwindling number of reasonable Republicans—that is, those CD who are willling to engage in bipartisanship—and a growing number of extremists who abhor compromise, even with other Republicans.

Phillips wrote:

This week, we’re reviewing some of the most important political stories of 2023. Today: How — and why — Republicans are struggling to govern.

The Republicans’ struggles to be a cohesive party are probably most evident in their tumultuous year in the House of Representatives.

Republicans narrowly took over the majority of the House in the 2022 midterms, took days to elect a speaker, then careened toward legislative crisis after legislative crisis that would have hurt the economy (the debt ceiling showdown; government shutdown threats). They opened an impeachment inquiry into President Biden that has struggled to get off the ground with actual facts. They kicked out their speaker and froze the House for three weeks while they fought over choosing another. It ended up being one of the least-productive sessions of Congress in modern times.

Republican strategists I talked to agreed that something irreparable has happened to the party. Healthy parties don’t freeze an entire legislative chamber that they control.

“They fought so hard to be a governing majority,” said strategist Alice Stewart, referring to House Republicans, “and they can’t even agree among themselves. And that’s bad.”

Other Republicans say the House speaker drama reflects a broader problem for the party, one that has been metastasizing for decades. Depending on how you look at it, almost every Republican speaker since Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s has been pushed out or has stepped down over deep ideological splits within the party between moderates and the hard right.Then there’s the Republican presidential primary, where the front-runner is a candidate who has been twice impeached (including with votes from members of his own party), is facing 91 criminal charges, could face jail time and has been ruled by the Colorado Supreme Court as ineligible to appear on that state’s primary ballot.

“The party has been damaged for years,” said one Republican strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with party leaders. “And it’s not recoverable.”

Historian Thomas Balcerski, at Eastern Connecticut State University, went as far as to write for CNN this fall that we could be witnessing “the possible collapse of the Republican Party as we know it.”

“A failure to reach a majority consensus signals the doom of an American political party,” he wrote.

Leaders don’t seem to have an answer on what to do next.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Republicans
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