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Michael Hiltzik: The House GOP Demands Cuts to Programs for the Neediest

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2023 //
3

Michael Hiltzik, my favorite columnist in the Los Angeles Times, writes about the demands of the House GOP to avert a government shutdown. Their draconian cuts would protect their wealthy donors (by cutting IRS agents) but savage the programs that are essential for the neediest families, adults, and children.

He writes:

It’s all well and good to treat the House Republicans’ careening toward a government shutdown as a cabaret farce staged for our amusement

However, the threat to ordinary Americans, especially those dependent on government programs, is no joke.

As outlined by the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, two progressive think tanks working from official communications including the budget resolution released Sept. 20 by House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, they would involve these cuts in the social safety net:

Even if the Republicans don’t provoke the shutdown currently likely to begin at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, the budget cuts House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) has said he would support to meet the demands of his caucus’ far-right wing would devastate government assistance to the most vulnerable Americans.

  • A cut of $14.7 billion, or 77%, in Title I education grants to school districts with high levels of poverty, which fund services and supports for students from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds. The CBPP calls this funding “a core federal support for K-12 education.”
  • Reduction of the fruit and vegetable benefit in the Agriculture Department’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC)by 56% to 70%, affecting about 5 million participants.
  • Unsustainable reductions in low-income assistance programs for housing and heating.
  • $1.9 trillion in Medicaid cuts over 10 years.

These cuts go well beyond those agreed upon in the debt-ceiling negotiations last May, which McCarthy accepted.

As a sop to the Republicans’ rich patrons, the House caucus would rescind all of the $88 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service that was enacted as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The absurd truth of all this “negotiating” is that it won’t help Speaker McCarthy, America’s most outstanding political invertebrate, get a funding proposal through his chamber that would be even remotely acceptable to the Senate. That includes Senate Republicans, who have signed on to a bipartisan spending scheme.

There are doubts that McCarthy can get any proposal through his caucus, which is effectively controlled by extremists who keep moving the goalposts by insisting on ever more draconian spending cuts. They show every sign of determination to shut the government down this weekend, even though it’s a political article of faith that the public always blames the GOP for shutdowns (as it should), leading to disaster at the ballot box.

The lack of character among congressional Republicans, not excepting those aligned with McCarthy, is truly amazing. These are people who have no compunctions about slandering working Americans while taking every opportunity themselves for slacking off.

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), one of McCarthy’s lieutenants, remarked during the debt-ceiling negotiations that Democrats were “willing to default on the debt so they can continue making welfare payments for people that are refusing to work.”

The serene nerviness of this slander was truly impressive, given that the House of Representatives had taken 12 of 20 workdays off in April and 10 of 22 workdays (not counting Memorial Day) off in May. Overall, the House has been scheduled to be in session only 117 days in 2023, fewer than half the 240 days most of the rest of us are at work.

The House took off the entire month of Augustand didn’t return to session until Sept. 12, all while the possible shutdown was looming. The rest were officially designated “district work days,” to which we can only respond, “Oh, sure.”

Graves has resurfaced during the shutdown negotiations, telling the Washington Post that the Republicans’ “bottom line is we’re singularly focused right now on achieving our conservative objectives,” which include “huge savings.”

As the Post toted up the numbers, those savings involved “taking more than $150 billion per year out of the part of the budget that funds child care, education subsidies, medical research and hundreds of additional federal operations.”

If there’s a silver lining in the House GOP’s performative horseplay, it’s that it has cured the political press of treating the standoff as a symptom of congressional dysfunction. It’s not; as is being reported more accurately and sensibly in recent days, it’s a symptom of Republican dysfunction and, more than that, McCarthy’s dysfunction.

McCarthy sold his soul to the Republican extremist in order to win the job of speaker. Now what will he do?

The extremists have made their priorities clear. Protect their rich donors, while slamming the door shut on those who rely on government aid to survive. They are a cruel and shameless lot.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Injustice, Republicans

Greg Olear on “President Rapist”

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2023 //
16

Greg Olear introduces us to an essay written shortly after the 2016 election. The essay is prescient in describing the rise of the sexual predators to high positions our nation. Some—like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein—were exposed and ruined. Others continue to hold prestigious roles. Open the link to read the provocative essay by Jana Martin, analyzing a photograph of Melania and Michelle.

He writes:

Sages and predators. That’s what’s on my mind this week.

I keep thinking about what my friend Ronlyn Domingue, a novelist, said on the podcast about the future of fiction writing: “Well, assuming A.I. doesn’t write every fucking book that people read in the next five years, you know, we are the sages. Think about all the books that have given people hope or inspiration or ideas of what the future could be—in good ways or bad. . . . We’re kind of giving voice to what’s coming in the next few years or decades.”

And then I recall what Thomas Pynchon, also a novelist, wrote in his 2003 introduction to the centennial edition of Nineteen Eighty-four: “Prophecy and prediction are not quite the same, and it would ill serve writer and reader alike to confuse them in Orwell’s case.” He went on:

Specific predictions are only details, after all. What is perhaps more important, indeed necessary, to a working prophet, is to be able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul. Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away, that far from having seen its day it had perhaps not yet even come into its own—the corruption of the spirit, the irresistible human addiction to power, were already in place, all well-known aspects of the third Reich and Stalin’s USSR, even the British Labour party—like first drafts of a terrible future. What could prevent the same thing from happening to Britain and the United States? Moral superiority? Good intentions? Clean living?

What novelist but Orwell is quoted, referenced, alluded to as often in the popular culture—by all sides of the political spectrum?

And with the flood of news about sex crimes—in the literal and not the Orwellian sense of the term—I think of predators: rapists, sexual assailants, sexual abusers, sexual harassers. FPOTUS is a predator and his now-ex attorney is a predator (who preyed on women during the Insurrection!), and the skeevy British “comic” was outed as a serial predator and defended by other predators a week after an actor who is a predator was sent to prison for decades for his crimes. One predator on the Supreme Court makes news every week with the length and breadth of his sweeping corruption, and another predator on the Supreme Court wants to dismantle voting protections, and both of those predators held with the majority to overturn Roe, thus enabling predators across the country, but in the red states particularly, to lean into their predation. Predators enabling predators. Media trustwashing predators. Predators seizing and abusing power to protect themselves from prosecution, to allow themselves more leeway for their recidivism: Epstein, Weinstein, Trump.

The battle lines are drawn, as far as that goes. But they were drawn long ago. We are at an inflection point now. We will either slide completely into a fascist form of government—the “illiberal democracy” of Orbán—or we will root out the predators in our politics, our justice system, our media, our public life. With fascism comes sexual predation, and with sexual predation comes fascism. The two are inextricable, obverse and reverse of the same corroded coin.

Societies should be judged based on how they treat their most vulnerable. Ours allowed a predator on the Supreme Court—in the Year of Our Lord 2018!—because, when confronted with the odiousness of his behavior, he publicly and performatively choked up. Time and again, the fake tears of the predator trump the true blood of the victim.

Somehow, it’s been almost seven full years since the 2016 election. Those of a more eschatological bent may regard this period as the Great Tribulation. Not all of us survived it. As we emerge from the collective fugue state brought on by the traumatizing and toxic combination of Trump, the pandemic, and the rise of American fascism, it is instructive, I think, to look back at what we thought at that time, when we knew we were on a collision course with something unspeakably, unknowably horrible: when the Cassandras were screaming.

Back then, we were winding down our online arts and culture magazine, called The Weeklings. My friend Jana Martin, a terrific writer and a contributor to that site, posted this piece on December 3, 2016—after the election, before the inauguration.

Here, Dear Reader, is a sage writing about a predator. As Pynchon has it, what’s important is not the specific details she does or doesn’t get right—although she got almost everything right—but her ability to see deeper than most of us into the human soul.

Please open the link to read the essay by Jana Martin.

Categories Accountability, Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Gender, Trump

ProPublica: Clarence Thomas Attended Koch Fundraisers, Ruled on Koch Issues

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2023 //
30

Our Supreme Court used to be an institution that all Americans could rely on to be impeccably honest, nonpartisan, and fair-minded. Tge Court occasionally issued unanimous decisions.

No more.

Several justices have been criticized for accepting money from people or groups with issues before the Court.

None is more profligate in accepting gifts of great value than Justice Clarence Thomas.

ProPublica, a nonpartisan investigative website, has reported on Justice Thomas’s acceptance of many expensive gifts from billionaire Harlan Crow. Vacations, private jets, tuition for his nephew, the purchase of his mother’s home, etc.

Now ProPublica reports that Justice Thomas attended Koch events as a draw to bring in additional donors to Koch’s campaigns to privatize schools, cut taxes on billionaires, and undercut all government programs. Charles Koch and his late brother David had interest in many cases before the Court, but Thomas never revealed his ties to the billionaires nor did he recuse himself.

ProPublica wrote:

On Jan. 25, 2018, dozens of private jets descended on Palm Springs International Airport. Some of the richest people in the country were arriving for the annual winter donor summit of the Koch network, the political organization founded by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. A long weekend of strategizing, relaxation in the California sun and high-dollar fundraising lay ahead.

Just after 6 p.m., a Gulfstream G200 jet touched down on the tarmac. One of the Koch network’s most powerful allies was on board: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

During the summit, the justice went to a private dinner for the network’s donors. Thomas has attended Koch donor events at least twice over the years, according to interviews with three former network employees and one major donor. The justice was brought in to speak, staffers said, in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.

That puts Thomas in the extraordinary position of having served as a fundraising draw for a network that has brought cases before the Supreme Court, including one of the most closely watched of the upcoming term.

Thomas never reported the 2018 flight to Palm Springs on his annual financial disclosure form, an apparent violation of federal law requiring justices to report most gifts. A Koch network spokesperson said the network did not pay for the private jet. Since Thomas didn’t disclose it, it’s not clear who did pay.

Thomas’ involvement in the events is part of a yearslong, personal relationship with the Koch brothers that has remained almost entirely out of public view. It developed over years of trips to the Bohemian Grove, a secretive all-men’s retreat in Northern California. Thomas has been a regular at the Grove for two decades, where he stayed in a small camp with real estate billionaire Harlan Crow and the Kochs, according to records and people who’ve spent time with him there.

Please open the link and keep reading.

The Koch’s invested well. In a 2021 decision, called Americans for Prosperity v. Rob Bonta, Justice Thomas concurred that it violated the first amendment rights of Koch donors (dark money) to require them to disclose their names. Rob Bonta W’s the Attorney General of California, who was trying to force disclosure of the names of donors to the Koch group called Americans for Prosperity.

Categories Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Elections, Ethics, Justice, Koch Brothers

Robert Hubbell on Trump’s Hysteria and Rage

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2023 //
41

Robert Hubbell thinks that there must be a line that divides reasonable commentary from unhinged ranting, and Trump long ago crossed it. He has no filter that requires him to think before he posts a comment. He becomes increasingly deranged, and the media accepts it as normal. Of course it is normal from him.

Hubbell writes:

Several stories collided within the bounds of Trump’s unhinged posts on his vanity social media platform on Monday. As Speaker Kevin McCarthy goes through the motions of passing a spending bill over the objections of the extremist elements of his extremist caucus, Trump weighed into the fight:

The Republicans lost big on Debt Ceiling, got NOTHING, and now are worried that they will be BLAMED for the Budget Shutdown. Wrong!!! Whoever is President will be blamed. UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN! Close the Border, stop the Weaponization of ‘Justice,’ and End Election Interference.

          [Note to Readers: I will not be linking to Trump’s posts on Truth Social. You can run a word search on the text if you want to view the source posts.]

          For a nation hoping to avoid the pain of a shutdown on tens of millions of Americans, the post was not welcome news. Although Trump dresses his post in language that seems to focus on negotiating tactics, the real reason for the post is contained in the phrase “stop the Weaponization of “Justice” and End Election Interference.”

          That’s right, Trump is asking Republicans to shut down the government to help him evade accountability for his crimes. Surely, no member of Congress would place the personal interests of Donald Trump over the interests of tens of millions of Americans who will be hurt in a shutdown, right? Don’t hold your breath!

          The last time anyone heard from Kevin McCarthy, he was promising a third vote on the defense bill (and a few others?) on Tuesday. Don’t hold your breath!

          All of this means that the prospect of a government shutdown is increasing with each passing hour. See NYtimes, A Shutdown Is Looming. What Comes Next? (This article is accessible to all.)

          Per the Times, “Medicare and Social Security also continue uninterrupted because they are authorized by Congress in separate laws that do not need to be renewed every year. Medical care of veterans also goes on unaffected.”

          The GOP House caucus was dysfunctional before Trump injected himself into the budget fight. Trump just made that process more unmanageable. But perhaps he has hastened the moment when some Republicans concede that there is no path forward except for a bipartisan effort with Democrats. For all our sakes, let’s hope that moment arrives sooner rather than later.

Trump threatens retribution against the liberal media if he is elected.

          Last week, Trump called for the death penalty for General Milley, the retiring Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The media yawned. On Sunday, Trump accused the liberal media of treason and threatened retribution if he is elected. He wrote:

They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its “Country Threatening Treason.”

Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies, be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE? They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!

          Picking through Trump’s word salad with a fork, we see that he combines the concepts of “treason” and “paying a big price” in reference to NBC, MSNBC, and the “Fake News Media.” Threatening the media with treason and shuttering presses is the favorite tactic of fascist dictators everywhere. Criticism by the press is not permitted by fascists—and Trump has put the media on notice about his intentions if re-elected.

          What did the media do in response to this broadside threat? Yawned. Oh, rather, it ran another story about voters worried about Joe Biden’s age and the price of gas.

          The media has an important role in protecting democracy. If it can’t rouse itself to condemn threats against freedom of the press, it will deserve what happens if Trump is elected.

Trump demands that all Democratic Senators resign.

          Before you roll your eyes at a third story about Trump’s unhinged posting on Truth Social, stick with me. I have a point. See Concluding Thoughts.

          Democratic Senator Robert Menendez refused to resign while he defends himself against bribery charges. That decision put Trump in a bind: Trump claims he can run for president, win, and serve from a jail cell, so he can’t call for Menendez to resign. The next best thing (in Trump’s view) is for all Democratic Senators to resign—which is what he did:

Why doesn’t the FBI raid Senate Democrat’s homes like they illegally raided Mar-a-Lago, where nothing was done wrong based on the Presidential Records Act. Menendez is a ‘piker’ compared to some of those Election Stealing THUGS.

Menendez is one of many, a small timer at that. EVERY DEMOCRAT SHOULD RESIGN FROM THE SENATE!

          Trump is confused about the facts surrounding the search of Menendez’s house. No matter. The point is that Trump does not call on Menendez to resign because they are brothers in arms when it comes to placing personal interest ahead of that of their constituents. Why that means that all Democratic Senators should resign requires logical fallacies served with a dollop of lies.

          Menendez should resign because his continued service provides cover for Trump’s corrupt campaign for the presidency. As Dennis Aftergut explains in Why Menendez must resign | The Hill, a resignation by Menendez would

·      Honor the public trust that holding elected office embodies.

·      Show the public that no one should hold or seek office while under a serious indictment.

·      Distinguish Democrats from Donald Trump, Rep. George Santos, and MAGA Republicans who defend individuals holding or running for office while indicted.

The last point is the most important: By refusing to resign, Menendez legitimizes the notion that politicians under indictment should fight those indictments while serving in (or seeking) positions of honor and trust. It is hard to imagine that Menendez could make matters better for Trump or worse for Biden….

So, here’s my point about Trump: Any rational observer of any other elected official in America who made the same posts would conclude that the official is having an emotional break. Over the last four days, Trump has called for the death penalty for the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the resignation of all Democratic Senators, and for prosecuting the press for treason for writing unfavorable stories about him.

That’s a lot. But I have quoted only snippets of Trump’s lengthy and rambling statements on his vanity social media platform. In context, they are reminiscent of the ramblings of Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber. 

My point is not (merely) to engage in Trump-bashing. It is that standing alone, Trump’s statements raise serious questions about his mental stability, even as compared to his steady-state level of chaos and confusion. I do not follow Trump directly on Truth Social. Those who do say that his most recent postings are reaching a different pitch of madness. And yet, they are largely being ignored by the media. 

Trump apparently believes there are no boundaries that constrain his social media postings. He is wrong; there is a line that cannot be crossed—and Trump will find it. When he does, it should be a bigger story than “Biden is older than Trump.” 

Some of you will undoubtedly disagree. Your position is not unreasonable given the sorry history of the media’s coverage of Trump up to this point. But I have an ember of hope that there is enough integrity and professionalism remaining in the media to hold Trump to account for his deranged postings. 

Categories Elections, Insane, Trump

Who Are the Billionaire Wilks Brothers of Cisco, Texas?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2023 //
2

Dan and Farris Wilks are politically powerful billionaires who live in Cisco, Texas. They both finished high school but went no further. They got into fracking early on and sold their oil and gas business to the government of Singapore for $3.5 billion in 2011.

They are passionate evangelical Christians. They fund Christian nationalist groups. They fund anti-gay organizations and anti-abortion groups. They consider climate change a hoax. They are major funders of voucher advocacy. They would like to see every student enrolled in a private Christian school or home-schooled.

The brothers are closely associated with ALEC and the Koch network. They are big contributors to Senator Ted Cruz.

Dan and Farris Wilks are major funders of PragerU videos, which present history and economics from a rightwing perspective, echoing the views of Dennis Prager, the talk-show host who created the videos.

Read about Dan Wilks here.

Read about Farris Wilks here.

The Wilks brothers have been described as “the Koch brothers of the Christian right” for their funding of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTgroups. In addition to a variety of groups on the Religious Right, the brothers have funded organizations associated with the Koch brothers’ political network such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). Farris Wilks runs The Thirteen Foundation, which has been described as “one of the biggest and quietest anti-abortion donors in the United States.”

The Guardian summarized their negative influence here.

Experts who follow the influence of the Wilks brothers say their sprawling agendas and big checks spark strong concerns.Videos denying climate science approved by Florida as state curriculum

“Farris and Dan Wilks, who believe their billions were given to them by God, have spent the last decade working to advance a dominionist ideology by funding far-right organizations and politicians that seek to dismiss climate change as ‘God’s will’, remove choice, demonize the LGBTQ community, and tear down public education, all to turn America into a country that gives preference to and imposes their extreme beliefs on everyone,” said Chris Tackett, a Texas-based campaign finance analyst.

“The goal of [the] Wilks and those that share their ideology is to gain control of levers of power and control information. That’s why they invest heavily into politicians, agenda-driven non-profits and media organizations like PragerU and the Daily Wire. It is all connected.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Racism, Religion, Republicans, Vouchers

DeSantis and His Failed Search for Voter Fraud in Florida

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2023 //
21

One of the most bizarre aspects of the 2020 election-denial drama is the search for voter fraud in states that voted for Trump. Florida is Exhibit Number One, as demonstrated in this excellent article in the New York Times by Alexandra Bersin and Sharon LaFraniere. Trump won Florida handily, yet Governor Ron DeSantis felt he had to mollify Trump’s rabid base by insisting that he would root out election fraud. Did he want to increase Trump’s numbers or what? Maybe Biden really won Florida? It made no sense. Or was DeSantis grandstanding for the nutty rightwing base?

The story begins:

It resembled a political rally more than a news conference. In November 2021, exactly one year after Donald J. Trump lost the presidential election to Joseph R. Biden Jr., Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida spoke to a raucous crowd in a hotel conference room just a few miles from Mr. Trump’s home base of Mar-a-Lago.

Their suspicions about vast election malfeasance would be heard, Mr. DeSantis promised. He was setting up an election police unit and he invited the crowd to send in tips about illegal “ballot harvesting,” nodding to an unfounded theory about Democrats collecting ballots in bulk.

The crowd whooped and waved furiously. “He gets it!” posted a commenter watching on Rumble.

But in his seven-minute, tough-on-election-crimes sermon, Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, never explicitly endorsed that theory or the many others spread by the defeated president and embraced by much of their party.

In this way, for nearly three years, Mr. DeSantis played both sides of Republicans’ rift over the 2020 election. As his state became a buzzing hub of the election denial movement, he repeatedly took actions that placated those who believed Mr. Trump had won.

Most prominent was the creation of an election crimes unit that surfaced scores of “zany-burger” tips, according to its former leader, disrupted the lives of a few dozen Floridians, and, one year in, has not yet led to any charges of ballot harvesting or uncovered other mass fraud.

Yet Mr. DeSantis kept his own views vague. Only last month — two years, six months and 18 days after Mr. Biden was sworn into office — did Mr. DeSantis, now running for president, acknowledge that Mr. Biden had defeated Mr. Trump.

DeSantis never spoke honestly to the election deniers. Instead he appeased them. His “election crimes unit” managed to find a grand total of 32 ex-felons who voted illegally. They didn’t know they were voting illegally because they received letters from the state urging them to vote and were issued voter registration cards.

Nathan Hart, a 50-year-old ex-felon from near Tampa, is among 32 people who have been arrested or faced warrants under the new initiative. Mr. Hart, who plans to appeal his conviction, said he lost his job as a warehouse worker because he had to show up in court. When he cast his ballot for Mr. Trump he had no idea he was ineligible to vote, he said.

He and others suffered so that the governor “could have a really good photo op and make himself look tough,” he said.

In the 2020 election, 11 million Floridians voted, and Trump won the state by 371,686 votes. Yet the leaders of the election fraud crusade descended on Florida, including Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell, Michael Flynn, and Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com. Local activists organized to find evidence of voter fraud. One group even delivered a box of claims to DeSantis’s mother, who sent it on to her son. None of the “evidence” or tips panned out. The search for voter fraud was a wild goose chase.

DeSantis’ much-ballyhooed election crimes unit turned over 1,500 names of potential fraudsters to local officials, which resulted in 32 arrests. A big nothing-burger.

DeSantis boasted about his crackdown on voter fraud, but never admitted that it produced no evidence of voter fraud. The only genuine fraud was the insistence by conspiracy theorists that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud.

And my initial question remains unanswered: what was the point of searching for voter fraud in a state that Trump won handily?

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Elections, Florida, Hoax, Trump

Michael Hiltzik: NBC’s “Meet the Press” Interview with Trump Was a Disaster

By dianeravitch
September 22, 2023 //
15

Michael Hiltzik, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, excoriates Kristen Welner, the new face of “Meet the Press” for her inability to pose tough questions to Trump or to counter his repeated lies. But, in fairness, Trump knows how to use television to his own advantage far better than the professional journalists who interview him. The bottom line is that no broadcast journalist has figured out how to counter a firehouse of lies.

He writes:

When Chuck Todd announced in June that he would be retiring as host of “Meet the Press,” not a few people who take politics seriously breathed a sigh of relief: No more of Todd’s insight-free, planed-down, both-sides-do-it horse race approach to news.

The NBC News publicity machine immediately built up Todd’s successor, Kristen Welker, as a tough, whip-smart journalist, “dogged” and a master of “sharp questioning of lawmakers.”

That whole PR edifice came crashing down Sunday, when Welker got steamrollered by Donald Trump on national television.

Despite ample evidence that dealing with Trump on his own level — through four years of the Trump presidency and as recently as May, when Trump chewed CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins to pieces at a misbegotten town hall — was a no-win situation, NBC News went ahead and subjected its hopelessly unprepared journalist to ritual humiliation. It was a milepost in the deterioration of network news’ ability and inclination to hold politicians to account.

What Trump received was a nearly hour-long, essentially unmoderated publicity platform, gratis, an opportunity to once again show that he is a feral exploiter of television’s tendency to take everyone at their own level of self-esteem.

Of Welker the sharp questioner of lawmakers, nothing remains. Here’s a fair sampling of her presence during the interview (drawn from the full official transcript of the encounter, of which only a portion was shown during the broadcast):

“But Mr. President—”

“Let’s stay on track, though, Mr. President.”

“Mr. President, we have so many topics to cover.”

“You had —”

“You — Mr. President —”

“But, let me, let me, but Mr. President —”

“Mr. President, let me just ask this question, please —”

Etc, etc….

The transcript fails to illustrate how often Welker, bollixed by Trump, ended up stepping on her own questions. Trump delivered the coup de grace late in the program, when he complained to Welker, “You keep interrupting me.”

Welker allowed Trump to emit lie after lie in what I’ve described as his “Gish gallop,” a technique named for a notorious creationist who would conduct debates with experts in evolution by “spewing forth torrents of errorthat the evolutionist hasn’t a prayer of refuting in the format of a debate.”

Welker tried, here and there, to counter Trump’s lies, but on the whole she failed miserably; they just keep coming at too great a pace. But she displayed abject ignorance about too many of the issues she herself raised. NBC News posted a “fact check” online after the broadcast, but at a mere 1,800 words it couldn’t possibly correct the record adequately.

Let’s take a look at some of Trump’s most egregious lies.

On abortion, Trump claimed that Democrats advocate allowing abortions “after five months, six months, seven months, eight months, nine months, and even after birth.”

Not only is after-birth abortion a contradiction in terms, but late-term abortions aren’t done out of a casual decision not to proceed with birth, but because the fetus is not viable or suffers from extreme deformities, or the pregnancy is a threat to the woman’s health.

Welker’s response to this was a wan, “Only 1% of late-term abortions happen.”

When Welker asked about the consequences of anti-abortion laws in red states — “How is it acceptable in America that women’s lives are at risk, doctors are being forced to turn away patients in need, or risk breaking the law?” — Trump simply failed to give an answer, and Welker failed to insist on one.

Trump claimed that abortion is “a 50/50 issue,” meaning that the U.S. public is evenly split. That’s not true.

According to Gallup, 67% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in the first three months of pregnancy — the first 90 days. The most stringent anti-abortion laws enacted in red states don’t allow abortion at all or restrict it to the first six weeks, a period in which many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.

Importantly, Gallup finds that 58% consistently oppose the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade, which had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide. Trump has long bragged about having installed the court majority that overturned the 1973 ruling.

Trump defended his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his notorious call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to find enough votes to flip the Georgia results from Joe Biden to himself. He said Raffensperger “again last week said I didn’t do anything wrong… Raffensperger said ‘it was a negotiation.’ ”

This is a lie. Raffensperger has not said Trump did not do anything wrong. At a federal court hearing last month on a motion by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows to move the trial over his indictment over conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, Raffensperger was asked point-blank by the judge whether the call was a “negotiation.” He replied that it was not.

Trump has also been indicted in that case, brought by Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis.

Turning to economic affairs, Trump claimed that his 2017 tax cuts, which went mostly to corporations and wealthy people, “created tremendous jobs…. More importantly, we had more revenue with lower taxes than we did with higher taxes.” These assertions are false or highly misleading.

Job growth under Trump fell short of the mark set by former President Obama. In the first three years of Trump’s administration (leaving out 2020, when the pandemic provoked huge job losses), 6.36 million jobs were created, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; in the last three years of the Obama administration, 8 million jobs were created.

In the two years following the tax cuts, job growth was meager — 2.3 million new jobs in 2019, and 2 million in 2019. Those were worse than the annual figures for 2013-16. Under Biden, incidentally, nearly 14 million jobs have been created, in part thanks to the post-pandemic recovery.

Higher revenues after enactment of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act? No, not really.

Corporate income tax receipts fell to $224.9 billion in 2018 from $230.34 billion the year before and fell again to $210.45 billion in 2019. Personal income tax receipts held their own in 2018, coming in at $1.615 trillion, up modestly from $1.613 trillion in 2017, then rose to $1.7 trillion in 2020.

But those figures fell significantly below what had been projected by the Congressional Budget Office in 2017 — a shortfall of $275 billion, or 7.6% of pre-tax cut projected revenues, the Brookings Institution calculated.

Put it all together, and Brookings found that despite conservatives’ promises, “The TCJA did not pay for itself, nor is it likely to do so in the future.”

Welker, of course, was utterly ill-equipped to push back on Trump’s job and revenue claims. He simply blamed the pandemic, though the consequences of the tax cuts were felt long before then.

What’s most shocking is that almost none of Trump’s lies was new — he’s been spouting most of them nonstop. So how could Welker be so unprepared to address them head-on?

Given that the quality of Welker’s interrogation scraped the bottom of the barrel clean, it’s hard to pinpoint the lowest of low notes.

My vote for the single stupidest question she put to Trump is this one, which wasn’t heard during Sunday’s broadcast but appears in the full transcript: “Is there any scenario by which you would seek a third term in office?”

Leaving aside that Trump has served only a single term, lost his bid for a second term, and is not yet the official GOP candidate for the 2024 campaign, there’s this little thing out there known as the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

That amendment states forthrightly, in black and white, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Perhaps Welker hasn’t had a chance to learn about it yet, it’s been around only since 1951.

Trump was perhaps too canny to answer her question; he turned it into an attack on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is challenging him for the nomination.

But one can only ask: What the hell was Welker thinking? Was this her way of asking Trump if he would stage an anti-constitutional coup d’etat? If so, why not ask that outright?

And where the hell was the NBC News staff, who surely were in the room at Trump’s New Jersey golf club where the interview took place? Did no one say, “Er, Kristen….”

So that was that. At the end of the interview Welker docilely asked Trump, “If you have time, I think we want to get one little shot of us walking together.” Because, of course, what’s important to NBC News and its fellow TV enterprises is the optics.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Lies, Media, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: GOP Prepares to Shut Down the Government

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2023 //
3

Heather Cox Richardson writes about the tumultuous showdowns yesterday:

The fight over how we conceive of our federal government was on full display today.

The Biden administration announced the creation of the American Climate Corps. This will be a group of more than 20,000 young Americans who will learn to work in clean energy, conservation, and climate resilience while also earning good wages and addressing climate change.

This ACC looks a great deal like the Civilian Conservation Corps established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats in 1933, during the New Deal. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for unemployed young men (prompting critics to ask, “Where’s the She, She, She?”) while they worked to build fire towers, bridges, and foot trails, plant trees to stop soil erosion, stock fish, dig ditches, build dams, and so on.

While the CCC was segregated, the ACC will prioritize hiring within communities traditionally left behind, as well as addressing the needs of those communities that have borne the brunt of climate change. If the administration’s rules for it become finalized, the corps will also create a streamlined pathway into federal service for those who participated in the program.

In January, a poll showed that a climate corps is popular. Data for Progress found that voters supported such a corps by a margin of 39 points. Voters under 45 supported it by a margin of 51 points.

While the Biden administration is establishing a modern version of a popular New Deal program, extremists in the Republican Party are shutting down the government to try to stop it from precisely this sort of action. They want to roll the government back to the days before the New Deal, ending government regulation, provision of a basic social safety net, investment in infrastructure, and protection of civil rights.

Extremists in the House Republican conference are refusing to acknowledge the deal worked out for the budget last spring by President Biden and Republican speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Instead, in order to pass even a continuing resolution that would buy time for Congress to pass an actual budget, they are insisting on cuts of up to 8% on discretionary spending that Senate Democrats, as well as Biden himself, are certain to oppose.

The White House has noted that the cuts the Republicans demand would mean 800 fewer Customs and Border Protection agents and officers (which, in turn, would mean more drugs entering the United States); more than 2 million women and children waitlisted for the WIC food assistance program; more than 4,000 fewer rail inspection days; up to 40,000 fewer teachers, aides, and key education staff, affecting 26 million students; and so on.

House speaker McCarthy cannot corral the extremists to agree to anything unless they get such cuts, which even other Republicans recognize are nonstarters (those cuts are so unpopular that Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News reported today that Republicans are somewhat bizarrely considering changing their messaging about their refusal to fund the government from concerns about spending to concerns about border security).

Meanwhile, the extremists are threatening to throw McCarthy out of the speakership. There are rumors that Republican moderates are considering working with Democrats to save McCarthy’s job, but Democrats are not keen on helping him when he has just agreed to open a baseless impeachment inquiry into the president in order to appease the extremists.

“If you’d asked about two months ago I would have said absolutely,” Representative Dean Phillips (D-MN) told Manu Raju, Lauren Fox, and Melanie Zanona of CNN. “But I think sadly his behavior is unprincipled, it’s unhelpful to the country,” he said.

As a shutdown appears more and more likely, even Republicans acknowledge that the problem is on their side of the House. Until the 1980s, funding gaps did not lead to government shutdowns. Government agencies continued to work, with the understanding that Congress would eventually work out funding disputes. But in 1980 a fight over funding the 1,600-employee Federal Trade Commission led President Jimmy Carter to ask Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti if the agency could continue to operate when its funding ran out. Civiletti surprised participants by saying no.

Four years ago, Civiletti told Ian Shapira of the Washington Post that his decision was about a specific and limited issue, and that he never imagined that politicians would use shutdowns for long periods of time as a political weapon. And yet, shutdowns have become more frequent and longer since the 1990s, usually as Republicans demand that Congress adopt policies they cannot pass through regular procedures (like the 34-day shutdown in 2019 over funding for the border wall former president Trump wanted).

Many observers note that “governing by crisis,” as President Barack Obama put it, is terribly damaging and that Civiletti’s decision should be revisited. Next month’s possible shutdown has the potential to be particularly problematic because there is no obvious solution. After all, it’s hardly a surprise that this budget deadline was coming up and that the extremists were angry over the deal McCarthy cut with Biden back in May, and yet McCarthy has been unable in all those months to bring his conference to an agreement.

Republicans appear resigned that voters will blame them for the crisis, which, honestly, seems fair. “We always get the blame,” Representative Mike Simpson (R-ID), a senior appropriator, told Katherine Tully-McManus and Adam Cancryn of Politico. “Name one time that we’ve shut the government down and we haven’t got the blame.”

Meanwhile, the House extremists continue to push their vision for the nation by undermining the institutions of the government. The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), today held what normally would have been a routine oversight hearing focused on policy, law enforcement, and so on. Instead of that business, though, Jordan and the hard-right Republicans on the committee worked to construct a false reality in right-wing media by attacking Attorney General Merrick Garland over his role in the investigation of President Biden’s son Hunter, begun five years ago under Trump.

Glenn Thrush of the New York Times noted drily that “[m]any of the claims and insinuations they leveled against Mr. Garland—that he is part of a coordinated Democratic effort to shield the Bidens and persecute Mr. Trump—were not supported by fact. And much of the specific evidence presented, particularly the testimony of an investigator who questioned key decisions in the Hunter Biden investigation, was given without context or acknowledgment of contradictory information.”

Instead, Jordan and his extremist colleagues shouted at Garland and over his answers, producing sound bites for right-wing media. Those included the statement from Representative Victoria Spartz (R-IN) that the rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, were actually “good Americans” who brought “strollers and the kids.” Even as both Biden and Garland have prioritized restoring faith in the Justice Department after Trump’s use of it for his own ends, the extremist Republicans are working to undermine that faith by constructing the false image that the Department of Justice is persecuting Trump and his allies.

Their position was not unchallenged on the committee, even within their own party. Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) defended Garland from their attacks, while Democrats on the committee went after the Republicans themselves. Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) accused Jordan of making the Judiciary Committee into a “criminal defense firm for the former president.”

Garland, who is usually soft-spoken, pushed back too. “Our job is not to take orders from the president, from Congress, or from anyone else, about who or what to criminally investigate,” he told the committee. “I am not the president’s lawyer. I will add I am not Congress’s prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people.”

“We will not be intimidated,” he added. “We will do our jobs free from outside influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”

Please open the link for the footnotes and consider subscribing to this valuable blog.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Republicans

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Paxton’s Acquittal is Evidence of Authoritarian Lawlessness

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2023 //
16

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an expert on fascism and authoritarianism. She teaches European history at New York university. I subscribe to her blog Lucid, where this post appeared. The acquittal of a corrupt State Attorney General is a warning to the nation about what the GOP has become (if further warning were needed).

She writes:

For two reasons, it’s unsurprising that Paxton was acquitted of all charges by his cronies in the Texas Senate. The Texas GOP is one of the most extreme in the nation. Paxton has been a vociferous supporter of Trump’s claim that Trump won the 2020 election. In October 2021 Paxton, a hard-core Trump defender, characterized Joe Biden’s presence in the White House as an “overthrow” –the word implying that Biden pulled off a coup to take power.

A 2022 Texas GOP resolution expands on this attempt to make Biden a lawless figure: it calls him an illegitimate and “acting” president. For those who study authoritarianism, this is a red flag: it not only discredits Biden but implies that he won’t be there for long and can be removed at any time..

The logic of corruption also matters here. The GOP has embraced the methods and values of authoritarianism. It now depends on propaganda (the “Big Lie”), intimidation, and corruption –election denial being a form of corruption–for its identity and to maintain itself in power. In particular, it is a party that has remade itself in Trump’s image, with the goal of protecting the corrupt and the criminal dictating its actions.

With its leader and many luminaries now indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election, and those running for president pledging on live television that they will support a convicted criminal as nominee, it is dangerous for the GOP to stand up at the state level for accountability. How much more appropriate to keep a corrupt attorney general in office. Authoritarianism is rule by the lawless. At its peak, as in the states of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, authoritarianism becomes political rule in support of kleptocracy.

The dangers of accountability, transparency, impartial investigation and other bedrock values of democracy for authoritarian leaders and parties is why these inevitably go after members of the press and the judiciary and often the intelligence sector as well. In the American case, this motivates attacks against the FBI, which is still investigating Paxton (who also faces a state securities fraud case).

In the short term, Paxton will be further emboldened to aggressively undermine the rule of law in his state. On cue, Paxton denounced the “weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences.” No matter that the GOP as a whole is seeking to impeach Biden, at Trump’s bidding, to “settle political differences” and take revenge on Biden for having committed the sin of having been legally elected to the office of the presidency.

For the authoritarians of the GOP, who no longer see free and fair elections as valid ways of deciding America’s leadership, that amounts to an “overthrow,” to use Paxton’s word. This is where the GOP is now.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Justice, Texas

Politico Advises Democrats to Act Like GOP on School Choice

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2023 //
26

In what has to be the worst, most unbalanced article about education in all of 2023, Politico urged Democrats to act like Republicans and promote school choice.

Politico’s education writer, Juan Perez Jr., interviewed Democrats who are well known as advocates for charter schools as proof that Democrats must support choice policies.

He begins:

MINNEAPOLIS — President Joe Biden’s education chief believes public schools are facing a “make or break moment.” The rescue plan coming from some Democrats, however, rings of policies that have already landed wins for conservatives.

Political skirmishes over classrooms have left Democrats underwater, or dead even, with Republicans among voters in a clutch of battleground states. And as they worried their party has not honed a strategy to reverse declining test scores, enrollment and trust in public schools, liberals watched Republican governors sign historic private school choice laws this year.

The GOP wins and a generational crisis in schooling has convinced some Democrats that the Biden administration needs to promote a liberal version of public school choice in the 2024 campaign, or risk losing votes.

“We’ve lost our advantage on education because I think that we’ve failed to fully acknowledge that choice resonates deeply with families and with voters,” said Jorge Elorza, the CEO of Democrats for Education Reform and its affiliate Education Reform Now think tank.

Please open the link. It doesn’t get any better. Not only does he quote DFER, the hedge managers group that does not support public schools, he also quotes Kerri Rodrigues of the “National Parents Union,” funded by the billionaire Waltons as a leader of the 2016 failed campaign to increase charters in Massachusetts.

Not exactly typical Democrats. More like charter advocates.

I sent Mr. Perez the following email:

Dear Mr. Perez,

I am writing to express my strong disagreement with your article today about Democrats and schools. Democrats will not improve their popularity by acting more like Republicans.

Republicans are on a mission to transfer public funds to nonpublic schools. Whenever vouchers have been put to a state referendum, they are defeated by large margins, as they were in Florida, Arizona, and Utah. The Republicans leaders of those states ignored the will of the voters and authorized vouchers.

In every state with vouchers, 70-80% are claimed by students who never attended public schools. Vouchers are a giveaway to families who already put their kids in private and religious schools.

Nearly 90% of the parents in this country send their children to public schools.

The most recent Gallup Poll showed that the overwhelming majority of parents are happy with their public schools.

For decades, Republicans have promoted school choice by attacking public schools.

The way forward for the Democratic Party is not to embrace GOP policies but to support the adequate and equitable funding of public schools and to stand against the privatization of public schools.

Volumes of research show that charter schools on average do no better than public schools, even though they admit whom they want and oust whoever has low scores or is disruptive. The Network for Public Education, in which I am involved, reports frequently on the high rates of closings by charter schools, as well as the scandals that occur almost daily due to embezzlement and other financial misdeeds.

Voucher students do not take state tests. Their schools are not accountable. Their teachers need not be certified. They may discriminate against students and families on grounds of religion, LGBT, or any other reason. They are not required to accept students with disabilities. Students who leave public schools for voucher schools typically fall behind their public school peers, and many drop out and return to public school.

Why in the world should Democrats support schools that are free to discriminate, free to hire uncertified and unqualified staff, managed by for-profit entities, and are not as successful as public schools?

That is bad political advice, which you got by interviewing people whose organizations advocate for charter schools (DFER and the so-called “National Parents Union”). The only pro-public school voices in your article were Randi Weingarten and Miguel Cardona, a union leader and the Secretary of Education.

Why didn’t you interview parents engaged in the fight to keep public education public? They are in every state, fighting billionaire-funded organizations like DFER and Moms for Liberty.

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, could introduce you to them. Why don’t you come to our 10th annual national conference, which will be held at the Capitol Hilton in DC on October 28-29. You would meet parents from every state who are working to preserve their public schools and keep them safe from entrepreneurs, grifters, corporate chains, and religious interests.

Diane Ravitch

You too can write him at jperez@politico.com.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Democracy, Democrats for Education Reform, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Republicans
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