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Gavin Newsom: Where Freedom Reigns in the USA

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
48

Gavin Newsom sent out July 4 greetings with a question: Where do people have true freedom?

Newsom writes:

Happy 4th of July from the Freedom State of California.

Freedom.

While Republicans cry freedom, they dictate the choices that people are allowed to make. Fanning the flames of these exhausting culture wars. Banning abortion, banning books and banning free speech in the classroom and in the boardroom.

But the truth is, true freedom means being able to love the person you love without fear or discrimination.

True freedom means you can afford to get the health care you need without going bankrupt.

True freedom means you can go to a movie, a parade, a church or an elementary school without fear of getting shot.

True freedom is a woman and her doctor making the health care decisions she needs.

True freedom means you don’t have to choose between covering the cost of your utilities or the medicine you need to live.

True freedom means living life without fear that large portions of the planet will be uninhabitable for future generations.

More than any people, in any place, California has bridged the historic expanse between freedom for some, and freedom for all.

Freedom is our essence, our brand name – the abiding idea that right here, anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything.

So with that, I want to wish you and your family a safe, happy and healthy 4th of July from the Freedom State of California.

Thank you,

Gavin Newsom

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, California, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Gender

“Democracy”: The GOP War on the Founding Fathers’ Vision

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
19

A blog reader who identifies as “Democracy” argues that today’s Republican Party, which prizes individualism over the common good has abandoned the vision of the Founding Fathers.

It appears that Ron DeSantis and the entirety of the Republican Party is in direct opposition to American history and the United States Constitution.

The Founders envisioned a democratic society “in which the common good was the chief end of government.” They agreed with John Locke’s view that the main purpose of government –– the main reason people create government –– is to protect their persons through –– as historian R. Freeman Butts put it –– a social contract that placed “the public good above private desires.” The goal was “a commonwealth, a democratic corporate society in which the common good was the chief end of government.”

The Preamble – the stated purposes – of the Constitution, reads

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

In Article I, Section 8 of that document, the legislative branch is given broad, specific powers (among them taxing, borrowing money, regulating commerce, coining money and regulating its value, etc.). Indeed, Article I, Clause 1 gives Congress the power to tax for “the common defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Clause 18 of Section 8 stipulates that Congress had the power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”

Two Supreme Court decisions early in the republic’s history –– both unanimous –– supported and cemented a broad – liberal – interpretation of the implied powers of Congress.

Republicans call them “socialism.”

In 1819 (McCullough v. Maryland) the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the U.S. government was “a Government of the people. In form and in substance, it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefit.”

The Court explicitly reaffirmed that one of the critical purposes of government under the U.S. Constitution is to promote the general welfare “of the people.”

In that case, Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the necessary and proper clause:

“the clause is placed among the powers of Congress, not among the limitations on those powers.” And he added this: “Its terms purport to enlarge, not to diminish, the powers vested in the Government. It purports to be an additional power, not a restriction.”

In Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) Chief Justice Marshall wrote this about the Congressional commerce power:

“This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.”

The history of the United States, and the Constitution, over time, reflect progressive changes. The American Revolution was a progressive movement inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers; conservatives opposed it. The early expansion of voting rights to those who didn’t own land was progressive, and conservatives of the day fought
against it. The purchase of the Louisiana Territory, a purchase that doubled the size of the fledgling United States, rested on a liberal interpretation of constitutional authority. U.S. government funding of roads and canals relied on a liberal perspective of Congressional commerce power. Those roads and canals were instrumental to economic growth and prosperity, not unlike federal funding of interstate highways, the Internet, medical research, and health care.

And yet, the Republican Party is filled with people who basically reject all of this in favor of sedition.

As David Blight, Yale professor of American history put it,

“Changing demographics and 15 million new voters drawn into the electorate by Obama in 2008 have scared Republicans—now largely the white people’s party—into fearing for their existence. With voter ID laws, reduced polling places and days, voter roll purges, restrictions on mail-in voting, an evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a constant rant about ‘voter fraud’ without evidence, Republicans have soiled our electoral system with undemocratic skullduggery…The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy.

Obviously, public education has a central – critical – role to play here. Here’s how Will and Ariel Durant explained it in ‘The Lessons of History’ (1968):

“Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.”

Republicans: The New Confederacy
Categories Democracy, Democrats, DeSantis, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, History, Lies, Republicans, Trump

July 4: A Day to Recommit to Our Founding Ideals

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2023 //
52

I learned to love the USA from a very young age. I was 7 when World War 2 ended, and I remember very well how patriotic everyone was. From my earliest years, I learned to love America because it provided a safe haven for my family at a time when the Jews of Europe were targeted for mass extinction.

I was brought up in the 1940s and 1950s when our public schools taught only about our goodness and greatness, while leaving out the shameful chapters of our history.

Today, we are challenged to believe that one can study those shameful chapters and still love your country. Today, too many politicians—notably Republicans—are censoring textbooks and banning library books, anything that students may read, to ensure that they never encounter the ugly parts of our history or anything that includes references to sex or gender identity. Our schools confront a multi-pronged assault built on racism, bigotry, prudishness, and fear of the Other.

Too many Republicans practice the politics of hate and division. Instead of talking about their plans to improve the economy, they use their time in the public eye to demonize the powerless.

My wish is that we could strive again towards the Founding Fathers’ ideals of freedom, reason, equality, justice, and respect for the right of others to dissent, to practice their own religion, to live as they wish within a context of laws. The Founders enunciated these ideals but did not live up to them. It’s up to us to reclaim their vision.

Our Founding Fathers did not want to create a Christian nation. There are several clauses in the Constitution assuring that no one would have to conform to a state-sponsored religion, no one would have to pass a religious test to qualify for office. Whatever your religion or if you practice no religion, the Constitution protects you.

And yet, today religious zealots speak as if the nation belongs to them. It doesn’t. It belongs to all of us.

The greatest threat to our democracy at this moment is the Supreme Court, which seems intent on reversing every precedent and returning the USA to a time before the New Deal, when the government did not actively protect anyone’s rights. It is beyond my understanding that this Court ruled that one’s sincere religious views—no matter how hateful—gives you license to be a bigot.

Our ability to thrive as a nation depends on our ability to work with and value people who are not the same as us. We may be the most diverse people in the world. We cannot succeed unless everyone believes that this is their nation too and that they too can have a fulfilling life regardless of where they came from and when they arrived.

Whether we can keep our democracy rests on our shoulders. Trump and his passionate base have done their best to undermine the pillars of our democracy by questioning the legitimacy of any election they lose, by insulting the rule of law, and by assailing the free press.

The strength of our democracy depends on all of us to get involved. Join an organization that defends our rights and freedoms. Encourage others to do the same. Run for office. Democracy is not a spectator sport. 2024 may be an election that determines our future. Take action.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Injustice, Justice, Religion, Republicans

Florida: DeSantis’ War Against LGBT Rights Falters in Courts

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2023 //
39

The Miami Herald points out that Governor Desantis’ efforts to eliminate the rights of LGBT people have not fared well in the courts. However, he will appeal all the decisions he has lost to higher courts in hopes of finding bigoted judges who agree with him. He is s petty, vengeful man who has pledged to control the courts and the Justice Departnent if elected President and make them instruments of his war on WOKE

Multiple federal court decisions have frozen key portions of Ron DeSantis’ campaign against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in recent weeks, complicating the Florida governor’s efforts to present himself as a conservative champion with a track record of winning cultural battles over LGBTQ causes.

In the last week alone, the DeSantis administration faced setbacks in three legal battles over LGBTQ rights. Judges rejected state efforts to block transgender adults’ access to gender-affirming care under Medicaid, bar transgender children from accessing puberty blockers, and ban minors from certain types of live entertainment at restaurants – legislation widely interpreted as a proposal to target drag shows.

DeSantis’ agenda has hit other roadblocks, with judges blocking portions of his plans to control teaching and training on gender identity in schools and workplaces. The governor also faces ongoing litigation over his efforts t0 ban transgender athletes from competing on sports teams of their declared gender and to restrict access to school books, including those with LGBTQ themes.

His pressure on private industry has faced challenges, as well, with Disney — one of the state’s largest employers — suing the governorclaiming he overstepped his power in taking punitive action against the company over its opposition to policies the company viewed as hostile to the LGBTQ community. DeSantis is pushing for the federal trial to start after the 2024 presidential election. In the meantime, Disney will host a major LGBTQ conferencein Florida this September that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Florida, Gender

Jeannie Suk Gersen: Overturning Affirmative Action

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2023 //
91

Writing in The New Yorker, where she is a contributing columnist, Jeannie Suk Gersen analyzes the SCOTUS decision that ended affirmative action. Gersen is a Harvard Law School professor.

Gersen writes that the High Court forbade explicit consideration of race in evaluating candidates for admission, but it left a small opening:

Since universities can no longer consider applicants’ race in deciding whether to offer them admission, the immediate practical question is what information they can consider about applicants. In a key sentence, toward the end of his ruling, Roberts said, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” (Harvard cited the sentence in a message to its community after the Court’s decision.) Roberts’s point was that “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”

It remains to be seen whether colleges will find “race-neutral” ways of identifying students of color so they can maintain a diverse enrollment. One way is to de-emphasize standardized testing, which enlarges the pool of Black candidates.

Colleges and universities have long contended that demographic diversity is an important goal. The learning experience is enriched, they argued, when students come from different backgrounds and bring different perspectives.

But the goal of diversity was thrown out by the Roberts’ court. The six-justice majority ruled that diversity is no longer to be considered by courts to be “a compelling interest.”

She writes:

But even the liberal dissenters, in their strong defense of the need for race-conscious affirmative action, seemed not quite willing to tether their support of the policy to the goal of student-body diversity. That is because the dissenters, in two opinions, penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, were focussed on the continuing need to remedy the devastating, ongoing effects of the historical subjugation of Black Americans.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of the affirmative-action precedents is that since 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court has said that the goal of remedying past societal discrimination and injustice is not a compelling interest for schools to pursue in admissions. The dissents in the S.F.F.A. cases underscored not only that the sins that the United States has visited on Black people did not end after slavery and Jim Crow but also that the original justification for affirmative action which the Court approved five decades ago—diversity—was entirely incommensurate to the profound problem to be addressed and was doomed to fail. ♦

Suppose the goal of affirmative action was to fast track large numbers of students from historically disadvantaged groups into the professions and the upper ranks of the business and corporate world. On that ground, it’s clear that affirmative action has been a remarkable success. It has propelled many hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of men and women into medicine, law, education, social work, and every other field.

But the problem that affirmative action was created to solve is very far from solved. Despite the strides that have been made, Blacks, Hispanics, people from Indigenous groups are still very far from equality. They continue to suffer from the historic injuries of the past.

I wonder: if the lawyers for the universities had justified affirmative action not on the value of diversity but on the basis of righting historic wrongs, would the Court have ruled differently? I don’t think so. The six hard-right Justices are on a mission to roll back civil rights law, to curb the power of government to right wrongs, and you encourage the emergence of a society in which people pull themselves up by their bootstraps without relying on government.

We know the problems with the bootstrap theory of progress. In a world where there is so much inequality, some people don’t need to pull themselves up. They are already on top. Others, those on the bottom, may not have any bootstraps at all. Rugged individualism will not reduce social and economic inequality.

Sadly, we can no longer look to the Supreme Court to protect either precedents or rights. Instead, we must tremble for our future whenever they announce a new decision.

The only hope for our democracy is an electoral sweep that makes possible an FDR or an LBJ.

It’s not likely to happen in 2024, given Trump’s loyal base, but I believe our survival as a democracy depends on re-electing Biden. Neither Trump nor DeSantis is qualified for the Presidency. The American renaissance is likely to happen when enough citizens realize that the Republican Party is no longer interested in protecting the Constitution and the rule of law. Will that be after Trump leaves politics? Will it be 2028? 2032?

Liz Cheney said recently that the biggest problem in our politics is that the people keep electing “idiots.” We will have our Renaissance when voters realize that governing requires reason and intelligence. That would mean a blue wave to sweep the idiots out of office.

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Higher Education, Justice, Race, Racism

Heather Cox Richardson: The Supreme Court Is Putting Our Democracy at Risk

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2023 //
87

This is one of the best letters that Heather Cox Richardson has written since I started reading her posts. It puts the current Supreme Court’s radical decisions into historical perspective. This Court, hand-picked by Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, is engaged in a shameless effort to move the clock back to the world as it existed before the New Deal. This Court threatens our democracy and our rights.

She writes:

Today the Supreme Court followed up on yesterday’s decision gutting affirmative action with three decisions that will continue to push the United States back to the era before the New Deal.

In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis the court said that the First Amendment protects website designer Lorie Smith from having to use words she doesn’t believe in support of gay marriage. To get there, the court focused on the marriage website designer’s contention that while she is willing to work with LGBTQ customers, she doesn’t want to use her own words on a personalized website to celebrate gay marriages. Because of that unwillingness, she said, she wants to post on her website that she will not make websites for same-sex weddings. She says she is afraid that in doing so, she will run afoul of Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws, which prevent public businesses from discriminating against certain groups of people.

This whole scenario of being is prospective, by the way: her online business did not exist and no one had complained about it. Smith claims she wants to start the business because “God is calling her ‘to explain His true story about marriage.’” She alleges that in 2016, a gay man approached her to make a website for his upcoming wedding, but yesterday, Melissa Gira Grant of The New Republic reported that, while the man allegedly behind the email does exist, he is an established designer himself (so why would he hire someone who was not?), is not gay, and married his wife 15 years ago. He says he never wrote to Smith, and the stamp on court filings shows she received it the day after she filed the suit.

Despite this history, by a 6–3 vote, the court said that Smith was being hurt by the state law and thus had standing to sue. It decided that requiring the designer to use her own words to support gay marriage violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.

Taken together with yesterday’s decision ruling that universities cannot consider race as a category in student admissions, the Supreme Court has highlighted a central contradiction in its interpretation of government power: if the Fourteenth Amendment limits the federal government to making sure that there is no discrimination in the United States on the basis of race—the so-called “colorblind” Constitution—as the right-wing justices argued yesterday, it is up to the states to make sure that state laws don’t discriminate against minorities. But that requires either protecting voting rights or accepting minority rule.

This problem has been with us since before the Civil War, when lawmakers in the southern states defended their enslavement of their Black (and Indigenous) neighbors by arguing that true democracy was up to the voters and that those voters had chosen to support enslavement. After the Civil War, most lawmakers didn’t worry too much about states reimposing discriminatory laws because they included Black men as voters first in 1867 with the Military Reconstruction Act and then in 1870 with the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and they believed such political power would enable Black men to shape the laws under which they lived.

But in 1875 the Supreme Court ruled in Minor v. Happersett that it was legal to cut citizens out of the vote so long as the criteria were not about race. States excluded women, who brought the case, and southern states promptly excluded Black men through literacy clauses, poll taxes, and so on. Northern states mirrored southern laws with their own, designed to keep immigrants from exercising a voice in state governments. At the same time, southern states protected white men from the effects of these exclusionary laws with so-called grandfather clauses, which said a man could vote so long as his grandfather had been eligible.

It turned out that limiting the Fourteenth Amendment to questions of race and letting states choose their voters cemented the power of a minority. The abandonment of federal protection for voting enabled white southerners to abandon democracy and set up a one-party state that kept Black and Brown Americans as well as white women subservient to white men. As in all one-party states, there was little oversight of corruption and no guarantee that laws would be enforced, leaving minorities and women at the mercy of a legal system that often looked the other way when white criminals committed rape and murder.

Many Americans tut-tutted about lynching and the cordons around Black life, but industrialists insisted on keeping the federal government small because they wanted to make sure it could not regulate their businesses or tax them. They liked keeping power at the state level; state governments were far easier to dominate. Southerners understood that overlap: when a group of southern lawmakers in 1890 wrote a defense of the South’s refusal to let Black men vote, they “respectfully dedicated” the book to “the business men of the North.”

In the 1930s the Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt undermined this coalition by using the federal government to regulate business and provide a social safety net. In the 1940s and 1950s, as racial and gender atrocities began to highlight in popular media just how discriminatory state laws really were, the Supreme Court went further, recognizing that the Fourteenth Amendment’s declaration that states could not deprive any person of the equal protection of the laws meant that the federal government must protect the rights of minorities when states would not. Those rules created modern America.

This is what the radical right seeks to overturn. Yesterday the Supreme Court said that the Fourteenth Amendment could not address racial disparities, but today, like lawmakers in the 1870s, it signaled that it would not protect voting in the states either. It rejected a petition for a review of Mississippi’s strict provision for taking the vote away from felons. That law illustrates just how fully we’re reliving our history: it dates from the 1890 Mississippi constitution that cemented power in white hands. Black Mississippians are currently 2.7 times more likely than white Mississippians to lose the right to vote under the law.

The court went even further today than allowing states to choose their voters. It said that even if state voters do call for minority protections, as Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws do, states cannot protect minorities in the face of someone’s religious beliefs. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that for “the first time in its history,” the court has granted “a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”

It is worth noting that segregation was defended as a deeply held religious belief.

Today, using a case concerning school loans, the Supreme Court also took aim at the power of the federal government to regulate business. In Biden v. Nebraska the court declared by a vote of 6 to 3 that President Biden’s loan forgiveness program, which offered to forgive up to $20,000 of federally held student debt, was unconstitutional. The right-wing majority of the court argued that Congress had not intended to give that much power to the executive branch, although the forgiveness plan was based on law that gave the secretary of education the power to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs…as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a…national emergency…to ensure” that “recipients of student financial assistance…are not placed in a worse position financially in relation to that financial assistance because of [the national emergency]”.

The right-wing majority based its decision on the so-called major questions doctrine, invented to claw back regulatory power from the federal government. By saying that Congress cannot delegate significant decisions to federal agencies, which are in the executive branch, the court takes on itself the power to decide what a “significant” decision is. The court established this new doctrine in the West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agencycase, stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate certain kinds of air pollution.

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” constitutional analyst Ian Millhiser wrote today in Vox, today’s decision in Biden v. Nebraska “is complete and utter nonsense. It rewrites a federal law which explicitly authorizes the loan forgiveness program, and it relies on a fake legal doctrine known as ‘major questions’ which has no basis in any law or any provision of the Constitution.”

Today’s Supreme Court, packed as it has been by right-wing money behind the Federalist Society and that society’s leader, Leonard Leo, is taking upon itself power over the federal government and the state governments to recreate the world that existed before the New Deal.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called out the lurch toward turning the government over to the wealthy, supported as it is by religious footsoldiers like Lorie Smith: “Today, the court substituted itself for Congress,” Cardona told reporters. “It’s outrageous to me that Republicans in Congress and state offices fought so hard against a program that would have helped millions of their own constituents. They had no problem handing trillion-dollar tax cuts to big corporations and the super wealthy.”

Cardona made his point personal: “And many had no problems accepting millions of dollars in forgiven pandemic loans, like Senator Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma had more than $1.4 million in pandemic loans forgiven. He represents 489,000 eligible borrowers that were turned down today. Representative Brett Guthrie from Kentucky had more than $4.4 million forgiven. He represents more than 90,000 eligible borrowers who were turned down today. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia had more than $180,000 forgiven. She represents more than 91,800 eligible borrowers who were turned down today.”

In the majority opinion of Biden v. Nebraska, Chief Justice John Roberts lamented that those who dislike the court’s decisions have accused the court of “going beyond the proper role of the judiciary.” He defended the court’s decision and urged those who disagreed with it not to disparage the court because “such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country.” But what is at stake is not simply these individual decisions, whether or not you agree with them; at stake is the way our democracy operates.

Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute didn’t offer much hope for Roberts’s plea. “It is not just the rulings the Roberts Court is making,” he tweeted. “They created out of [w]hole cloth a bogus, major questions doctrine. They made a mockery of standing. They rewrite laws to fit their radical ideological preferences. They have unilaterally blown up the legitimacy of the Court.”

In a shot across the bow of this radical court, in her dissent to Biden v. Nebraska, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that “the Court, by deciding this case, exercises authority it does not have. It violates the Constitution.”

—

Categories Accountability, Biden, Bigotry, Billionaires, Cardona, Miguel, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Gender, Higher Education, History, Inequity, Injustice, Justice, Race, Racism, Religion, Shame, Student Financial Aid and Student Debt

Florida: Prepare for Carnage on July 1 When Gun Control Disappears

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2023 //
34

The Miami Herald editorial board published the following editorial about the end of meaningful gun control in Florida. Elect DeFascist and every American will be armed or fearful of leaving their home. This is a way to erode trust among citizens. Which lunatic bought a gun? Who’s packing heat? You? You? You?

Anyone with good sense in Florida is dreading July 1.

That’s the day when the state starts allowing people over the age of 21 to carry a concealed weapon without a permit and without any gun training — at all.

It’s the terrible law that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the complicit Legislature pushed through this session as they piled aboard the DeSantis-for-president train, intent on giving the governor the rightest of far-right of platforms to run on, in the hope of siphoning support from Donald Trump.

Florida isn’t the only state to do it. In fact, it’s the 26th, joining Kentucky, Alabama, Maine and Texas, among others.

But in a state that spawned the “Florida man” meme, lowering restrictions on guns is crazy. And scary.

You don’t have to look far to see why. Just a few weeks ago, on June 15, a Dunedin man emptied his assault rifle at a pool cleaner he thought was an intruder.

It was around 9 p.m., and the man and his wife were watching a movie when they heard noises coming from their patio and saw a man walking around their pool. They said they yelled at him to go away and told deputies that they didn’t recognize him.

The wife, sensibly, called 911. The husband got his gun. He saw a flashlight and fired into the back yard — from behind his couch, through closed blinds.

lIt was their 33-year-old pool cleaner who had been cleaning their pool for at least six months and was running behind schedule.

He wasn’t hit by a bullet, only glass and shrapnel. And of course, he ran. But the homeowner, with the blinds closed, thought someone was still outside. So, as video footage shared by the local sheriff shows, almost a minute after the cleaner ran from the pool deck, the man emptied the magazine of his rifle into the back yard. He shot a total of 30 rounds in about 90 seconds. Stray bullets were found on the shuffleboard court behind the couple’s home.

Will the homeowner face charges? Under Florida’s existing “stand your ground” law, which allows a homeowner to fire at someone he thinks is a threat, apparently not.

Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office offered the right assessment of the situation in a June 26 news conference: “It’s probably one of those things that I would call lawful but awful.”

And now we will have “permitless carry” in Florida. With it, no doubt, will come more “lawful but awful” situations. And deadly ones, too.

Can’t wait for July 1.

Categories DeSantis, Elections, Extremism, Guns, Safety

NYC: Mayor Eric Adams Said He Gets Instructions Directly from God

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2023 //
73

Mayor Eric Adams has previously talked about the importance of bringing religion into public life. He has said that he doesn’t believe in separation of church and state.

On Father’s Day, he expressed his views on religion again and explained that God talks to him.

Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday that his decision to publicly discuss his religion, including controversially dismissing America’s separation of church and state, was actually suggested to him by God himself.

The pious pol was delivering an eight-minute Father’s Day sermon at the historic Lenox Road Baptist Church in Flatbush when he shed light on why he has chosen to speak more publicly on his Christian faith in recent months. A couple of months ago, the mayor said he awoke from his sleep in a cold sweat and was told by God to “talk about God.”

“And I started to say, don’t tell me about separation of church and state,” Adams told the Sunday parishioners. “Don’t tell me that when you took prayer out of school, guns came in. Don’t tell me that I have to remove my feeling of God. And you saw what happened! You saw all the front pages and the national stories, you know, how dare the most powerful mayor on the globe start talking about God! Because I don’t care what anyone say, it’s time to pray….”

Hizzoner’s conversation with God echoed one he says he had over 30 years ago, where the Lord not only told Adams he would one day be mayor, but even said exactly when it would happen: January 1, 2022, the day he assumed office.

“Thirty-something years ago, I woke up out of my sleep in a cold sweat. God spoke to my heart and said, ‘you are going to be the mayor January 1, 2022.’ And the message was clear. God stated, ‘you cannot be silent, you must tell everyone you know,’” preached Adams, who was a police officer at the time and would go on to become a State Senator and Brooklyn Borough President before being elected mayor. “I would go around the city, pastor, and I would tell everybody ‘I’m gonna be mayor January 1, 2022.’ People used to think I was on medication.”

Not forgetting the fatherly theme of the day, Adams began asking “how are the children,” which he said was a greeting used by the Maasai people of eastern Africa, before presenting a vision of crisis and bleakness among the city’s youth. Among other things, he used the opportunity to repeat a dubious claim that children start their days by going to bodegas and buying weed and fentanyl before going to school.

“How are the children? Young children are carving highways of death with 9 mm bullets, taking the lives of other children,” said Hizzoner. “How are the children? They start their day going to the local bodega, getting cannabis and fentanyl, and they sit in the classroom trying to learn, when we know what cannabis does to the brain of a child at an early age. How are the children? Social media is teaching them how to steal cars, how to disfigure their bodies, how to use drugs. How are the children? Depression is how, suicide is how! How are the children? Our children are in a state of disrepair, and we’re so busy trying to be popular to our babies instead of being parents to our children that we have to ask, how are the children.”

Of his relationship with his own son, rapper Jordan Coleman, the mayor said his job was never to be his son’s “buddy;” in fact, he said his son was “supposed to hate me” until he was an adult and realized his reasons for parenting the way he did. Later on Sunday, Adams said in a video that being Coleman’s father is the “best job” he’s ever had.

The mayor concluded his remarks by criticizing press coverage of him and his administration, particularly of his faith, and compared himself to Denzel Washington’s character in the 1989 Civil War film “Glory,” when he is set to be whipped for leaving his squadron to spend time with his love interest. Scars from previous whippings are seen, which Adams said represents how critical press coverage cannot hurt or deter him from his Godly mission.

“What do they think they can do to me? You try to beat me with your news articles? I’ve got the scars already,” said Hizzoner. “You try to beat me with your commentary? I got the scars already. You can’t do anything to me! I know whose voice I hear.”

God could not immediately be reached for comment.

Categories Elections, New York City, Religion, Separation of church and state

Politico: Republicans Flock to “Moms for Liberty” Event

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2023 //
70

Politico reported on the rising significance of “Moms for Liberty” among leading Republicans. “Moms” are known for their advocacy of censorship, book banning, and hatred for public schools.

BATTLE OF THE MOMS — Moms for Liberty is having a busy month.

— The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the organization an “anti-government extremist group” at the forefront of a movement to seize control of public schools. One of the group’s chapters in Indiana apologized after featuring a Hitler quote in a newsletter.

— And later this week, one of the country’s fastest-growing conservative political outfits will gather its supporters and Republican presidential candidates at a dayslong rally in Philadelphia. A struggle for the hearts, minds and votes of American mothers ahead of the 2024 election is fully underway.

— Former President Donald Trump is set to be the keynote speaker at Moms for Liberty’s “Joyful Warriors” summit. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also has a speaking slot. So do former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — as well as a Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden: anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

— “This election is, I think, probably the most important election of my lifetime,”Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice told your host. “There are a lot of other parents around the country that feel the same way.”

— Moms for Liberty is not the first organization to capitalize on the political moment surrounding schoolchildren and families.

— But the group’s ability to marshal much of the GOP presidential field to its second-ever national conference illustrates the power of a Florida-founded group that has harnessed pandemic-driven rage, social media and culture war politics to skyrocket to conservative stardom. The group now claims 285 chapters in 45 states and a membership that exceeds 115,000 people.

— Its designation as an extremist group has even sparked fierce resistance from conservative politicians, school officials and media outlets while energizing fundraising. “If @Moms4Liberty is a ‘hate group,’ add me to the list,” Haley tweeted this month. Tickets to attend this week’s event are sold out.

— Yet after a June like this one, don’t expect Moms for Liberty to immediately unite around one presidential candidate.

— “American parents and kids are winning if all of these candidates care about the issues that we care about,”Justice said of the organization’s star-studded speaking list. “And we want to make sure we know where they stand.”

What’s needed now is for a group of activists to form a “Moms for Democracy” to stand up for American values of freedom, justice, equality, and the Constitution.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans

Paul Bonner: The Democratic Party Should Defend Our Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2023 //
62

Paul Bonner is a retired public school leader.

He has an idea for the Democratic Party that would resonate with the 90% of Americans who went to public schools and whose children attend public schools.

Here’s an ad I would run if I were a PAC supporting the Democratic Party:

Narrator: (As numerous images of schools, students, and teachers engaged in learning are shown across the screen)

“In the early twentieth century the United States of America reinforced a universal commitment to Public Schools. This resulted in an economic powerhouse that generated more wealth than at any time in the history of the world. The alumni of these schools led Democratic governments in the defeat of tyranny in World War II and resulted in the establishment of universities that are the envy of the world. Industry and finance thrived. Yes, the public schools did this.”

(Pan to politicians advocating privatization and attacking teachers)

“Today, there are those who would like to pretend that the public schools have been a failure. That government efforts to educate our children could never produce the work force that would result from subsidies for private efforts. They are wrong!”

(Show closed charter buildings and parents seeking help for their children)

“Any implementation of vouchers has resulted in subsidies for those who already attend private schools, charters have not outperformed public schools academically, and closing public schools with unfulfilled promises of better results has resulted in decimated communities.”


(Pan to schools and parents who are engaged with their public schools in the myriad of ways this happens every day).

The only way to improve educational opportunity in America is to vigorously fund our Public Schools. To support teachers through greater resources, district support, and higher pay. To provide facilities that are equally great in all communities. America has thrived through our support of public schools. We as citizens, need to recommit to Public Schools with our purse and our fervor.”

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Education Reform, Elections, Funding, Supporting public schools
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