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Eugene Robinson: Why Is the Presidential Election So Close?

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2024 //
8

Eugene Robinson is a regular columnist for The Washington Post. He is baffled that the election is so close. He finds one demographic where Trump holds a decisive lead. This group is loyal to Trump. They think he cares about them and empathizes with them. He does care about separating them from their hard-earned cash. He does care about getting their votes. He does care about exploiting their grievances, their resentment about being left behind. It’s hard to remember what precisely he did for them during his four year term in office.

Robinson writes:

It is absolutely, completely, totally ridiculous that this election is even close. But here we are.

The choice between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump should not be a tough call. Harris is a former prosecutor; Trump, a felon. Harris gives campaign speeches about her civic values; Trump rants endlessly about his personal grievances, interrupting himself with asides about sharks and Hannibal Lecter. Harris has outlined a detailed set of policy proposals for the economy; Trump nonsensically offers tariffs as a panacea, describing this fantasy in terms that make it clear he doesn’t understand how tariffs work.

Also, Harris never whipped thousands of supporters into a frenzy and sent them off to the Capitol, where they smashed their way into the citadel of our democracy, injuring scores of police officers and threatening to hang the vice president, in an attempt to overturn the result of a free and fair election. Trump did.

Yet polls tell us that either candidate could win. The Post’s polling average has Harris ahead by 2 percentage points nationally. The Post also finds that Harris holds leads in four of the seven crucial swing states — 3 percentage points in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, 2 points in Michigan, less than a point in Nevada — but adds a note of caution: “Every state is within a normal-sized polling error of 3.5 points and could go either way.”

So how is it possible that this is not a done deal? I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer, but I can throw out a few theories.

One obvious potential factor is that Harris would be the first woman to serve as president and commander in chief. It amazes me that the preceding sentence can be written in 2024 — decades after the careers of Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and so many other women who have led their nations in peace and war. But, again, here we are.

Harris and her advisers have made the decision not to lean into the history-making aspects of her candidacy, which I think is wise — if only because Trump so desperately wants to have a fight over gender and race. Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), are trying hard to win the votes of men who equate manhood with cartoonish machismo — men who somehow feel that their status and prospects are threatened because they are men.

An Associated Press poll released on Thursday found that about 4 in 10 Americans believe Harris’s gender “will hurt her chances of getting elected this fall,” which suggests the manly-men act by Trump and Vance might be having some impact. Then again, the issue of reproductive rights, along with gratuitous insults such as Vance’s “childless cat ladies” slur, might be driving enough women into Harris’s corner to offset Trump’s harvest of dudes. I find it hard to conclude that gender alone answers the question of why Harris doesn’t have a bigger lead.

Deep in the numbers, you can find other hypotheses. Trump got 74 million votes in the 2020 election. Joe Biden got 81 million — thankfully — and won the electoral vote 306-232. But Trump’s showing means he started his 2024 campaign with a big base of support, and it has remained loyal.

White voters without a college degree are a key component of Trump’s base, and two recent polls — one by the New York Timesand one by CNN — showed Harris with a huge deficit of roughly 35 points to Trump among this segment. That is worse than Biden did against Trump in 2020, when he lost this big demographic by 32 points, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Whites without a college degree make up 42 percent of the electorate — meaning that if Harris were matching Biden’s performance with this group, she would add a full point to her overall national lead.

This might suggest that Trump’s red-meat-to-the-base campaign strategy is not as crazy as it looks. His vicious demagoguery on immigration — the lies he keeps telling about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, for example — invites working-class Whites to see their jobs and communities as under threat. That kind of tribal appeal likely does not win Trump many new voters, but it might keep some of the old ones on his side.

Still, though, how does any of this overcome Trump’s manifest unfitness? How does any of it erase his pathetic performance in the debate? How does it nullify the fact that he awaits sentencing by a New York judge after 34 guilty verdicts in a criminal trial? If the answer is buried somewhere in some poll, I can’t find it.

The truth about the election might be simple: It is what it is. Look at the trend lines in the polling averages. Trump had a narrow but consistent lead over Biden. Soon after Harris became the candidate, the lines crossed, and she took a lead over Trump. Since taking that lead, she has not surrendered it. In fact, she has slowly expanded it.

It is possible that Harris could pull ahead decisively. But it is also quite possible that this race will still be too close to call on Election Day. And at that point, the question we face will not be theoretical, but urgently practical: With Democrats’ huge advantage in money and volunteers, will they be able to turn out their supporters in numbers big enough to overwhelm any hidden population of Republican voters that the pollsters might be missing?

The people, not the pollsters, will give that answer.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Hypocrisy, Trump

Brookings Institution: A View of Education in the Republican and Democratic Platforms

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2024 //
25

Jon Valant, head of the Brown Center at the Brookings Institution, reviewed the education sections of both parties.

He writes:

K-12 education has captured its share of headlines over the last few years. Schools—and, specifically, local school boards—became a lightning rod for anger about the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. From the first weeks of the pandemic, Republicans accused Democratic leaders of being too slow to reopen schools. That accusation gained potency as evidence mounted that schools hadn’t been the vectors of COVID-19 transmission that experts initially feared. Sensing vulnerability, Democrats became reluctant to engage on K-12 issues, and Republicans such as Glenn Youngkin showed that Democrats wouldn’t put up much of a fight if education became a battlefield for culture war conflicts. The result was a dizzying, maddening stretch where schools were embroiled in controversies over critical race theory and transgender students’ rights when education leaders needed to focus on pandemic recovery.

Now, as memories of the pandemic recede, the politics of education are changing. Democrats are talking more about schools, emboldened by the selection of a former schoolteacher, Tim Walz, as Vice President Harris’s running mate. Republicans, for their part, have harnessed discontent with public schools into an aggressive push for private school voucher programs that threaten America’s public education systems.

The platforms of the Democratic and Republican parties, along with the education-related portions of Project 2025, provide a glimpse of where K-12 education might be headed.

The Democratic platform

The Democrats’ 2024 platform is light on specifics, with more attention to the current administration’s accomplishments and the would-be Harris administration’s support for some broadly defined goals (e.g., reducing chronic absenteeism). To some extent, the lack of specifics stands in contrast to both the Democrats’ 2020 platform—which, for example, pledged a tripling of Title I funds for high-needs schools—and more detailed 2024 proposals for early childhood education (e.g., free, universal pre-K) and higher education (e.g., free community college). 

The 2024 platform does contain relevant, specific ideas outside of its “Education” section. For example, Democrats propose rebates for school districts that purchase electric school buses—an idea grounded in research on the harms of students’ exposure to toxins. They also offer specific proposals to reduce gun violence (amid a scourge of school shootings) and to strengthen civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ children and students of color (frequent targets of culture war attacks).

Notably, some of the platform’s clearest statements on education describe what Democrats oppose. That includes private-school voucher plans and policies hostile to transgender youth that have become increasingly popular among Republican leaders.  

The Republican platform

Republicans’ 2024 platform is also light on policy specifics. The platform has a few ideas that have long been cornerstones of GOP education politics. That includes ending teacher tenure—an idea that would require local or state action and confront fierce opposition from teachers’ unions.

The platform has language about resisting political indoctrination in schools—while seeming to propose some indoctrination of its own. This includes proposals to “support schools that teach America’s Founding Principles and Western Civilization” and “promote Fair and Patriotic Civics Education.” Along similar lines, former President Trump recently described a bewildering plan to create a credentialing body to “certify teachers who embrace patriotic values, support our way of life, and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children.”

Substantively, the most important part of the Republican education platform might be its support for universal school choice. In about a dozen states, Republicans have recently created or expanded education savings account (ESA) programs that make public funds available to pay for private school or other educational expenses. Critics of these programs—myself included—argue that they violate our basic traditions, benefit the wealthy at the expense of others, and are not well supported by research.

Project 2025

If the Republican platform is light on policy proposals, Project 2025 certainly is not.

Along with my colleagues Rachel Perera and Katharine Meyer, I recently wrote a more detailed piece that analyzes Project 2025’s education proposals. Project 2025 proposes severe cuts to the resources and protections available to the country’s poorest, most marginalized children. For example, it proposes to eliminate the Head Start program (for young children in poverty), discontinue federal Title I funding (for schools that serve low-income children), and kneecap IDEA (federal legislation that supports students with disabilities). It’s especially harsh on transgender children, with proposals aimed at reorienting civil rights enforcement around “rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory” and stripping Title IX protections from transgender students.

In other words, Project 2025 sets its sights on the programs that serve America’s neediest students. It would essentially terminate the federal government’s long-running role in addressing inequities that arise in locally governed school systems.

Notably, many key Project 2025 proposals would require an unlikely degree of congressional cooperation. This includes some of the highest-profile proposals, such as eliminating the U.S. Department of Education (a vaguely defined idea that’s unlikely to materialize in its most extreme form). Still, a second Trump administration couldenact some Project 2025 proposals unilaterally. That includes rolling back civil rights protections and replacing civil servants in the U.S. Department of Education with political appointees after reinstating Schedule F.

Taking stock

It’s fair to say that Democrats’ plans for federal education policy are modest. Democrats aren’t proposing a markedly stronger role for the federal government. On K-12 education, Democrats remain in a mostly defensive posture as they offer a more “conservative” agenda that protects against the GOP’s increasingly radical efforts.

Just what those GOP plans might be—and just how radical they are—depends on whether the true Trumps X administration plan is the Republican platform, Project 2025, or some combination of the two. That remains to be seen

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Vouchers

Scientific American Endorses Kamala Harris

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2024 //
18

For only the second time in its 179-year history, the prestigious magazine Scientific American issued a Presidential endorsement. It endorsed Kamala Harris. The only other endorsement in its history was four years ago for Joe Biden. The magazine cares deeply about science, climate change, health, and factual evidence. For these reasons, it opposes Trump.

The editors of Scientific American wrote:

In the November election, the U.S. faces two futures. In one, the new president offers the country better prospects, relying on science, solid evidence and the willingness to learn from experience. She pushes policies that boost good jobs nationwide by embracing technology and clean energy. She supports education, public health and reproductive rights. She treats the climate crisis as the emergency it is and seeks to mitigate its catastrophic storms, fires and droughts.

In the other future, the new president endangers public health and safety and rejects evidence, preferring instead nonsensical conspiracy fantasies. He ignores the climate crisis in favor of more pollution. He requires that federal officials show personal loyalty to him rather than upholding U.S. laws. He fills positions in federal science and other agencies with unqualified ideologues. He goads people into hate and division, and he inspires extremists at state and local levels to pass laws that disrupt education and make it harder to earn a living.

Only one of these futures will improve the fate of this country and the world. That is why, for only the second time in our magazine’s 179-year history, the editors of Scientific American are endorsing a candidate for president. That person is Kamala Harris.

Before making this endorsement, we evaluated Harris’s record as a U.S. senator and as vice president under Joe Biden, as well as policy proposals she’s made as a presidential candidate. Her opponent, Donald Trump, who was president from 2017 to 2021, also has a record—a disastrous one. Let’s compare.

HEALTH CARE

The Biden-Harris administration shored up the popular Affordable Care Act (ACA), giving more people access to health insurance through subsidies. During Harris’s September 10 debate with Trump, she said one of her goals as president would be to expand it. Scores of studies have shown that people with insurance stay healthier and live longer because they can afford to see doctors for preventive and acute care. Harris supports expansion of Medicaid, the U.S. health-care program for low-income people. States that have expanded this program have seen health gains in their populations, whereas states that continue to restrict eligibility have not. To pay for Medicare, the health insurance program primarily for older Americans, Harris supports a tax increase on people who earn $400,000 or more a year. And the Biden-Harris administration succeeded in passing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which caps the costs of several expensive drugs, including insulin, for Medicare enrollees. Harris’s vice presidential pick, Tim Walz, signed into law a prohibition against excessive price hikes on generic drugs as governor of Minnesota.

When in office, Trump proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid (Congress, to its credit, refused to enact them.) He also pushed for a work requirement as a condition for Medicaid eligibility, making it harder for people to qualify for the program. As a candidate, both in 2016 and this year, he pledged to repeal the ACA, but it’s not clear what he would replace it with. When prodded during the September debate, he said, “I have concepts of a plan” but didn’t elaborate. Like Harris, however, he has voiced concern about drug prices, and in 2020 he signed an executive order designed to lower prices of drugs covered by Medicare.

The COVID pandemic has been the greatest test of the American health-care system in modern history. Harris was vice president of an administration that boosted widespread distribution of COVID vaccines and created a program for free mail-order COVID tests. Wastewater surveillance for viruses has improved, allowing public health officials to respond more quickly when levels are high. Bird flu now poses a new threat, highlighting the importance of the Biden-Harris administration’s Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy.

Trump touted his pandemic efforts during his first debate with Harris, but in 2020 he encouraged resistance to basic public health measures, spread misinformation about treatments and suggested injections of bleach could cure the disease. By the end of that year about 350,000 people in the U.S. had died of COVID; the current national total is well over a million. Trump and his staff had one great success: Operation Warp Speed, which developed effective COVID vaccines extremely quickly. Remarkably, however, Trump plans billion-dollar budget cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, which started the COVID-vaccine research program. These steps are in line with the guidance of Project 2025, an extreme conservative blueprint for the next presidency drawn up by many former Trump staffers. He’s also talked about ending the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, calling it a pork project.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

Harris is a staunch supporter of reproductive rights. During the September debate, she spoke plainly about her desire to reinstate “the protections of Roe v. Wade” and added, “I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about one’s own body, should not be made by the government.” She has vowed to improve access to abortion. She has defended the right to order the abortion pill mifepristone through the mail under authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, even as MAGA Republican state officials have tried—so far unsuccessfully—to revoke those rights. As a U.S. senator, she co-sponsored a package of bills to reduce rising rates of maternal mortality. In August, Trump said he would vote against a ballot measure expanding access to abortions in Florida, where he lives. The current Florida “heartbeat” law makes most abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people even know they are pregnant.

Trump appointed the conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, removing the constitutional right to a basic health-care procedure. He spreads misinformation about abortion—during the September debate, he said some states support abortion into the ninth month and beyond, calling it “execution after birth.” No state allows this. He also refused to answer the question of whether he would veto a federal abortion ban, saying Congress would never approve such a ban in the first place. He made no mention of an executive order and praised the Supreme Court, three justices of which he placed, for sending abortion back to states to decide. This ruling led to a patchwork of laws and entire sections of the country where abortion is dangerously limited.

GUN SAFETY

The Biden-Harris administration closed the gun-show loophole, which had allowed people to buy guns without a license. The evidence is clear that easy access to guns in the U.S. has increased the risk of suicides, murder and firearm accidents. Harris supports a program that temporarily removes guns from people deemed dangerous by a court.

Trump promised the National Rifle Association that he would get rid of all Biden-Harris gun measures. Even after Trump was injured and a supporter was killed in an attempted assassination, the former president remained silent on gun safety. His running mate, J. D. Vance, said the increased number of school shootings was an unhappy “fact of life” and the solution was stronger school security.

ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE

Harris said pointedly during the September debate that climate change was real. She would continue the responsible leadership shown by Biden, who has undertaken the most substantial climate action of any president. The Biden-Harris administration restored U.S. membership in the Paris Agreement on coping with climate change. Harris’s election would continue IRA tax credits for clean energy, as well as regulations to reduce power-plant emissions and coal use. This approach puts the country on course to spend the authorized billions of dollars for renewable energy that should cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030. The IRA also includes a commitment to broadening electric vehicle technology.

Trump has said climate change is a hoax, and he dodged the question “What would you do to fight climate change?” during the September debate. He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement. Under his direction the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies abandoned more than 100 environmental policies and rules, many designed to ensure clean air and water, restrict the dangers of toxic chemicals and protect wildlife. He has also tried to revoke funding for satellite-based climate-research projects.

TECHNOLOGY

The Biden-Harris administration’s 2023 Executive Order on Safe, Secure and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence requires that AI-based products be safe for consumers and national security. The CHIPS and Science Act invigorates the chipmaking industry and semiconductor research while growing the workforce. A new Trump administration would undo all of this work and quickly. Under the devious and divisive Project 2025 framework, technology safeguards on AI would be overturned. AI influences our criminal justice, labor and health-care systems. As is the rightful complaint now, there would be no knowing how these programs are developed, how they are tested or whether they even work.

The 2024 U.S. ballots are also about Congress and local officials—people who make decisions that affect our communities and families. Extremist state legislators in Ohio, for instance, have given politicians the right to revoke any rule from the state health department designed to limit the spread of contagious disease. Other states have passed similar measures. In education, many states now forbid lessons about racial bias. But research has shown such lessons reduce stereotypes and do not prompt schoolchildren to view one another negatively, regardless of their race. This is the kind of science MAGA politicians ignore, and such people do not deserve our votes.

At the top of the ballot, Harris does deserve our vote. She offers us a way forward lit by rationality and respect for all. Economically, the renewable-energy projects she supports will create new jobs in rural America. Her platform also increases tax deductions for new small businesses from $5,000 to $50,000, making it easier for them to turn a profit. Trump, a convicted felon who was also found liable of sexual abuse in a civil trial, offers a return to his dark fantasies and demagoguery, whether it’s denying the reality of climate change or the election results of 2020 that were confirmed by more than 60 court cases, including some that were overseen by judges whom he appointed.

One of two futures will materialize according to our choices in this election. Only one is a vote for reality and integrity. We urge you to vote for Kamala Harris.

Categories Elections, Environment, Extremism, Harris, Kamala, Health, Science, Trump

Trump Is Now Selling Overpriced “Trump Watches”

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2024 //
12

Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark has performed a public service by dissecting the actual cost of the brand-new Trump watches, which Trump is advertising and selling online. The top of the line sells for $100,000, the least expensive is $499. All profits, of course, go to Trump personally, not to his campaign. Trump is cashing in on the gullibility of his cult.

Last shows in his post that the actual cost of putting together the $100,000 all-gold with inlaid diamonds watch (engraved with Trump’s name on is face) is $20,000. The actual cost of the $499 watch with Trump’s name on its face is $60.

He writes:

How much are these watches worth, really?

Let’s take the $499 version, which is a red-dial steel dive watch. It has an automatic date movement of unspecified origin. (Translation: China.) It has a mineral crystal with an aluminum bezel. The clasp does not appear to have micro-adjustments.

The internet is full of off-brand watches like this. Here’s how you build one:

Everything you need comes from China using AliExpress. First you buy a steel case and bracelet for, say, $30. Like this one.

You engrave the caseback using laser etching working off an .svg file. Maybe that costs $5. Then you buy the cheapest possible automatic movement with a date function. Here’s one for $9. Pop the movement into the case and all that’s left are ial and handset. Hands are super-cheap.

And sunburst dials—even with applied markers—are not terribly expensive, either.

The final step is actually the most expensive: You have to pay someone to machine the “TRUMP” and signature bits and glue them to the dial. This is the first truly custom step and maybe, if the manufacturer wants to spend a little more money, they’re having a fourth-party make the dials for them out of sunburst blanks.

All told we’re in the neighborhood of $60. And that’s if you’re just trying to build a single watch without bulk purchasing power.

Reminder: They’re selling it for $499.

Last determined that Trump will pocket millions of dollars from the sale of these watches.

Here is his description of the $100,000 watch:

Enough with the plebe beater watches. I want to know about the $100,000 Trump “Victory” watch!

At least these aren’t from Ali Express.

Almost the entirety of the cost for the Victory models comes in the material cost for the “solid gold” case and bracelet. Trump claims there’s 200 grams of 18K gold in each watch. If true, the spot price of gold puts that cost near $13,000.¹ That’s real money.

The tourbillon movement inside these watches also appears to be an off-the-shelf product, but at least it’s a high shelf.² If I had to bet, I’d guess the Victory uses something from Olivier Mory, who sells “Swiss Made” tourbillon movements that generally run around $3,000.

How does Mory keep costs down? “Swiss Made” is like “Broadway”—it sounds like a colloquial description, but it’s actually a legal term of art.³Swiss Made means that 60 percent of the manufacturing costs and 50 percent of the “essential manufacturing step” must occur in Switzerland. Mory sources as many parts of his movement as he can from outside Switzerland—while still maintaining his “Swiss Made” status. And he streamlines his build process so that he can assemble 1,000 movements per month while keeping half of the “essential manufacturing step” in country.⁴

I can’t speak to the cost of the diamonds because there’s no information about the total karat weight involved but they appear to be quite small, in the <1mm range. For the sake of argument let’s say that the diamonds add another $1,000.

We’re now talking about a total production cost in the neighborhood of $20,000—and possibly much less—for a watch offered at $100,000.

As a point of reference, the list price on a solid gold Rolex Submariner is $40,600. In the Submariner you get an in-house, state-of-the-art movement running at COSC spec inside a bullet-proof case. The fit and finish will be superlative. And even though you’re paying over the odds for the Rolex name, you’re getting 10x the watch for 40 percent of the price of a Trump Victory.

Did I mention that the Trump Victory can’t get wet? From the Trump website: “The Tourbillon watches are not intended for water exposure.”

Which watches does Trump own?

Last writes:

Trump is not a watch nerd, exactly, but he knows that Big Rich Guys should wear expensive gold watches. So he has a Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse ($17,500), a gold Rolex President Day-Date ($40,000), and a Vacheron Constantin Historiques Ultra-Fine ($20,000). It’s a small, understated collection and if I’m being honest, it’s impressive in its own way. These are beautiful watches from serious watchmakers and they suggest an elevated taste that I would not have expected from Trump.

The website for Trump watches includes this advisory:

Trump Watches are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals. TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC uses the “Trump” name, image and likeness under a paid license agreement which may be terminated or revoked according to its terms. Trump Watches are intended as collectible items for individual enjoyment only, not for investment purposes. 
The images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product.
These watches are not political and have nothing to do with any political campaign.

Panelists on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” agreed that it’s become very expensive to be a follower of Trump. The Trump Bible. The Trump commemorative coins. The Trump NFT. The Trump sneakers. Now the Trump watch.

And there is much more for sale at Trumpstore.com.

Gotta make money while there’s still time.

Profiteering off your candidacy is tawdry and undignified.

Categories Elections, For-Profit, Trump

Leonie Haimson: Mayoral Control of Schools Has Failed in NYC

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2024 //
2

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, writes about the latest developments in New York City. Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on multiple charges of corruption. His top aides resigned, including his schools chancellor David Banks. Adams says he is innocent and won’t resign. Leonie worries about what will happen to the city’s public schools, which are controlled by the mayor. Some of us–Leonie and I–long for the end of mayoral control and a revival of an independent Board of Education. Checks and balances are a very important part of democratic government. Under mayoral control, there is more cronyism than accountability.

She writes:

Mayor indicted, Chancellor resigning, and the Panel for Educational Policy eliminates its Contract Committee; so much for Mayoral control!! 

Mayor Eric Adams talks to the press outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the mayor of New York City, on September 26, 2024, after he was indicted on federal criminal charges

Mayor Adams has now been indicted on  five federal charges of bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.  Chancellor Banks is resigning as of Dec. 31, 2024, to be replaced by Melissa Aviles-Ramos, current Deputy Chancellor for Family Engagement. This follows the announced resignations of other top officials, including the Police Commissioner and Commissioner of Health, in the last two weeks.

We should recall the false narratives promoted by those including Governor Hochul who insisted on extending unchecked Mayoral control for two more years last April, with no strings attached: that any other system invited corruption, instability, and inefficiency. The Mayor himself insisted on renaming Mayoral control “Mayoral Accountability”, and Chancellor Banks threatened to resign if the governance system was altered in any significant way. And look at what has happened since. 

The only minor tweak the Legislature made to Mayoral control was that the Chair of the Panel for Educational Policy chair would be appointed by the Mayor from among three nominees put forward by leaders of the Legislature and Board of Regents. And yet it turns out that the new Chair will be exactly the same man who already held that seat as a Mayoral appointee, Greg Faulkner. The only difference is that now the Mayor will get an extra PEP appointee, to further cement his control over controversial educational policies, as well as questionable contracts and spending.

The Chancellor himself was reported having privately met with the CEO of 21stCentEd in October of 2022, and  subsequently greenlit a major contract with this company that had hired his brother, Terrence Banks, as a lobbyist. According to the Daily News,  21stCentEd has since received more than $1.4 million in business from the Department of Education for providing a variety of services. In cases where a family member is involved, the city requires that a Conflict of Interest waiver be obtained.  And yet Banks never applied for one. Both Chancellor Banks and Terence Banks have had their homes raided and their telephones seized by federal investigators.

Terence Banks also apparently lobbied for a Florida-based tech firm called Saferwatch which markets “panic button” apps to be used to alert authorities in case of school emergencies such as fires or active shooters.  The NYPD signed a contract with Saferwatch which was piloted in several schools  last year.

We have seen tremendous privacy problems with Teenspace, an online mental health program for NYC students 13 and up, relentlessly promoted by the Mayor and the Chancellor, after the Department of Health signed a $26 million dollar with the parent company Talkspace last year. And yet as we have discovered, Teenspace collects, shares and uses personal student data for marketing and commercial purposes with multiple social media “partners” that would be illegal if the contract was with the DOE rather than the Department of Health.  When a NYC student visits the Teenspace website on their phone, their personally identifiable information is collected by 34 cookies, and shared with 15 ad trackers, as well as Facebook, Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft among other companies. The company has also been sued in Californiafor sharing personal data with TikTok, including  the mental health data of minors. One should not be surprised to learn that lobbying firm for Talkspace is Oaktree Solutions, the firm owned by Frank Carone,  a close associate and a former chief of staff to the Mayor who was with him last night when Adams was huddling with his attorneys after learning of his federal indictments. 

Shortly after he was elected, Mayor Adams own partner,  Tracey Collins, who already worked at DOE,  was promoted and named the “senior adviser to the deputy chancellor of school leadership,” and received a 23% boost to her salary to $221,597 a year.  Shortly thereafter, Sharon Adams, the wife of the Mayor’s brother Bernard Adams, was hired by DOE, at a salary of $150,000-a-year .

The whirlwind of scandals and investigations surrounding the Mayor and his top appointees, including the Chancellor, should give rise to a new call for more accountability, oversight and checks and balances at DOE, but I fear that no lessons will be learned by those in power, because their interests lie in maintaining one-person rule, and ignoring the voices of parents and teachers.  Indeed, there have been many cases of large-scale corruption at the DOE under previous administrations. 

Eric Goldstein was hired in 2004 during Bloomberg/Klein years as a deputy overseeing food, transportation and high school sports, and promoted to chief executive in 2007. Goldstein was just recently sentenced to two years in prison, for a corrupt scheme he was involved in 2015-2016, during the De Blasio administration, by receiving bribes in exchange for turning a blind eye to tainted food served to public school kids — including chicken tenders laden with plastic, bones and metal, causing choking. 

There is also the recently revealed, shocking case of DOE staffers in the Queens office who took their own kids on trips to Disneyland and other trips by using federal funds meant to provide educational experiences for homeless children.  For some reason, the DOE failed to ask for restitution for the money stolen; and neither the DOE nor the Special Investigator for Schools  reported the alleged fraud, forgery and misuse of federal funds to any authorities for possible prosecution.  To make things even more bizarre, the SCI held off posting its findings report, dated January 2023, for nearly two years after it was completed, and when they did so, they posted it quietly without any press release or notification, perhaps in hopes it would be ignored by the media focused instead on the allegations and investigations surrounding the Mayor.  I have since reported these alleged crimes to the Inspector General’s office of the US Department of Education, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

There have been many more multi-million dollar DOE corruption scandals under Mayoral control over the last 20 years, a selection of which I summarized in my testimony to the State Education Department and my presentation last year to the NYC Bar Association, both posted here.

And yet despite all these allegations of cronyism and worse, the first thing that the newly reconstituted Panel for Education Policy did in its first meeting of the new school year on September 25 is to eliminate its Contracts Committee by amending their  Bylaws  as depicted below. 

Image

This committee, whose meetings have been livestreamed and recorded, has provided the only public airing of discussion and questioning of DOE officials by PEP members of the rationale behind  hundreds of millions of dollars of questionable DOE contracts before the final Panel vote.  The approval to ditch the committee was 13-6, with one abstention.   As usual, every Mayoral appointee plus the new, supposedly “independent” Chair voted in lockstep to eliminate the Contracts Committee and its monthly public meetings.  So much for so-called Mayoral accountability!

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Failure, New York City

Media and Democracy Project Pickets New York Times: Stop Sanewashing Trump!

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2024 //
20

Bloggers are quick to report on Trump’s latest mistakes, lies, gaffes, outrages, and mental confusion, but a large swathe of the media reports on his speeches without pointing out his lies, threats, and incoherence. A group called the Media and Democracy Project decided to bring their complaints directly to the nation’s most influential newspaper, The New York Times.

THE GOOD NEWS

Members of Media and Democracy Project joined Rise and Resist’s protest outside the New York Times offices in Manhattan on September 18th, 2024

Peaceful Protest Outside The Times

The New York Times is the most powerful news organization in the United States. The narratives created by its editors and journalists have a cascading effect; the rest of the political press internalizes the Times’ agenda and then spits out its priorities and frames to the wider masses. The editorial decisions made on 8th Avenue in New York have a real impact on Americans’ understanding of the stakes of the upcoming elections and the future of our democracy.

An increasing number of regular people are joining media critics in pointing out that the Times is failing catastrophically with its election coverage, in what feels like their leadership willfully ceding to abnormalcy. This month, Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote an exhaustive chronicle of worldwide threats to press freedoms, yet still drew the conclusion that he mustn’t direct his staff to accurately contextualize, or warn of, the threat to democracy here at home.

Yours truly protesting outside the New York Times offices in Manhattan on September 18th, 2024

By failing to join the fight and act as partisans for democracy, Sulzberger and the Times are failing in their critical role to accurately inform American citizens. Drew Magary recently commented in SFGATE that the “Times cares more about its place in the power structure than in actually affecting that power structure.” Magary’s piece goes further to say no one should care what the Times says anymore and we should all ignore its political coverage. His righteous dismissal is a response to the Times’ efforts to reject criticism, both internal and external.

Members of Media and Democracy Project joined Rise and Resist’s protest outside the New York Times offices in Manhattan on September 18th, 2024

When A.G. Sulzberger’s father eliminated the Public Editor position in 2017, he assured his readership that they were now the most important critics. Dan Froomkin chronicled this for his Press Watch website:

At the time, Sulzberger wrote in a memo to the newsroom that “our followers on social media and our readers across the internet have come together to collectively serve as a modern watchdog, more vigilant and forceful than one person could ever be. Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office.”

The charade of newsroom responsiveness to outside criticism did not last long. Only a few years later, Times chief Dean Baquet was completely dismissive of “followers on social media,” saying “I could care less about the unnuanced voices on Twitter. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about what our readers think, but I don’t pay as much attention to Twitter as Twitter might want me to.”

Members of Media and Democracy Project joined Rise and Resist’s protest outside the New York Times offices in Manhattan on September 18th, 2024

We’ve explored all manner of tactics to get the Times to improve its coverage and regain its credibility, including calling on them in January to reinstate the position of Public Editor. We have not heard back as of the writing of this piece. 

While some, like Magary, believe it’s no longer worth anyone’s energy trying to effect change at the Times, we disagree. A workplace is not a monolith and there are many employees there who disagree with the Times’ normalizing coverage of the Trump/MAGA threat to democracy. We want to aid those workers by facilitating a culture of dissent. 

Members of Media and Democracy Project joined Rise and Resist’s protest outside the New York Times offices in Manhattan on September 18th, 2024

On September 18th, we joined a peaceful protest outside the Times building organized by Rise and Resist, a New York City-based direct action group. Flyers with criticisms of A.G. Sulzberger and senior editors were handed to employees entering the building with the goal of inspiring the humans who power the New York Times to activate their moral core and advocate for a change in political coverage. 

The flyer that was handed out to Timesemployees

No more excuses can be made for the upper management’s normalizing and sanewashing of the most manifestly unfit person ever to run for president. It is unlikely that the Times’ HR department would approve a person like Trump for any position in their building. So why are the powerful people who run the Times deceiving America about his fitness to take a job leading us all?

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Media, Trump

Charlie Sykes on Laura Loomer

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2024 //
13

Laura Loomer is a Trump fan who craves fame. She seems to have struck gold. She now travels with Trump on his private jet. She has insulted everyone who doesn’t worship Trump, and she has smeared every group that offends her. Charlie Sykes, a prominent Never Trumper, describes his view of Laura Loomer.

He writes:

“It is extraordinary. Laura Loomer is not just a bigot, she is a freak. She is at the far edges of the fever swamp. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene described her as racist and offensive. And yet Donald Trump is associating with her; these are the kinds of people who have his ear right now. So, at this moment of the campaign — I mean think about this we’re less than two months away from the election — Donald Trump is associating with some of the craziest, weirdest figures on the right.”  — Me on “Morning Joe,” September 12, 2024

Sykes writes:

Apparently, I triggered Loomer when I called her a freak…

…which is odd, when you think about it. 

By now — you’d think — she’d be used to being called an antisemitic-Islamophobic-racist-grotesquerie, as well as a conspiracist nutjob, and an overall vile human being. (Details below.)

After all, Trump’s favorite worm-tongue is not your standard-issue deplorable; she’s more like a leak from a laboratory of deplorability: a mutation of all the toxic insanity, bigotry, and demented inhumanity that has poisoned our politics. 

So, you might imagine that she would have developed a thickish hide.

But no.

On Thursday (which was quite a busy day for her), she spent a good chunk of her morning lashing out at Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lindsey Graham… and me. 

Personally, I thought “oxygen thief” was an underwhelming way to end this rant. But she was pretty jazzed by her efforts.

I am, of course, deeply flattered, honored, and not at all humbled by the fact that this loathsome mutant dislikes me. I may frame it.

Why is Donald Trump hanging out with Loomer? 

Why did he want her to be hired by his campaign? Why did she fly with him to the debate this week? Why would he take this 9/11 Truther to this week’s solemn remembrance? Why is he so enamored of her presence? 

Was Nick Fuentes unavailable? Were Alex Jones, David Duke, and the Tiki-torch dudes otherwise engaged? Or does she have other charms for the former president? I couldn’t possibly say.

But it seems clear that she is providing Trump the sort of safe space he so desperately craves — a space where his darkest and ugliest instincts are stroked and validated. Perhaps most important: she hates the people he hates. As Joe Perticone and Marc Caputo note, “Loomer has called Kamala Harris ‘a drug using prostitute.’ As for why Harris doesn’t have biological children, she once said: “I’m willing to bet she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.’”

Open the link to finish the post.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Trump

Imagining Trump’s Immigrant Detention Camps

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2024 //
33

Trump says he will deport 11 million illegal immigrants. He says his deportation program will be unlike anything the nation has ever seen. He is right.

Trump says that Franklin D. Roosevelt deported over one million Mexican immigrants. Not literally true. His aide Stephen Miller must have told him that; Miller will probably be put in charge of the program if Trump wins the election. He hates immigrants.

Actually, the deportations were started in 1930 and reached a peak in 1931, before FDR was elected. Estimates for the numbers of those deported ranged from 300,000-2 million, about half of whom were American citizens. President Herbert Hoover approved the deportation program on the belief that Mexicans were taking jobs from white people. Most of the deportation was implemented by local and state governments.

What would it look like to deport 11 million people?

First, they would have to be rounded up in massive raids. Imagine the terror as federal agents arrived at the homes of immigrants and raided them, carrying away families–men, women and children.

Where to put 11 million people?

Then, the federal government would have to build thousands, tens of thousands of detention camps. Every state would have detention centers. This would be a massive undertaking, because the camps would need to be constructed and supplied with beds, food, personnel, doctors and nurses.

Trump has suggested that the deportees would each have a serial number. Would it be tattooed on their arms?

Inevitably, families would be torn apart, people would die, women would give birth in the camps.

The images sent around the world of detention camps for millions of people would humiliate our country as a cruel, heartless place.

Someone should drape a hood over the Statue of Liberty, so that she does not see what is happening as she lifts her lamp “beside the golden door.”

On the base of the Statue of Liberty, “The New Collosus,” by Emma Lazarus.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

No more. Stay home. We are full. No more room. Not at this inn.

Categories Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, Trump

Rex Huppke: JD Vance Ate My Dog. Elon Musk Ate My Cat. Does Trump Care?

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2024 //
57

Rex Huppke is a columnist for USA Today. He wrote on Twitter about two important tech bros who are his pets. Then he quoted his own tweet as “evidence” that it was true.

He wrote in USA Today:

Given all the uproar over GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s baseless, utterly false and profoundly racist claims that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in an Ohio town, I would like to make a public statement that is supported by an equal amount of evidence:

“Not long ago, billionaire Elon Musk ate my cat, Mr. Smushyface. Days later, Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, stole and then barbecued and ate my dog, Zoe. I remained quiet about these incidents for fear other tech bros like Musk and Vance might come for my hamster, Dennis. But after much thoughts and prayer, I have decided to honor the memories of Zoe and Mr. Smushyface by letting the world know what I claim to be the truth.”

For those fortunate enough to not yet be aware of the “immigrants are eating our pets” allegations that bubbled up from the right-wing fever swamps and got spouted by Trump during Tuesday’s presidential debate, here’s the deal: A random Facebook post, grounded in something along the authoritative lines of “I heard from a friend of a friend’s kid,” claimed a cat went missing and was (maybe) eaten by a Haitian immigrant.

It’s true that JD Vance ate my dog because I wrote it on the internet

There’s no evidence of that happening, of course. But xenophobic fearmongers saw it is a perfect way to monger some xenophobic fear. So Musk started trumpeting the ludicrous claim on X, the enormous social media platform he owns, and then Vance was babbling about it and then Trump spoke the words no presidential-debate-watcher ever imagined they’d hear, saying of Springfield, Ohio: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

OK.

If an actual former president who is also the Republican Party’s standard-bearer and its presidential nominee is so concerned about a fabricated story aimed at dehumanizing an entire swath of people, he damn well better be equally concerned about my story, which is true because I read it on the internet. (Granted, what I read on the internet was from my own social media post, but that’s not important.)

My brave admission that Elon ate my cat

Here’s how this real-because-I-say-it-is story of Vance and Musk being ravenous pet devourers developed.

On Monday, I bravely posted the following on X, the social media cesspool formerly known as Twitter ‒ “True story: Elon Musk ate my cat. Please share your own story of Elon Musk eating your pet.”

The response was overwhelming and revealed my pet was far from the only victim of Musk’s decidedly un-American appetite. Others came out of the we’ve-lost-our-pets-to-hungry-tech-bros closet, with posts that included:

“Elon Musk ate my precious bearded dragon Cupcake.”

“Elon Musk ate my worm farm!”

“True story: Elon Musk ate my ferret.”

“He ate my kitten. I was at a conference where he was one day, holding my kitten. He grabbed it from my hand, poured ketchup on it, and just started chomping into it. It was so scary.”

There’s as much evidence Musk ate my cat as there is immigrants ate pets

Posts on X containing false or inaccurate information are often corrected with a “community note.” No such note appeared on my post or on any of the replies, which I took as proof that it’s all 100% true. 

Buoyed by the support of other victims, I posted an additional admission Thursday: “JD Vance ate my dog, Zoe. It’s true, because I am posting it here.”

I added: “I fear there is widespread pet-eating in the tech-bro community. They’re coming to our cities and towns, we don’t know much about them, they bring radical new ideas about what they view as ‘free speech,’ and they are apparently eating our pets. This has to stop.”

Support from others who say their pets were eaten by Musk and Vance

Again, the responses revealed that Vance’s consumption of my beloved Zoe was not a one-off. 

“I caught JD Vance running away with my dog in his grocery wagon.”

“I walked into my house only to find Elon up to his shoulders in my fish tank, bobbing for them while JD chased my cat with a fork and knife! It was horrifying!”

“My Pugs, Montez and Pearl, may they rest in peace, were also consumed by Elon Musk and JD Vance. They had a Pug-B-Que. I grieve every single day for my Pug babies.”

What monsters.

I hope Donald Trump condemns his running mate’s pet-eating ways

Clearly there’s more than enough evidence here for Trump to loudly address the problem, condemn his running mate and Musk and imply there’s something scary, evil and unwelcome about wealthy tech dudes who incorrectly think they’re hilarious.

Nothing will bring back my precious Mr. Smushyface or my lovable dog Zoe. Nothing can bring back any of the wonderful pets I know were stolen and eaten by Vance and Musk because I read something somebody posted on the internet and declined to consider it might just be fabricated bull(expletive). 

Something must be done about these rabid tech bros before all our pets wind up down their seemingly bottomless gullets.

I look forward to Trump making this a central part of his campaign in the weeks ahead.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Hoax, Media, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Joyce Vance: Women! Would You Rather Be a Stepford Wife or a Handmaid?

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2024 //
7

Joyce Vance is a lawyer. She served for eight years as US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, appointed by President Barack Obama. She blogs at Civil Discourse. This post could be subtitled “Ladies, Don’t Worry your pretty little head about ‘rights.”

She writes:

This is what was on Trump’s mind at 11:49 p.m. last night. 

What did he intend? Were patriarchal family-man types supposed to read it to their wives and daughters while they did chores and prepared meals? It certainly reads that way. You can easily imagine Trump hoping these men would say to the women in their lives: You’re worse off and less healthy than you were four years ago; less safe, more depressed, less happy. Or maybe American women are just supposed to take Trump’s word for it.

Women celebrate in Washington DC after Joe Biden wins the presidency in 2020

Trump thinks women can be told that they are less confident about the future than they were four years ago and they will simply accept it. Women will get on Truth Social, read his post, and think, I don’t need to worry anymore because Donald Trump will fix all of that.

President Joe Biden takes a selfie with a group of event attendees. President Biden has on a pair of aviator sunglasses with the American flag in the lenses. The women in the selfie have on black aviator sunglasses.

These women are looking pretty happy about not-Donald Trump

Donald Trump to women: If you will just listen to Donald Trump, the national nightmare you are enduring will be over.

This Photo Has Some Convinced Taylor Swift Is Backing Kamala Harris - Business Insider

Winning ticket

Donald Trump also wants you to know, if you’re a woman voter, that you won’t have to think about abortion anymore if he’s president. Why? Apparently, because abortion will be one less right to worry about since you won’t have it anymore. Say goodbye to what remains of your control over your health care. But it will be okay, Donald Trump tells you: It will make you happy. 

Trump says in one breath that there are “powerful exceptions” to his abortion bans while also saying that the status of a woman’s right to an abortion is up to her state. Many of those states don’t have exceptions for the mother’s health or have passed laws criminalizing abortion so doctors are afraid to provide care to women until it’s too late. In some of those states, attorneys general are threatening to prevent women from leaving the state to obtain abortion care or to prosecute them for doing so.

“I will protect women at a level never seen before,” Trump concludes. “They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe, and secure. Their lives will be happy, beautiful, and great again.” He writes it with all the fervor of a man envisioning a future that is part “Stepford Wives” and part “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Trump: You will be happy. Your life will be beautiful. It will be that way because I say so. It is not up to you. 

That’s the future Donald Trump has in store for American women.

Donald Trump is a lunatic. I don’t say that casually. His post from last night was a stark reminder of what it’s like to live in Donald Trump’s America. I’m sure you all remember it—waking up in the middle of the night to check Twitter for news of unfolding disasters. Had he praised a dictator, enacted a Muslim ban, separated children from their parents at the border, called white nationalists “decent people”? What would be next? Don’t worry your pretty little heads about that, he’s telling women now. 

We are 45 days away from the election. We all know the assignment. We are never ever getting back together with Donald Trump. Never ever.

In 2020, early exit polls showed Biden winning the votes of 57 percent of women. A majority of American women were eager to end Trump’s power over their lives. If the best argument Trump has to convince those women to vote for him is that they’ll lose more rights while he tells them to be happy about it, well, good luck with that.

Here’s some better advice for women:

  • It’s okay to vote for Kamala Harris, even if you’re a lifelong Republican voter.
  • If you don’t want to, you don’t have to tell anyone the truth about who you voted for. 
  • Women should be able to make their own choices about their healthcare, and they shouldn’t have to watch their daughters suffer and even die because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans. Woman and their families should have access to IVF. Try telling men they can’t get lifesaving medical care, or even a prescription for Viagra, and see how far that gets you. Don’t vote for someone who treats you like a second-class citizen.

Donald Trump is losing women from inside of his fold. It’s not just Liz Cheney and the never Trumpers. Dawn Roberts, the Iowa state co-chair of the Nikki Haley’s campaign and a lifelong Republican, endorsed Kamala Harris, telling The Des Moines Register, “My husband, Steve, often questioned why the U.S. has never had a female president. I think the time is now and Kamala Harris is the person to lead our country into the future.”

Iowan Harris supporter Dawn Roberts, lifelong Republican

Donald Trump complains that Kamala Harris is too joyful, that she laughs too much. Trump thrives on a dark vision of America in chaos, casting himself in the role of faux superhero coming to save us all. He benefits from fearmongering. Trump made the deliberate choice to talk about “American carnage” in his inaugural address in 2020. As he loses votes among women, Trump resorts to telling us what to think and how to feel. It has nothing to do with our well-being and everything to do with helping him win the election. Sorry Donald. We are not going back.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Civil Rights, Elections, Equity, Gender, Trump
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