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Alexandra Petri: Why Not Try a New Approach to Deadly Diseases?

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2025 //
10

Alexandra Petri is the resident humorist at The Washington Post. She has the knack of taking wacky ideas in the world of politics and exposing them as bizarre. In this post, she shows the absurdity of sanewashing extremism in the guise of finding a “middle ground” with crackpot ideas. The “middle ground,” she cautions, may actually mean “giving ground” to very bad and deadly ideas. Sometimes there is no middle ground between a good idea and a dangerous idea.

She writes:

“As a Democratic member of Congress, I know my party will be tempted to hold fast against Mr. Trump at every turn: uniting against his bills, blocking his nominees and grinding the machinery of the House and the Senate to a halt. That would be a mistake. Only by working together to find compromise on parts of the president-elect’s agenda can we make progress for Americans who are clearly demanding change in the economy, immigration, crime and other top issues.”

— “Let’s Try Something Different in How We Deal With Trump,” Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York), in a New York Times op-ed


Look, some people are still naive enough to believe that polio is, for lack of a better word, “bad.” And recent signs haven’t been encouraging! It seems like the disease wants to do exactly what it did last time: cripple children and put them in iron lungs. But what if instead of fighting it, we … didn’t?

When I look at how people voted this election, I am forced to conclude: Some of you want polio. Who am I to stand against that desire? Someone with values?

Do I think polio is good? No! Of course not. But some people do, and I just think it would be a mistake not to give them the opportunity to set the course of vaccine policy for the next four years. Which, again, isn’t what I want. But compromise is important. That was why people voted for me, someone who said he didn’t like polio, so that I could surprise them by wanting to hear polio out. That’s just good politics.

It’s not only polio. Everywhere you look, there are battles that once felt existentially important in which you can just surrender, as I’m sure Donald Trump is eager to tell Ukraine. And I am ready to start doing that work — first on polio, then on everything else.

Listen, I’m not naive. I know that every indication so far has been that only one side is willing to compromise on anything. That gives us bargaining power! Or is it the other side that gets the bargaining power … ? Hang on, let me go look this up. This feels important to get right! Well, let me keep going with my argument, but I will come back and look this up. Don’t let me forget!

Where was I? Right: Having core values means that sometimes you have to stand up for them, even when it feels like an uphill battle. For instance, the belief that trans people deserve protection from those who would legislate them out of public spaces and eliminate their right to medical self-determination — a bottom line that I would never budge on, except to completely throw away that principle if I ever decide it’s politically expedient. Which I think I might just have done! Whoops!

But, hey, that’s what principles are: inconvenient. Except for my bedrock principle: that those who want the opposite of what I stand for and who refuse to work with me on any issue probably know something that I don’t, and I should listen to them. That I will never abandon.

When I see someone who wants to put polio back on the map, I just see one more opportunity for compromise. Why, if enough of us say, “You know what, in all that ranting about fluoride, I heard one word that made a kind of sense! Say more! I bet we can find common ground!” maybe the other side will stop believing what they believe and change their entire worldview! Isn’t that what happened to Scrooge? It’s not? Well, never mind.

If I just listen hard enough and agree to find common ground, I am certain the other party will be the one to change. That’s usually what makes people change: when you give up defending your position completely! Then they budge. I hope! That’s certainly what I’m counting on for the next four-plus years!

When I read the sentence “Unless enough people find the spine to oppose his appointment, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will soon be in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services,” what I see is not a call to find some spine (impossible) and remind others of the stakes of not doing so. When has anyone found a congressional spine, except RFK Jr. while out on one of his weekly Hikes in Search of Surprising Things to Put Into His Freezer?

No, what that sentence means is: We need to start thinking of ways to compromise now! Compromise public health, compromise public safety, compromise all of our principles! Because that’s what the country needs: more things to be compromised.

And I, for one, am excited.

Categories Ethics, Extremism, Fraud, Health, Humor, Science

Sanewashing Quack Science? The Case of RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2025 //
4

Gabriel Schoenfeld of The Bulwark cautions us about accommodating or compromising with totally unqualified people nominated by Trump to take prominent roles in crucial federal agencies. He writes specifically about the nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr. to direct the Department of Health and human Services, as well as Dr. Oz. Apparently, Trump offered him this role in return for his endorsement but it’s important to oppose this nomination, not accept it, because RFK is not only totally unqualified but dangerous due to his ignorance and his embrace of discredited ideas.

Schoenfeld reminds us of one of the especially sordid chapters in the history of Stalin’s USSR, when crackpot science became state policy and killed millions of people.

He writes:

RATHER THAN OPPOSE DONALD TRUMP’S dangerous nominee for secretary of health and human services, some liberal commentators have suggested that the critics of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should find ways to accommodate him.

Writing in the New York Times in November, physician Rachael Bedard argued for finding “common ground” with the anti-vaccine ideologue. “We can’t spend four years simply fighting his agenda,” she wrote. Instead, RFK Jr.’s critics should try to “turn his most valid criticisms of the American health care system into constructive reforms.” In a follow-up interview this week, Bedard insists she isn’t “sane-washing” RFK Jr., she just wants to be realistic about recognizing “that he has a growing movement of people behind him, who aren’t just going to go away because we yell at them.”

Meanwhile, Adam Jentleson, a former Democratic congressional staffer—he held prominent jobs under Sens. John Fetterman and Harry Reid—has called for an effort to get RFK Jr. to “bless the next wave of vaccines.” How Jentleson thinks the notorious antivaxxer might be persuaded to perform an about-face is left unstated. Jentleson just wants to “build bridges.”

At a moment when we should be thinking of this nomination in terms of the potential risk to human lives, all this muddled analysis about science and politics calls to mind a grim episode from the last century that is a cautionary tale for today: the career of the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko.

Born in 1898, Lysenko had accomplishments of great consequence to his name. Most of these occurred in the field of agronomy, where he advanced a revolutionary set of ideas—now known as Lysenkoism. His main contentions were that genes did not exist, that acquired traits could be inherited, and that heredity itself could be altered by “educating” plants.

One such form of education was called “vernalization”—the notion that crop yields would dramatically increase if seeds that usually died in harsh frosts were exposed to lower temperatures before sowing. “Insights” like that, derived ultimately from Marxist ideology instead of legitimate empirical research, were put into practice on a large scale, first in the USSR and then in Communist China. Widespread crop failures followed, and then famines in which millions perished.

Lysenko—a crackpot with the power of the Soviet state behind him—was the recipient of numerous awards, including, on eight occasions, the Order of Lenin, and on three occasions, the Stalin Prize. Lysenko died of natural causes in 1976.

This history of massive state-sponsored scientific fraud is pertinent to Trump’s attempt to install Kennedy to the highest-ranking healthcare position in the U.S. government. The secretary of health and human services has oversight of everything from food safety to medical research to private health insurance to epidemiology to Medicare and Medicaid and much, much more.

Like Lysenko, RFK Jr. has departed from science even as he claims its mantle. He is a proponent of consuming raw milk despite the proven safety benefits of pasteurization (just last month raw milk in California was found to contain bird flu). He opposes the fluoridation of water despite the proven benefits to dental health. But it is for his opposition to vaccines—and his lies about them—that he is most notorious and most dangerous.

Kennedy’s position atop HHS would put him in charge of the Vaccines for Children program. It has saved millions of lives by immunizing children against diseases like polio and measles that, thanks to the vaccines, are now rare. He would also oversee the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has as one of its most important roles deciding which vaccines health insurers are required to cover.

To be sure, in lobbying for his confirmation Kennedy has said that “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody.” He also says he aims to improve the science of vaccine safety and wants nothing more than to provide “good information” so people “can make informed choices.”

But in light of some of his other pronouncements, this is all disingenuous. One piece of his “good information”—repeated in a 2023 interview with Fox News—is that vaccines cause autism. This theory was first popularized by the British doctor Andrew Wakefield in the Lancet in 1998. But Wakefield was discredited and his Lancet paper was retracted because it was fraudulent. Despite numerous studies that have since found no link between vaccines and autism, Kennedy has persisted in trumpeting his view, and gone even further to claim that “no vaccine is safe and effective.” Notably, the lawyer Kennedy selectedto screen candidates for positions at HHS has filed a petition to the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the polio vaccine. On social media, Kennedy has called COVID shots “a crime against humanity.” Estimates are that COVID vaccines have prevented 3.2 million deaths in the United States alone through 2022.

A person with no medical or scientific training, RFK Jr. is evidently unaware that vaccines are one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. Smallpox, the deadliest disease in human history, has been wiped from the face of the earth. Polio, a scourge that terrified generations of Americans and struck down an American president, has been largely consigned to the dustbin of history, at least in the developed world. Rabies, an invariably fatal disease, is preventable by vaccination (does RFK Jr. want to stop vaccinating Fido as well?). New vaccines can even prevent cancer. This is “good information.”

Even if, unexpectedly, RFK Jr. did absolutely nothing to hinder the development and distribution of vaccines, the mere elevation of someone with such views to a position of national authority would undermine public confidence in vaccines and increase vaccine hesitancy, with severely deleterious consequences for public health. If vaccination rates decline sufficiently, diphtheria, measles, yellow fever, shingles, and many other infectious diseases now relatively dormant may roar back into prominence.

UNFORTUNATELY, RFK JR. IS NOT THE ONLY Lysenko-like figure nominated to serve in the incoming administration. Trump has also tapped MAGA loyalist Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Oz has a long record as a grifter pushing pseudoscience for bucks. Among his claims lacking any scientific backing are that selenium supplements are “the holy grail of cancer prevention”; that raspberry ketones are “the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat”; that umckaloabo root extract is “incredibly effective at relieving cold symptoms,” and that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19. All of this is quackery.

The analogy to Lysenko and Soviet science is not exact, of course. The differences between the totalitarian USSR under Joseph Stalin and the (for now) liberal democratic United States under Donald Trump are too obvious to enumerate. For one thing, a democracy such as ours has self-corrective mechanisms that can set things right. Crackpots like Kennedy and grifters like Oz have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate—and it is not inconceivable that, even with a Republican majority, their nominations will be shot down. But given how cowed Republican senators are by Donald Trump, it would not be surprising if both are confirmed.

For another thing, Lysenko’s critics were either executed outright or sent to the gulag to die of starvation and overwork. Critics of RFK Jr. and Oz are not likely to suffer a remotely similar fate . . . unless, of course, their name is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is now being threatened with imprisonment by leading figures in MAGA world, including by RFK Jr. himself. “You should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison, Dr. Fauci,” says Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. On his X platform, president-elect sidekick Elon Musk has been particularly insistent, tweeting the same message multiple times: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” The threats are serious enough that President Joe Biden is reportedly considering offering Fauci a preemptive pardon.

Trump has said he has appointed Kennedy to “go wild” on U.S. health. The phrase is well chosen. When it comes to medical care and medical science in the unfolding second Trump administration, we’re entering a wild time and a dark age. Among other things, Trump intends to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization on his first day in office. The WHO is a flawed international body that badly needs reform—but withdrawal will have potentially catastrophic effects on the battle to contain the next future global epidemic. In the United States and around the world, as happened with COVID, millions could die. We are less than a month away from opening a new chapter of Lysenkoism, American style.

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Extremism, Science, Trump

Whooping Cough Cases Soar; Health Officials Blame Decline in Vaccinations

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2025 //
3

Whooping cough is one of the diseases that had been virtually eliminated thanks to the development of effective vaccines. But with the rise in vaccine skepticism, whooping cough is on the rise. If RFK Jr. is confirmed as the nation’s Secretary of Health and human Services, we can expect the return of many once-vanquished diseases.

Sabrina Mali of The Washington Post reported a dramatic increase in cases of whooping cough:

Whooping cough continues to surge in the United States, with reported cases soaring to more than 32,000 this year — nearly five times the 6,500 cases recorded during the same period last year — marking the highest levels in a decade.
Health experts cite as main culprits for the increase waning vaccination rates and a loss of broad immunity tracing to coronavirus lockdown protocols.

The disease, caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis, is highly transmissible from person to person through the air. Because of their immature immune systems, infants younger than 1 year old are at highest risk of contracting whooping cough — also known as pertussis — and are at most significant risk of severe illness.

Vaccination rates with the DTaP shot — which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis — declined from March through September 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. But because people were following pandemic protocols such as masking and social distancing, cases did not soar. Some children who missed getting their shots during that period may never have received them, experts have said…

Health experts worry that the incoming administration could impede efforts to increase vaccination rates among vulnerable populations.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President-elect Donald Trump selected to lead HHS, will have significant influence over vaccine production and safety. Kennedy has been a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and many health experts express concerns that he could contribute to waning vaccination rates.

Although he has said he is not anti-vaccine, Kennedy has criticized the recommended list of childhood vaccines and promoted debunked claims about autism and vaccines.

Categories Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Science, Stupid

Editorial Cartoonist at Washington Post Quits After Her Cartoon Was Killed

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2025 //
25

Ann Telnaes, editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post since 2008, quit her job after one of her cartoons was censored by higher-ups. The cartoon at issue depicted tech and media billionaires paying obeisance and money to Donald Trump. The cartoon included portrayals of Mark Zuckerberg (META), Sam Altman (AI), Patrick Soon-Shiong (Los Angeles Times), and Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post. And, of course, Disney, which settled with Trump for $15 million rather than defend George Stephanopoulos in court. Each has given Trump $1 million or more to underwrite his inauguration. If Telnaes had waited a day, she would have added Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, to her list of suck-ups and sycophants.

The motto of the Washington Post is: “Democracy dies in darkness.” Conservative (but anti-Trump) lawyer George Conway wrote on BlueSky:

I guess the new slogan for the Washington Post ought to be:

“Newspapers die in cowardice.”

Ann Telnaes’ resignation is an act of courage that should inspire all of us to stand by our principles.

Telnaes wrote about her decision to resign on her Substack blog:

I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.

The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner. 

While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.

(rough of cartoon killed)

Over the years I have watched my overseas colleagues risk their livelihoods and sometimes even their lives to expose injustices and hold their countries’ leaders accountable. As a member of the Advisory board for the Geneva based Freedom Cartoonists Foundation and a former board member of Cartoonists Rights, I believe that editorial cartoonists are vital for civic debate and have an essential role in journalism. 

There will be people who say, “Hey, you work for a company and that company has the right to expect employees to adhere to what’s good for the company”. That’s true except we’re talking about news organizations that have public obligations and who are obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy. Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press— and trying to get in the good graces of an autocrat-in-waiting will only result in undermining that free press.

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness”.

Thank you for reading this.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Censorship, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Freedom of the Press, Media

Michigan: What Are Charter Schools Trying to Hide?

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2025 //
5

This article was written by Dr. Cassandra Ulrich, who served as president of the Michigan State Board of Education, and now is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.

Dr. Casandra Ulbrich is a former Michigan State Board of Education president (2014 – 2023). She is a member of the Network for Public Education Board of Directors Ulbrich has spent most of her career in higher education administration, currently serving as the Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Ulbrich began her career as a press secretary to the former U.S. House Democratic Whip David Bonior, acting as the official spokesperson for the Congressman. She has been recognized as one of Michigan’s 40 under 40 by Crain’s Detroit Business.

At the end of the 2023-2024 session, the House and Senate of Michigan took up bills to increase charter school transparency in a state where 70% of the schools are run by for-profits. Ultimately, the bills did not pass, but the problems persist. Below is the testimony given by Dr. Casandra Ulbrich, the former President of the Michigan Board of Education.

As the former President of the State Board of Education, I would like to commend the State Senate for taking the issue of financial transparency seriously. The bills before you today level the playing field by requiring charter schools, education management companies, and authorizers to demonstrate that they are responsible stewards of public dollars, just as traditional public schools are currently required to do.

Financial transparency is an essential element of accountability for all publicly funded institutions and a necessary component for an engaged citizenry. Absent timely and accurate financial data in a manner that is easily accessible and understood by the public, citizens lack the resources necessary to make informed decisions. Missing or misleading financial information removes a citizen’s ability to adequately determine the value of their public investments. Similarly, a charter school board that is denied this information cannot fulfill its oversight duty and its commitment to the citizens it serves.

This is particularly true for the K-12 public schools that educate approximately 1.3 million students in the State of Michigan, nearly 10 percent of whom attend a charter school. In 2022 – that year will be relevant during my testimony – Michigan Charter schools received roughly $1.4 billion in taxpayer funding. How this money is spent is often hidden from taxpayer view behind a wall of secrecy. One reason is that Michigan law allows charter school boards to contract out all the school’s services to a for-profit education management company that also assumes control of the school’s budget. This arrangement is known as a ‘sweeps’ contract in the charter school sector. Its name comes from the fact that nearly all of the school’s public dollars – anywhere from 95 percent to 100 percent – is ‘swept’ into a charter management company. Once that happens, that money is no longer reportable to the taxpayers who funded those dollars.

While the schools themselves must adhere to Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) laws, private, for-profit management companies themselves are not subject to FOIA. Therefore, when a management company assumes the vast majority, if not all, of the school’s budget, how that money is spent is legally hidden from public view.

For years, the charter lobby has argued that charter schools adhere to all applicable transparency laws. In most cases, they are correct. But, those laws fall far short of allowing taxpayers adequate oversight over the schools for which they fund.

In 2022, the State Board of Education used the Freedom of Information Act to identify and disclose the similarities and differences in financial reporting between traditional and charter school districts.

We sent FOIA requests to all school districts, both traditional and charter, in five Michigan counties. Of those districts, 112 were traditional school districts, representing over 551,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) student counts, and 166 were charter school districts, representing nearly 80,000 FTE student counts. For the charter districts, 117 (71%) used for-profit management companies, 19% used non-profit management companies, and 11% were self-managed. Individual district student counts ranged from a low of 71 to a high of more than 55,000 FTEs.

On January 5, 2022, each district received a FOIA from me as the President of the SBE. A second letter was sent to those who did not respond, and in some cases, a third letter was also sent. The FOIA request included five items:

  • Contracts for rental or lease of facilities.
  • Contracts for food service management or vended meals.
  • Contracts with custodial service vendors.
  • Contracts with lawn and grounds service vendors.
  • Contracts with educational service providers or education management
    companies.

The results demonstrated what we had assumed all along.

Following the third letter, 100% of traditional school districts responded to the FOIA request, while only 93% of charter districts responded. Seven percent of charter school districts didn’t even bother to respond to three Freedom of Information Requests from the State Board of Education.

When it came to facility contracts, Charter school districts were more likelyto submit facility rental or lease contracts. Sixty-eight percent, or 105, of charter districts submitted these contracts. Many charter districts lease their buildings from entities related to the management companies overseeing the schools.

A management company that also subleases its own facilities to the schools they manage raises obvious questions about conflicts of interest. It also allows the management company/facility owner to set lease terms that may be excessive. The State Board of Education FOIA did not address the market rates of each lease, but other states have identified this as an issue. For example, in 2012, the New York State Comptroller issued a report detailing how a Brooklyn charter school managed by National Heritage Academies approved a lease from a “related business” at a rate nearly $800,000 above market value, or $3.96 million more over the term of the five-year lease. The report also indicated that NHA refused to divulge financial records supporting expenses that it charged to the charter school. A 2019 Ohio Auditor report found similar examples in that state.

Another issue is that many charter management contracts also include a provision that allows the management company to own all property in the school, even though that property was most likely funded by taxpayers.

Food Service, Custodial, and Lawn Contracts

Charter school districts, particularly those managed by for-profit companies, were far less likely to share food, custodial or lawn contracts. In fact, these charter districts indicated they were not responsible for these contracts. This reflects the fact that many charter districts engage in “sweeps contracts.” Therefore, a common response among for-profit managed companies was to deny the State Board’s FOIA request related to these three contracts. The FOIA coordinator responded, “Your request for information contained in bullets 2 through 4 is denied because the Academy does not (i) contract for food service management or vended meals, (ii) contract with custodial service vendors, or (iii) contract with lawn and grounds service vendors. Instead, the Academy contracts for the above services through a third-party management company by way of an educational management agreement and, thus, the Academy is not a party to the service contracts.” (S. Wilson, personal communication, January 14, 2022).

Financial Disclosures

One thing that became evident through the FOIA process was the vast differences in detailed financial disclosures. All districts, regardless of charter or traditional, are required by statute to submit annual comprehensive financial data (MCL 388.1618(5) and a financial audit report (MCL 388.1618(4). While the reports tend to be detailed for traditional school districts, this is not the case for charter districts. Most PSAs report most of their current operating expenditures as“purchased services” through their management company. The management companies, themselves, are not required to report detailed information. As a private vendor, there is no statutory requirement for management companies to submit financial reports to the state.

It’s important to note that, with limited exceptions, traditional school districts are not permitted by law to contract for instructional services. On the other hand, many charter school districts contract with a management company for all or most of these services. According to a state board of education resolution, in FY21, 90.4% of charter schools reported that more than 50% of the school’s current operating expenditures were spent on purchased services (totaling $1.3 billion in purchased services), resulting in those expenditures not being reported and audited with the same level of detail provided for expenditures of traditional school districts, and not subject to public disclosure under FOIA” (MI State Board of Education, 2022).

Financial Reporting

Michigan school districts provide financial information to the state via the Financial Information Database (FID). Data submitted to the FID includes financial reports, revenues, and expenditures. However, what is reported looks very different depending on the type of district and their management contracts, leading to greater disparity between traditional and charter school districts. Under current reporting requirements, the costs for services provided to charter districts under a management agreement are often aggregated under “purchased services” and therefore lack any detailed information.

As a result of this method of reporting, it is nearly impossible to make any kind of accurate comparisons of financial spending. And, since management companies are not subject to the same financial reporting and audit requirements as districts, taxpayers have no way of knowing if their investments are being spent appropriately or if those dollars are being spent in an illegal or
inappropriate manner. In my role on the State Board of Education, I have heard many anecdotal examples of this happening, but absent real transparency laws, there is no way of holding bad actors accountable for their actions. Not only is this inappropriate for a public entity, but it also serves as a stain on all charter schools, including those that are acting in good faith and are truly interested in
providing quality education for children.

The bills before you today alleviate many of the concerns that the State Board of Education has been raising over the last twenty years. Specifically, financial information will be available to the Boards that are charged with overseeing these schools, allowing them to do their jobs effectively. Financial
information will also be not only FOIA-able for the public but in many cases available on the school’s website. It will bring to light related party transactions and taxpayer overspending.

If we are truly interested in parents making choices for their children, they should have access to this information, as should taxpayers who are funding these schools.

For these reasons, the Charter School lobby should be the first in line tosupport these financial transparency laws that could demonstrate what they have been saying…that the vast majority of charter school operators are conducting themselves appropriately and to send a message to those who may not be.

Absent that, I would ask yourself, what do they have to hide?

Dr. Casandra Ulbrich is a former Michigan State Board of Education president (2014 – 2023). She is a member of the Network for Public Education Board of Directors Ulbrich has spent most of her career in higher education administration, currently serving as the Vice Chancellor for Institutional Advancement at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Ulbrich began her career as a press secretary to the former U.S. House Democratic Whip David Bonior, acting as the official spokesperson for the Congressman. She has been recognized as one of Michigan’s 40 under 40 by Crain’s Detroit Business.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit, Funding, Michigan

Heather Cox Richardson: MAGA Threatens the Ideals of Liberal Democracy

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2025 //
27

Heather Cox Richardson recalls the days of bipartisan consensus around the goals of liberal democracy, in which government protected the rights of individuals. By today’s MAGA standards, President Dwight D. Eisenhower would be considered a dangerous leftwinger.

She wrote on her blog, “Letters from an American”:

Cas Mudde, a political scientist who specializes in extremism and democracy, observed yesterday on Bluesky that “the fight against the far right is secondary to the fight to strengthen liberal democracy.” That’s a smart observation.

During World War II, when the United States led the defense of democracy against fascism, and after it, when the U.S. stood against communism, members of both major political parties celebrated American liberal democracy. Democratic presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower made it a point to emphasize the importance of the rule of law and people’s right to choose their government, as well as how much more effectively democracies managed their economies and how much fairer those economies were than those in which authoritarians and their cronies pocketed most of a country’s wealth.

Those mid-twentieth-century presidents helped to construct a “liberal consensus” in which Americans rallied behind a democratic government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. That government was so widely popular that political scientists in the 1960s posited that politicians should stop trying to court voters by defending its broadly accepted principles. Instead, they should put together coalitions of interest groups that could win elections.

As traditional Republicans and Democrats moved away from a defense of democracy, the power to define the U.S. government fell to a small faction of “Movement Conservatives” who were determined to undermine the liberal consensus. Big-business Republicans who hated regulations and taxes joined with racist former Democrats and patriarchal white evangelicals who wanted to reinforce traditional race and gender hierarchies to insist that the government had grown far too big and was crushing individual Americans.

In their telling, a government that prevented businessmen from abusing their workers, made sure widows and orphans didn’t have to eat from garbage cans, built the interstate highways, and enforced equal rights was destroying the individualism that made America great, and they argued that such a government was a small step from communism. They looked at government protection of equal rights for racial, ethnic, gender, and religious minorities, as well as women, and argued that those protections both cost tax dollars to pay for the bureaucrats who enforced equal rights and undermined a man’s ability to act as he wished in his place of business, in society, and in his home. The government of the liberal consensus was, they claimed, a redistribution of wealth from hardworking taxpayers—usually white and male—to undeserving marginalized Americans.

When voters elected Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Movement Conservatives’ image of the American government became more and more prevalent, although Americans never stopped liking the reality of the post–World War II government that served the needs of ordinary Americans. That image fed forty years of cuts to the post–World War II government, including sweeping cuts to regulations and to taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, always with the argument that a large government was destroying American individualism.

It was this image of government as a behemoth undermining individual Americans that Donald Trump rode to the presidency in 2016 with his promises to “drain the swamp” of Washington, D.C., and it is this image that is leading Trump voters to cheer on billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as they vow to cut services on which Americans depend in order to cut regulations and taxes once again for the very wealthy and corporations.

But that image of the American government is not the one on which the nation was founded.

Liberal democracy was the product of a moment in the 1600s in which European thinkers rethought old ideas about human society to emphasize the importance of the individual and his (it was almost always a “him” in those days) rights. Men like John Locke rejected the idea that God had appointed kings and noblemen to rule over subjects by virtue of their family lineage, and began to explore the idea that since government was a social compact to enable men to live together in peace, it should rest not on birth or wealth or religion, all of which were arbitrary, but on natural laws that men could figure out through their own experiences.

The Founders of what would become the United States rested their philosophy on an idea that came from Locke’s observations: that individuals had the right to freedom, or “liberty,” including the right to consent to the government under which they lived. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

In the early years of the American nation, defending the rights of individuals meant keeping the government small so that it could not crush a man through taxation or involuntary service to the government or arbitrary restrictions. The Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—explicitly prohibited the government from engaging in actions that would hamper individual freedom.

But in the middle of the nineteenth century, Republican president Abraham Lincoln began the process of adjusting American liberalism to the conditions of the modern world. While the Founders had focused on protecting individual rights from an overreaching government, Lincoln realized that maintaining the rights of individuals required government action.

To protect individual opportunity, Lincoln argued, the government must work to guarantee that all men—not just rich white men—were equal before the law and had equal access to resources, including education. To keep the rich from taking over the nation, he said, the government must keep the economic playing field between rich and poor level, dramatically expand opportunity, and develop the economy.

Under Lincoln, Republicans reenvisioned liberalism. They reworked the Founders’ initial stand against a strong government, memorialized by the Framers in the Bill of Rights, into an active government designed to protect individuals by guaranteeing equal access to resources and equality before the law for white men and Black men alike. They enlisted the power of the federal government to turn the ideas of the Declaration of Independence into reality.

Under Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, progressives at the turn of the twentieth century would continue this reworking of American liberalism to address the extraordinary concentrations of wealth and power made possible by industrialization. In that era, corrupt industrialists increased their profits by abusing their workers, adulterating milk with formaldehyde and painting candies with lead paint, dumping toxic waste into neighborhoods, and paying legislators to let them do whatever they wished.

Those concerned about the survival of liberal democracy worried that individuals were not actually free when their lives were controlled by the corporations that poisoned their food and water while making it impossible for individuals to get an education or make enough money ever to become independent.

To restore the rights of individuals, progressives of both parties reversed the idea that liberalism required a small government. They insisted that individuals needed a big government to protect them from the excesses and powerful industrialists of the modern world. Under the new governmental system that Theodore Roosevelt pioneered, the government cleaned up the sewage systems and tenements in cities, protected public lands, invested in public health and education, raised taxes, and called for universal health insurance, all to protect the ability of individuals to live freely without being crushed by outside influences.

Reformers sought, as Roosevelt said, to return to “an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.”

It is that system of government’s protection of the individual in the face of the stresses of the modern world that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and the presidents who followed them until 1981 embraced. The post–World War II liberal consensus was the American recognition that protecting the rights of individuals in the modern era required not a weak government but a strong one.

When Movement Conservatives convinced followers to redefine “liberal” as an epithet rather than a reflection of the nation’s quest to defend the rights of individuals—which was quite deliberate—they undermined the central principle of the United States of America. In its place, they resurrected the ideology of the world the American Founders rejected, a world in which an impoverished majority suffers under the rule of a powerful few.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, History, Trump

Joyce Vance: E. Jean Carroll Wins Again!

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2024 //
6

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance explains in plain English the latest court case that Trump lost.

His lawyers appealed a decision awarding E. Jean Carroll $5 million, claiming that the trial judge erred by allowing admission of evidence about previous accusations of sexual assault by other women, as well as the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Trump’s appeal.

After I read the post below, I asked a friend who is a lawyer whether Trump could evade accountability by pardoning himself, and she replied, “No, the President can pardon only criminal convictions, and this is a civil conviction.”

Joyce Vance explains:

After an inexplicable delay, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion, affirming the jury verdict in the first of E. Jean Carroll’s two defamation cases to go to trial against Donald Trump (for those of you who followed closely, you’ll recall this was actually “Carroll II,” the second of the cases Carroll filed, but it made it to trial first for reasons discussed here.)

Trump Unleashes on E. Jean Carroll While Attending Defamation Trial

At the start of it’s 79 page opinion, the court recites that “after a nine-day trial, a jury found that plaintiff-appellee E. Jean Carroll was sexually abused by defendant-appellant Donald J. Trump at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in 1996. The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed her in statements he made in 2022. The jury awarded Ms. Carroll a total of $5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.” 

The Second Circuit’s decision today does not involve the other case, where Carroll was awarded $83.3 million by a second jury. That happened in large part because Trump, after losing the first go-round, was simply incapable of letting it drop and continued to defame Carroll, including in a CNN town hall the day after the $5 million verdict.

The most important part first: The court ruled in Carroll’s favor, finding that Trump failed to show that the trial court committed errors that entitled him to a new trial. This is the final word in the Second Circuit’s view. Trump can ask the full court to rehear the case en banc, which it is unlikely to do. Or, he can petition the Supreme Court for certiorari review. But the Supreme Court doesn’t have to take the case and, in fact, it would be surprising if it did. 

If that topline from the case is enough for you, stop here. But if you want more, I’ve read the entire opinion, and I have some hot takes for you. Yes, it’s a lot of legalese, but I think you’ll find it worth your time. (And if you’re done here, do skip down five paragraphs and read the two starting with “In it’s recitation of the case,” because whether it’s intentional or not, the court has something to say about why E. Jean Carroll didn’t come forward for years.)

Keep in mind that as the court is careful to say, in an appeal like this, it’s required to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiff—that’s E. Jean Carroll—so the legal assumption the court proceeds with is that her version of the facts is accurate. This is the legal device used in an appeal of this nature: the Court of Appeals is evaluating the verdict and whether it can stand, assuming Carroll’s version of events, which the jury accepted, is true. Even with that in mind, the court’s recitation and evaluation of the evidence is a timely reminder of who the next president of the United States that is worth reviewing, even if you’re already thoroughly disgusted.

This appeal is primarily about whether the trial court erred when it admitted certain types of evidence at trial (see below), and in our legal system, those decisions are committed to the sound discretion of the trial judge and are only reversed if there is an abuse of that discretion. The Court of Appeals put it this way, “We accord ‘great deference’ to a district court, however, in ruling ‘as to the relevancy and unfair prejudice of proffered evidence, mindful that it sees the witnesses, the parties, the jurors, and the attorneys, and is thus in a superior position to evaluate the likely impact of the evidence.’” It is the trial court’s unique opportunity to eyeball the evidence and the witnesses during trial that puts it in the best position to make these calls.

Trump complained that Judge Kaplan improperly admitted certain types of evidence at trial. The Court of Appeals found there was no abuse of discretion and affirmed the verdict and award of damages to E. Jean Carroll.

There is nothing unique or novel in this case beyond the identity of the defendant. There is nothing to take it beyond the realm of the thousands of cases where decisions made by the courts of appeals across the country stand as a final decision every year. This decision should be the end of this case. If the Supreme does decide to take it, that, even in this era, would be a shocking abuse and indication of special treatment for Trump. 

It takes four Justices votes for the Court to agree to hear a case. Of the 7,000-8,000 cert petitions filed each term, the Court typically hears about 80 of them. Fact based questions about whether a trial judge abused their discretion in admitting evidence that demonstrates intent, motive, pattern of behavior, and so forth—evidence that is frequently used in cases—typically doesn’t rise to that level.

In its recitation of the facts of the case, the court seems to grasp something that Donald Trump never did, and that society at large often misses. Trump claimed Carroll made the whole thing up, that she wouldn’t have waited so long to tell the story if it was true. Of course, Carroll did tell two of her closest friends at the time, but she never went to the police. One of her friends had cautioned her: Trump was too powerful; it would end her career. It’s an all too familiar story for women.

Here is the court’s take: “While conducting interviews for a book that she was writing in 2017, the accounts of assaults perpetrated by Harvey Weinstein came to light and received nationwide attention. As a consequence of the many women who came forward to report their experiences of sexual assault, Ms. Carroll finally decided to share more broadly what Mr. Trump had done to her in 1996.” Me too was a watershed moment for so many women. It was for E. Jean Carroll too. In an era where women have faced taunts of “your body, my choice” in the wake of the election, we might want to stay focused on what women have gained—and lost—in recent American history.

In discussing the trial judge’s decision to permit Carroll’s lawyer to put on evidence of other alleged sexual assaults committed by Trump, the Court of Appeals writes, “Rules 413 and 415 permit a jury to consider evidence of a different sexual assault ‘precisely to show that a defendant has a pattern or propensity for committing sexual assault.’” They continue, “Congress ‘considered knowledge that the defendant has committed [sexual assault] on other occasions to be critical in assessing the relative plausibility of sexual assault claims and accurately deciding cases that would otherwise become unresolvable swearing matches.’ … ‘[T]he practical effect of Rule 413 [and Rules 414 and 415] is to create a presumption that evidence of prior sexual assaults is relevant and probative’ in cases based on sexual assault.”

A trial judge has the ability to prevent a jury from hearing evidence of prior sexual assaults if the value of the evidence in proving the plaintiff’s case is outweighed by undue prejudice to the defendant. That doesn’t mean that any prejudice is enough to keep the evidence out—all good evidence offered at trial is prejudicial, in the sense that it helps prove that one of the parties did or said something that they are being sued for. The question is whether there is unfair prejudice.

The court relates the evidence Carroll’s lawyers used at trial and concludes that all of it was properly admitted:

  • Jessica Leeds was assaulted on an airplane by Trump in 1978 or 1979 after he had a flight attendant invite her to come sit with him in first class. Leeds testified, “he was trying to kiss me, he was trying to pull me towards him. He was grabbing my breasts, he was — it’s like he had 40 zillion hands, and it was a tussling match between the two of us. And it was when he started putting his hand up my skirt that that kind of gave me a jolt of strength, and I managed to wiggle out of the seat and I went storming back to my seat in the coach.” Leeds acknowledged the groping and patting women frequently endured in that era, but testified, “when somebody starts to put their hand up your skirt, you know they’re serious and this is not good.”
  • Natasha Stoynoff testified that, in December 2005, she was areporter for People magazine on assignment at Mar-a-Lago to do a story about Trump and Melania’s one-year anniversary and the birth of Barron Trump. Donald Trump took Stoynoff to a room where he said he wanted to show her a painting. She testified, “I hear the door shut behind me. And by the time I turn around, he has his hands on my shoulders and he pushes me against the wall and starts kissing me, holding me against the wall.” Trump was interrupted when his Butler walked in, but he told Stoynoff afterward that they were going to have “an affair” and told her to remember what his second wife, Marla Maples, had said about him, “best sex she has ever had.” 
  • The infamous Access Hollywood tape was played twice for the jury. In the recording, Mr. Trump states that he “moved on” a woman named Nancy “like a bitch” and “did try and fuck her.” The first block below is what Trump says in the tape, as related by the court. The second one is Trump’s deposition testimony about it (the same deposition where he misidentified a photo of Carroll at the time as one of his second wife, Maples):

Here’s what the court has to say about this evidence adding up to show a pattern of sexual assault by Trump: “In each of the three encounters [Leeds, Stoynoff, and Carroll], Mr. Trump engaged in an ordinary conversation with a woman he barely knew, then abruptly lunged at her in a semi-public place and proceeded to kiss and forcefully touch her without her consent. The acts are sufficiently similar to show a pattern or ‘recurring modus operandi.’ … Moreover, the [Access Hollywood] tape was ‘directly corroborative’ of the testimony of Ms. Carroll, Ms. Leeds, and Ms. Stoynoff as to the pattern of behavior each allegedly experienced, and ‘the matter corroborated’ was one of the most ‘significant’ in the case — whether the assault of Ms. Carroll actually occurred.” On the question of undue prejudice, the court concludes, “we also find that the other act evidence was not unfairly prejudicial, as the incidents in question were ‘no more sensational or disturbing’ than the acts that Ms. Carroll alleged Mr. Trump to have committed against her.” The jury was entitled to hear all of this evidence against Trump.

Trump also objects to areas the trial judge didn’t permit his lawyers to go into in front of the jury, including why she never DNA tested her decades-old dress and why she didn’t file a police report. Using the same standard, the Court of Appeals concluded the trial judge did not abuse his discretion when he excluded this evidence.

So there you have it. The next president of the United States of America. A timely reminder.

As I’m writing this, the opinion is still only available on Pacer, the U.S. Court’s ridiculously expensive documents system. Unfortunately, that means I can’t link to it now, but I’ll update as soon as it’s available publicly. Taxpayers fund the courts, and they are well-funded. There is no reason the document system shouldn’t be available free of charge to everyone—open courts, and all that.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Evil, Justice, Trump

Scott Maxwell: Where I Stand, What I Believe

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2024 //
6

Scott Maxwell is an opinion writer for The Orlando Sentinel. I consistently enjoy his writings. Here he explains what he believes. I agree with him, although I am not a Presbyterian.

He writes:

Every new year, I follow a tradition started by former Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese who believed that, if a newspaper columnist is going to tell you what he thinks all year long, he should first tell you who he is and where he stands.

I am a married father with two grown kids, both of whom picked up their best attributes from their mother.

I’m not a Republican nor a Democrat. I’m a lifelong unaffiliated voter who has seen too many people defend indefensible deed-doers simply because they share a party affiliation.

That said, I lean left of center. I believe in public education, free speech, equal rights, balanced budgets and the U.S. Constitution.

I believe most of the politicians who lead this state and claim to be constitutionalists are full of it. We have the court rulings to prove it.

I believe censorship is favored by those with weak minds. If you crave government censorship, you’re an authoritarian’s dream disciple.

I think the world has two kinds of people: Those who hear an idea and immediately think: How will this affect me? And those who hear a new idea and also wonder: How will this affect society? I have a lot more respect for the latter.

One of my favorite quotes involves the definition of privilege — when something doesn’t strike you as a problem because it’s not a problem to you. I believe that explains why families with disabilities are on seven-year-waiting lists for basic services in this state.

Another one of my favorite quotes is: Fifty percent of the enjoyment you get from a vacation comes from the anticipation beforehand. My wife and I always have several vacations planned.

We love our children. I’d throw myself in front of a bus for either one. That said, now that they’re both grown, I’m glad that any buses they might take nowadays will drop them off at their own respective homes. My wife and I have fully embraced being empty-nesters.

Our daughter works with children in the arts. Our son writes and also substitute teaches. Both of our kids are good with kids. We take great pride in that.

I believe teachers are underappreciated. So are social workers, public defenders and full-time caregivers.

I believe arts and culture are an essential part of any community. So are nonprofit organizations. If cultural groups are the heart of a community, nonprofits represent the backbone.

My wife and I have two main sources of income — my salary at the newspaper and hers with the Department of Veterans Affairs. We’ve worked at both jobs for the past quarter century. Her job is a lot more stable.

We both read voraciously. She reads books — at least two a week. I read lengthy court rulings, drafted legislation and just about every piece of current-event info published about Florida.

We also diverge a bit when it comes to film. She likes Hallmark movies where a busy, big-city boss lady stumbles into a small town and discovers love on a Christmas tree farm. I like ridiculous, scary movies where the big-city boss lady stumbles into giant insects that have mutated in size thanks to toxic sludge dumped in that small town’s water reservoir.

My wife says her book and movie tastes are more normal. She’s usually right. About most things in life.

We own two houses — the one in which we live near downtown Orlando and our starter home that we still own and rent out in Seminole County.

I don’t have or accept any other streams of income. Mainly because I try to avoid financial conflicts of interest. But also because I find my one job pretty exhausting.

I start most days by 4 a.m. and work 60 to 80 hours a week, partly because our newsroom has only a fraction of the journalists and editors it used to have.

This newspaper business has changed a lot, in many ways for the worse when it comes to staffing and customer service. But I still believe in the mission and am honored to work alongside feisty, smart and curious  journalists who aren’t easily intimidated, virtually all of whom are still in local journalism because they care about this community.

I’m also honored to work for a paper with editors and publishers who have never — ever — told me what I can or can’t write.

I welcome dissenting opinions. In fact, I seek them out. When I’m writing a column, I usually spend as much time looking up arguments against my premise as I do ones that support it. I’d much rather hear the best arguments before I publish a piece.

I don’t worship any politician and am a bit puzzled by those who do. I’ve yet to meet one who was flawless. I respect elected officials who truly study the issues, question what they’re told and are willing to challenge the status quo.

I believe in checks and balances and that one-party control is a recipe for both extremism and corruption.

I’m a Presbyterian and church elder, a die-hard Tar Heel, a decent poker player, solid Worldler and much less-solid pickleball player.

I love laughter and plot twists and loathe bigotry and standing in lines.

I think Tesla Cybertrucks look ridiculous.

I feel privileged to have this job and honored to know so many of you read and share your own stories with me.

I hope you all have a happy, healthy new year.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Censorship, Character, Civil Rights, Democracy, Ethics, Justice

The “DOGE Commission” and Its Conflicts of Interest

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2024 //
14

Trump created an advisory group called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. It is an advisory commission, not a “department.” It has no official mandate. Musk claims it will cut the federal budget by $2 trillion, though he hasn’t said whether that’s a cut in by the annual budget or a cut over years.

Musk has billions in federal contracts, so his participation in this exercise raises questions about his conflicts of interest and whether he will injure his competitors.

Three ethics experts wrote an article for MSNBC about the conflicted role that Musk has. They are: Virginia Canter, chief anticorruption counsel, State Democracy Defenders Fund, Richard W. Painter, MSNBC Columnist and Gabe Lezra, policy director for State Democracy Defenders Fund.

The so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” is officially a mere advisory commission. But DOGE is nevertheless poised to help restructure the federal government and perhaps upend decades of regulation of everything from vehicle safety to space exploration. Co-chair Elon Musk is one of the most politically powerful private citizens in the country, as evidenced by his role in the recent budget crisis in Washington. Through his wealth and his ownership of X, he has enormous influence over President-elect Donald Trump, lawmakers in Congress and the national narrative.

Musk’s clout and his role as DOGE co-chair are even more significant given the billions of dollars in federal contracts held by his various companies and the array of federal agencies that regulate those companies. Americans are entitled to know about his communications and activities with the federal government before he and Trump go about overhauling it. That’s why our organization, the State Democracy Defenders Fund, has begun our inquiry into DOGE by filing Freedom of Information Act requests across the federal government.

As leaders of a federal advisory committee, Musk and his co-chair, Vivek Ramaswamy, plan to serve as “outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. As such, they will not be bound by conflict-of-interest law binding federal employees. But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 says that such groups must operate with transparency and allow public participation. Our inquiry about Musk’s interests before the federal government is part of the transparency that is required for DOGE to instill public confidence rather than sow distrust.

In announcing the creation of DOGE, Trump wrote that the commission would pave the way for his administration to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” Musk’s companies receive billions of dollars in government contracts. DOGE’s broad mandatecould give Musk vast sway over the very same agencies that administer those contracts, as well as agencies investigating his companies.

The scope of the potential problem we are facing is immense. Musk’s companies have been the subject of more than a dozen federal investigationsor reviews with various agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service, the National Labor Relations Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, among others.

Most recently, Musk reportedly failed to secure from the Air Force “high-level security access” due to “potential security risks,” and he and SpaceX reportedly “triggered” at least three federal reviews for noncompliance with federal reporting protocols in place to ensure the protection of state secrets. Accordingly, we’ve sent our requests for records to all of these agencies — and the agencies with which he or his companies appear to have (or have had) contracts, including NASA, the U.S. Space Force, the Department of Defense, the Air Force and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The possible conflicts of interest are too many to enumerate. The “de facto monopoly” that Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX has on rocket launches should raise flags at the Federal Trade Commission — an agency that is already in Musk’s crosshairs. Even minor changes in an agency’s enforcement priorities or procurement policies could cost — or make — Musk tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. And given the sheer array of Musk-owned companies, decisions affecting competitors are almost inevitable. Earlier this month, Ramaswamy said that DOGE is already looking at a Department of Energy loan to one of Tesla’s rivals, Rivian Automotive.

The mere appearance of conflict in government can quickly undermine the public’s confidence in its government.

A series of press reports indicate that Musk and Ramaswamy have already begun work on DOGE: They’ve been meeting with government officials, developing DOGE’s priorities and targets, and recruiting other technology executives to join the department. They’ve even launched a podcast. Musk has solicited applications on X (formerly Twitter) to join DOGE, with applicants expected to put in 80-hour weeks doing “tedious work…& compensation is zero.”

That is why we are beginning our investigation now, a month before the beginning of the new Trump administration. Presidential transitions have extensive contacts with the agencies the new administration will be taking over. If Musk, Ramaswamy or their agents are beginning to work on projects that could benefit them, the public must know.

The mere appearance of conflict in government can quickly undermine the public’s confidence in its government. Absent strong ethics controls and adequate oversight mechanisms, Musk’s participation in regulatory and other executive policy decisions could lead Americans to question whether his recommendations are truly in their interest — or in his financial interest.

If DOGE’s work has indeed begun, transparency must begin as well. Its leaders’ and agents’ communications with federal agencies are obviously in the public interest. They offer the first glimpse into how Musk and Ramaswamy may use DOGE to attempt to restructure the government — and the extent to which those plans may benefit DOGE’s leaders. Without these records, the public will remain in the dark as Musk and Ramaswamy begin this project, and will therefore not be able to assess whether DOGE will serve the nation — or the interests of a privileged few.

Categories Accountability, Competition, Corruption, Ethics, Musk, Elon, Trump

President Biden: Tribute to President Jimmy Carter

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2024 //
7

In President Joe Biden’s tribute to President Jimmy Carter, there is an implicit contrast with the man who will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. Just take every self-evident statement about Carter’s integrity, honor, and humanity, and flip it to its opposite extreme. You will have a portrait of 47: a man who never donned the uniform of his country; a man who never did an unselfish act for anyone else; a man whose business career was noted for bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits, and unpaid bills; a man known for serial lies; a man who has been married three times and cheated on all his wives. A man whose name is synonymous with lying, cheating, greed, and selfishness.

Now, read about the other extreme: a man who devoted his life to his country and service to others. President Jimmy Carter. A man who had a lifelong devotion to his wife. A man who sent his only child Amy to public schools in D.C. when he was President.

President Biden released this statement:

Today, America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman, and humanitarian.


Over six decades, we had the honor of calling Jimmy Carter a dear friend. But, what’s extraordinary about Jimmy Carter, though, is that millions of people throughout America and the world who never met him thought of him as a dear friend as well.


With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless, and always advocate for the least among us. He saved, lifted, and changed the lives of people all across the globe.


He was a man of great character and courage, hope and optimism. We will always cherish seeing him and Rosalynn together. The love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism.


We will miss them both dearly, but take solace knowing they are reunited once again and will remain forever in our hearts.


To the entire Carter family, we send our gratitude for sharing them with America and the world. To their staff – from the earliest days to the final ones – we have no doubt that you will continue to do the good works that carry on their legacy.


And to all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility. He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people – decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong (love this line).


To honor a great American, I will be ordering an official state funeral to be held in Washington D.C. for James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th President of the United States, 76th Governor of Georgia, Lieutenant of the United States Navy, graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and favorite son of Plains, Georgia, who gave his full life in service to God and country.

Categories Character, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Ethics, Goodness, Justice, Love
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