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Rick Perlstein: Texas is a Fascist State

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2024 //
7

Rick Perlstein writes in The American Prospect about a conversation with a friend who is a journalist in Texas. His friend describes how his native state is run by men who are determined to stamp out every last vestige of democracy in Texas. The Republican Party keeps moving to the extreme and crushing reasonableness and sanity. The result is a fascist state where all power is concentrated in the hands of Gregg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and far-right fascists.

Perlstein writes:

I made a friend a few years back, a young journalist at a newspaper in a smaller Texas city, bored with his work and seeking out conversation on the kind of things I write about. As time went on, however, he just wanted to talk about escape. “A local city I cover, as a matter of habit, appeals every single public records request,” went a typical plaint. “In a state that hasn’t completely lost its mind, maybe the solution is to reach out to the AG’s office. Except in Texas, you’re trying to get an indicted man who might have helped with January 6 to act on behalf of the public.”

At the end of that year, he approached me on the horns of a dilemma: take a job offer as a beat reporter at a daily in a big Texas city, or quit journalism and find some job at a do-gooder nonprofit. The guy’s dog was named “Molly Ivins.” I told him I didn’t think he had much choice. Alas, he took this graybeard’s advice. Things since have been hardly more rewarding.

One day: “Working on a deep dive into how the state of Texas fails to protect intellectually disabled people from predatory guardians. Depressing stuff.”

Another day: “A thing that really irks me about covering conservative dustups is how profoundly dishonest the whole thing is … When it comes time to write, you have two options. Either cut through the BS and call it what it is; then they’ll tell you you’re just biased. Or you can try to finesse it and sound insane.”

Another: “I also just finished a story about how domestic violence homicides are through the roof in Texas (even as overall homicide rates have declined), but we don’t have the infrastructure to really know how bad conditions have become. It turns out when you turn women into second-class citizens and make guns easily accessible, that doesn’t go well.”

A couple of weeks back, he shared with me a dark epiphany: He no longer felt hope. Thought it might be high time to get the hell out of his native state forever. He asked if there was anything out there that gave me hope. Having reached the “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown” stage of my relationship with the United States (in part thanks to his testimony from the front lines), I had no comfort to offer.

I did, however, have a suggestion. He could tell me about what all this was like. I could let you listen in. Forthwith, an edited and annotated transcript of my conversation with a man I’ll call Lonely Star. Though it’s not so much that he’s lonely; he has manyanguished compatriots who feel the same way. It’s just that they feel like there’s less they can do about it with every passing day.

Please open the link and read their conversation. It’s enlightening and frightening.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Texas, Vouchers

Forced Birth Laws Are Religious and Thus Violate the Constitution

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2024 //
10

Florida’s six-week ban on abortion went into effect today.

A reader who calls him/herself Quickwrit posted the following excellent thoughts about anti-abortion laws:

THE NINTH AMENDMENT that gives Clarence Thomas the constitutional right to live in an interracial marriage also gives women the constitutional right to abortion: The 9th Amendment says that rights, like the right to interracial marriage and the right to abortion, do not have to be stated in the Constitution in order to be constitutional rights because The Ninth Amendment says: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The current Supreme Court ruling on abortion not only violates the 9th Amendment, it violates the religious rights of many citizens. The ruling is supportive of the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church to which the six majority Justices belong.

The Bible gives commandments on a very, very long list of more than 600 laws on everything from divorce to gluttony or stealing — yet the Bible says nothing about abortion. Why is that? If abortion was even as important as gluttony and stealing, it would have been mentioned in the Bible.

Out of more than 600 laws of Moses, which includes the 10 Commandments, NONE — not one — comments on abortion. In fact, the Mosaic law in Exodus 21:22-25 clearly shows that causing the abortion of a fetus is NOT MURDER. Exodus 21:22-25 says that if a woman has a miscarriage as the result of an altercation with a man, the man who caused miscarriage should only pay a fine that is to be determined by the woman’s husband, but if the woman dies, the man is to be executed: “If a man strives with a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet there is no harm to the woman, he shall be punished according to what the woman’s husband determines and he shall pay as the judges determine.” So, the miscarriage is treated like the destruction of property, not murder.

There are Christian denominations that allow abortion in most instances; these Christian denominations include the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church USA. The United Methodist Church and Episcopal churches allow abortion in cases of medical necessity, and the United Universalist Association also allows abortion.

Most of the opposition to abortion comes from fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who believe that a full-fledged human being is created at the instant of conception. But that is a religious BELIEF and religious beliefs cannot be recognized by the government under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of our Constitution. Moreover, the belief that a fetus is a human person, complete with a soul, is a Christian interpretation of the Jewish Bible — the Old Testament. But, Jewish scholars whose ancestors wrote the Old Testament and who know best what the words mean say that is a wrong interpretation of their writings.

Christians largely base their view that a fetus is a complete human being and that abortion is murder on the Jewish Bible’s Psalm 139: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb…You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born.”

But who better to translate the accurate meaning of Psalm 139 than the Jews who wrote it? And Jewish scholars point out that Psalm 139 merely describes the development of a fetus and does not mean that the fetus has a soul and is a person. In fact, the Jewish Talmud explains that for the first 40 days of a woman’s pregnancy, the fetus is considered “mere fluid” and is just part of the mother’s body, like an appendix or liver. Only after the fetus’s head emerges from the womb at birth is the baby considered a “nefesh” – Hebrew for “soul” or “spirit” – a human person.

The idea that full-fledged human life begins at conception is a sectarian religious belief that isn’t held by the majority of religions, including a number of mainstream Christian religions.

Therefore, any local, state, or federal law that holds that full-fledged human life begins at conception is unconstitutional because such laws are made in recognition of an establishment of religion and violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

THE COURT BENDS THE FACTS: The University of London scientist whose research is cited by the Supreme Court in its ruling to take away abortion rights says that his research has been misinterpreted by Justice Alito and the Supreme Court’s activist conservative majority. Neuroscientist Dr. Giandomenico Iannetti says that the Court is ABSOLUTELY WRONG to say that his research shows that a fetus can feel pain when it is less than 24 weeks of development. “My results by no means imply that,” Dr. Iannetti declares. “I feel they were used in a clever way to make a point.” And Dr. John Wood, molecular neurobiologist at the University, points out that all serious scientists agree that a fetus can NOT feel pain until at least 24 weeks “and perhaps not even then.” Dr. Vania Apkarian, head of the Center for Transitional Pain Research at Chicago’s Feinberg School of Medicine, says that the medical evidence on a fetus not feeling pain before 24 weeks or longer has not changed in 50 years and remains “irrefutable”.

LIFE OF WOE: In its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling upholding abortion rights, the Supreme Court set “viability” — the point at which a fetus can survive outside of the womb — as the dividing line after which some restrictions can be imposed on abortion rights. The pending ruling by current activist conservative majority on the Court will do away with the concept of viability, yet even with all of today’s medical miracles to keep a prematurely born or aborted fetus alive, of all the tens of thousands of cases, 90% OF FETUSES BORN AT 22 WEEKS DO NOT SURVIVE, and data shows that the majority of those that manage to be kept alive live the rest of their lives with a combination of BIRTH DEFECTS that include mental impairment, cerebral palsy, breathing problems, blindness, deafness, and other disorders that often require frequent hospitalizations during their lifetimes.

Categories Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Gender, Religion

Greg Olear: Jared Kushner’s Ties to the National Enquirer

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2024 //
3

Greg Olear noticed Jared Kushner’s new role as a financier and his success at staying far, far away from his father-in-law’s trial in New York City. He also noticed that Jared had replaced Michael Cohen as Trump’s liaison with David Pecker and the National Enquirer. Naturally, he wonders why Jared is not being called to testify.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Character, Elections, Ethics, Trump

Florida: Should These Children Live or Die?

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2024 //
7

Scott Maxwell, columnist for The Orlando Sentinel, wrote about the state’s callous indifference to the neediest of the state’s children. These are the children who are not included in Ron DeSantis’s commitment to “right to life.” He cared about them when they were fetuses but neglects them now. Their lives don’t matter.

Maxwell writes:

Last week, the Orlando Sentinel shared a gut-wrenching story about the parents of some of this state’s sickest children either losing Medicaid coverage or bracing for losses.

Keep in mind: We’re not talking about kids with sniffles and headaches, but toddlers with traumatic brain injuries who need feeding tubes, wheelchairs and round-the-clock care. And kids who are nonverbal with challenges so severe that their parents take days off work just to care for them.

They are Florida’s most vulnerable residents.

The story was depressing, yet merely the latest in a long string of stories about various vulnerable populations. Consider other recent headlines:

https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2022/10/31/thousands-of-disabled-floridians-waiting-years-to-get-off-wait-list-for-help

https://www.wfla.com/8-on-your-side/just-help-me-get-my-kid-services-tampa-boy-with-autism-among-460k-florida-kids-kicked-off-medicaid/

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/670068-more-than-22k-children-dropped-from-florida-kidcare-in-2024-as-state-challenges-federal-eligiblity-protections/

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/15/1163617435/florida-is-1-of-11-states-declining-to-accept-federal-money-to-expand-medicaid

That last headline was actually from last year. Now, we’re one of only 10 states rejecting billions of federal dollars meant to help struggling families.

Each of those stories has its own complexities involving different segments of families in need. But I submit the common theme boils down to a single, soul-defining litmus test:

When you see a paralyzed or terminally ill child or an impoverished family, you either believe we have a collective, societal obligation to help them … or you don’t.

I submit this state has too many of the latter in charge. And too many people who just breeze past the dire headlines, because they have the luxury of doing so. Because they aren’t personally affected.

Like many of you, I was dealt a relatively good hand in life. My wife and I are healthy. So are our kids. But I still believe we have an obligation to care for those who aren’t, particularly those who can’t care for themselves.

I think most people agree. On tough issues — like abortion, taxes or the death penalty — reasonable people can reach different conclusions. But throughout time, most civilizations have agreed on this point.

In Florida, however, the state leaves children born with severe disabilities — without the ability to feed themselves or ever live on their own — languishing on waiting lists for services. The average wait is seven to 10 years. Some kids die before they’re served.

Again, either you think that’s OK or you don’t. The leaders of this state haven’t fully funded that Medicaid waiver program since Jeb Bush was in office.

Now, if you’re healthy and wealthy, the term “Medicaid waiver” may be unfamiliar. The health care landscape is littered with a dizzying array of jargon. There are Medicaid waivers, iBudgets, the Medikids program, Healthy Kids, the Children’s Medical Services Health Plan.

It all makes most people’s eyes glaze over. But each program serves a different population and has two common themes: Most are incredibly difficult to navigate. And most leave many people struggling to get the services they need … often by design.

Nowhere is that more evident than in this state’s steadfast refusal to accept federal dollars to expand Medicaid.

The expansion was created under the Affordable Care Act to provide coverage to millions more low-income Americans and hundreds of thousands more Floridians. A slew of organizations and think tanks have said Florida should do so for both moral and economic reasons.

Health care experts say it would save lives. Hospitals say it will create jobs. The Florida Chamber of Commerce says it will boost our economy by tens of billions of dollars.

GOP lawmakers, however, have steadfastly refused — as part of a decade-long tantrum against “Obamacare.” To hell with those who need coverage and for whom the money is there. These politicians say they’re unconvinced the program will work or that the state’s costs won’t rise.

But remember: Florida Republicans are an outlier. The vast majority of states — including dark red ones led by hard-core conservative leaders — have already accepted the money.

“It’s pro-life, it’s saving lives, it is creating jobs, it is saving hospitals,” Arizona’s former governor, Jan Brewer, said when she took the money back in 2013. “I don’t know how you can get any more conservative than that.”

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said: “We’re a compassionate state, and we’re not going to leave 220,000 people without some recourse.”

Florida Republicans, however, are fine with abandoning those low-income people. And sick kids. And those with profound disabilities. Re-read the headlines.

After reading all this, if you believe this state should do better by its most vulnerable residents, do me a favor, will you? Don’t send me an email telling me you agree. While I enjoy hearing from readers, I’m not the one who needs to hear this.

Send your thoughts to your state legislators. Or to the House speaker or Senate president. (Their contact info can be found at www.leg.state.fl.us) Or use the governor’s website at www.flgov.com/email-the-governor to share your thoughts there.

You can also ask them some basic questions.

Ask them if they believe it’s acceptable for 22,000 families with profound disabilities to face a 7- to 10-year wait for getting Medicaid waivers.

Ask if they believe the state did the right thing by removing 1.3 million people, including families with terminally sick children, from the state’s Medicaid roll.

Or just copy all those headlines above and ask: “Do you really believe all of this is OK?”

I’d like to believe most decent people don’t. But the headlines keep coming.

Categories DeSantis, Ethics, Florida, Health, Special Education

Rick Wilson: The “Both-Sides” Argument is Dangerous

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2024 //
11

Rick Wilson, a Never-Trump Republican and a founder of The Lincoln Project, warns about the danger of normalizing Trump:

I’m seeing a lot of traditional, DC “bothsides” reporting lately, arguing that this is at some level a “normal” election between a center-left Democratic party and a center-right Republican party.


This morning, Axios published a piece by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei titled “Behind the Curtain: America’s reality distortion machine,” which caused a stir in political media circles.


It leads out with a question: “Here’s a wild thought experiment: What if we’ve been deceived into thinking we’re more divided, more dysfunctional, and more defeated than we actually are?” and proceeds to make some pretty good arguments about why we’re not a dystopian hellscape. I think they missed the big point, and this piece will stand out as a Washington Normalcy Bias exemplar for a long time.


My friend Molly Jong-Fast lit them up on Morning Joe,
She had precisely the right response: “But you understand that the conventional framing elevates the autocrat.”


No, not every American — in fact, not even a majority — is locked in the day to day of political struggle. Yes, there are silos. Yes, the algorithmic hypnosis of social media is real.


I cede all those points. America is a nation filled with hundreds of millions of people who aren’t partisan jihadis, left or right. There really is a desire for basic decency, decoupled from political rage, induced or not.

They’re not wrong to make these points, and the America they describe is one we should crave—not being involved in politics every moment of the day is a luxury only present in stable democracies.


But they ignore the existential issue underpinning this all.


We aren’t in a nation where the sensible center will survive if Donald Trump wins.


Only one side of the political argument wants their president to govern like a dictator. Only one side believes that the President is above the law — if his name is Donald Trump. Only one side of the political equation mounted an armed attack on the United States Capitol.


Only one side has welcomed the “no enemies to our right” philosophy, which means their party winks and nods at the alt-reich, the white nationalists, and the rest of the Daily Stormer crowd. Only one side is banning books, diving deeply into the seas of culture war cruelty and persecution.


Only one side backs America’s enemies abroad and promises to hand Europe over to Vladimir Putin on a plate. I could recite the Bill of Condemnation all day, but you understand the point.


The political movement that embraces the aforementioned horrors is MAGA, and its sole leader is Donald Trump.

Once again, the world is playing chess, and Donald Trump is eating the pieces and crapping on the board, and instead of horror, the reaction is a shrug.


This isn’t a regular election with typical outcomes.


Ordinary people living ordinary lives who think politics doesn’t matter and that the world will go on as it has can’t grapple with what happens in a post-American Presidency. It seems a lot of Washington reporters can’t either.


Normalcy bias is the best friend of authoritarians. If you think the algo-driven bubble on social media is robust, nothing tops normalcy bias. This cognitive bias can play into the hands of authoritarian regimes or leaders in a few ways:


It plays to the natural tendency for people to underestimate the possibility of a disaster, dictator, or disruptive event coming to the fore. It lets people assume that things will continue as normal because they’ve always been that way. (Berlin, 1936, anyone?)


It lulls people into complacency: they assume things will continue as they always have, and like frogs boiling in a slow pot, they may fail to recognize creeping authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic norms and civil liberties until it’s too late.


It makes people—even people reporting on it professionally—miss clear signals that a movement or regime is becoming more authoritarian, even when its leaders lay out their plans in broad daylight.

Once you say, “It can’t happen here,” there’s a high likelihood it’s already happening.
The normalcy bias makes people slow to react and resist authoritarian encroachments because they don’t perceive the seriousness of the threat until it’s too late.


Normalcy bias also rears its ugly head after the damage is done. Authoritarian actions are emergencies, you see. “The Caravan! Antifa! Transing the kids!” demand temporary measures lulling citizens into acceptance of the worst…and the temporary measures seem to last forever.

People convinced that the current system is immutable are less likely to make contingency plans or organize resistance against potential authoritarianism taking root. Trust me, the Never Trump folks screaming into the void for the last decade can tell you all about this one.
It’s tempting to hope that societal inertia in the center will overcome the energy and danger on the MAGA flank.


It hasn’t, and it won’t.

Categories Bigotry, Cheating, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Bill Kristol: Reject the Mob, Every Mob

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2024 //
89

Bill Kristol is a Never Trumper who writes for The Bulwark. He reminds me of my conservative roots. I have always feared mobs. Once mobs form, it’s impossible to know what direction they will take and who is leading them. In the few times in my life that I inadvertently found myself stuck in a mob, I was terrified and got out as quickly as I could. There is something about a mob that is fundamentally in opposition to rationalism and the democratic temperament. Disagree with me if you wish, but please, be civil.

Kristol writes:

The AP reports on this week’s spring breakdown: 

Columbia canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at New York University and Yale, and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the public Monday as some of the most prestigious U.S. universities sought to defuse campus tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas.

More than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green were arrested last week, and similar encampments have sprouted up at universities around the country as schools struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.

At New York University, an encampment set up by students swelled to hundreds of protesters throughout the day Monday. The school said it warned the crowd to leave, then called in the police after the scene became disorderly and the university said it learned of reports of “intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents.” Shortly after 8:30 p.m., officers began making arrests.

Here’s a tweet from Jay Nordlinger that’s stuck with me: “There is scarcely anything in this world more terrifying than a mob. It is, frankly, pretty much at the root of my politics: this anti-mob feeling. Madisonian conservatism (or Madisonian liberalism, if you like) has struck me as right from a young age. Popular passions can kill.”

As we say on Twitter: 💯. Or even 💯💯.

Mobs can kill. They can also destroy the fabric of a civic order. They can disfigure the politics of a liberal, representative democracy. And so a healthy society will deter, will tamp down, will reject as much as possible mob action and mob spirit.

Now it’s of course true that there will always be elements of mob spirit in our politics, in our life. Some of the spirit of the mob runs, one might say, through each human soul.

A sound society suppresses that spirit to some extent. And since it can’t be altogether suppressed, a healthy social order also channels it, so it can be indulged and released harmlessly. A liberal democracy can have lots of sports fans.

But of course being a “fan” is the civilized version of being a fanatic.

Even in a healthy society, resistance to fanaticism is always fragile. And once fanaticism is unleashed, once the mob is empowered, it is hard to restore order and civility and decency.

Which is one reason thoughtful defenders of democracy have always feared demagogues, have sought to thwart their emergence, and have opposed them when they do rise.

Demagogues who can stoke mob spirit are dangerous. The problem with Donald Trump isn’t simply his policies, or his personal character. It’s his willingness, or rather his eagerness, to stoke the spirit of the mob. Trump’s posts on Truth Social condition some among us to the mob spirit as much as the hateful chants at Columbia or Yale condition others. MAGA is an expression of mob spirit. The campus encampments are manifestations of mob spirit.

And mob spirit is always nearer at hand than those with a sunny view of human nature would like. The lynch mobs in the South often consisted of respectable citizens, pillars of their communities. Many Berliners who participated in Kristallnacht went back to their normal office and jobs the next day.

So I’m with Jay on this. It seems simple, but it’s important: Be anti-mob. Because resisting and combating mob spirit is central to our political and social well-being.

And not just when that spirit is on the other side politically. Indeed, it’s more important to resist the mob when it claims to be acting for purposes you agree with.

Yes, it’s true that the consequences of the mob spirit taking over one of our two major political parties are greater than those of the mob spirit erupting on some elite college campuses. But lesser evils are still evil, and they can grow into greater ones. And history also suggests that indulging the mob spirit on one side soon enough empowers it on another. The mob spirit must be resisted across the board.

Resisting the mob isn’t all it takes to establish a sound society or a healthy politics. But it’s a necessary start. 

—William Kristol

Categories Democracy, Discipline, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

Tune in! I Discuss “Slaying Goliath” Tomorrow with Tim Slekar

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2024 //
3

Tim Slekar is a fearless warrior for public schools, teachers, and students. I will be talking to him about Slaying Goliath and the struggle to protect public schools from the depredations of billionaires and zealots.

This Thursday on Civic Media: Dive Back into “Slaying Goliath” with Diane Ravitch

Grab your pencils—BustEDpencils is gearing up for a no-holds-barred revival of Diane Ravitch’s game-changing book, *Slaying Goliath*, live this Thursday on Civic Media. 

Launched into a world on the brink of a pandemic, *Slaying Goliath* hit the shelves with a mission: to arm the defenders of public education against the Goliaths of privatization. But then, COVID-19 overshadowed everything. Despite that, the battles Diane described haven’t paused—they’ve intensified. And this Thursday, we’re bringing these crucial discussions back to the forefront with Diane herself.

This Thursday at 7pm EST on BustEDpencils, we’re not just revisiting a book; we’re reigniting a movement. Diane will dissect the current threats to public education and highlight how *Slaying Goliath* still maps the path to victory for our schools. This isn’t just about reflection—it’s about action.

**It’s time to get real. It’s time to get loud. It’s time to tune in this Thursday at 7 PM EST on Civic Media.**

If you believe that without a robust public education system our democracy is in jeopardy, then join us. Listen in, call in (855-752-4842), and let’s get fired up. We’ve got a fight to win, and Diane Ravitch is leading the charge.

Mark your calendars and fire up Civic Media this Thursday at 7pm Central. 

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Courage, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Injustice, Privatization, Propaganda, Resistance, School Choice, Separation of church and state, State Takeover, Supporting public schools, Teachers, Unions, Vouchers

What Universities Should Do About Hate Speech and Behavior

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2024 //
82

I recently visited Wellesley College to attend the lecture of lawyer-scholar Patricia Williams, who spoke about book banning, censorship and critical race theory. She was brilliant. Her lecture will be posted as soon as Wellesley releases the tape. She spoke as part of the annual lecture series that I endowed.

At the end of her lecture, a student asked a question. The student said that she had sent out a notice to all the others in her dorm denouncing genocide. Now she wanted Professor Williams to advise her on how to respond to an older alumna about genocide in a manner that was respectful and would lead to further discussion.

Professor Williams responded, and I paraphrase, “If you really want to have an honest exchange, don’t use the word ‘genocide.’ It’s a conversation stopper. Genocide has a specific legal definition, and it’s not the right word to use if you really want a discussion.”

Later, I had dinner with Professor Williams and Wellesley President Paula Johnson. Dr. Johnson described what happened when Hillary Clinton, the College’s most distinguished alumna, spoke recently on campus. Students disrupted her speech and denounced her as a war criminal. When her car pulled away from the President’s house, students surrounded the car, shouting obscenities and exercising their middle finger.

Frankly, I was appalled. Colleges and universities must protect free speech, but there are limits. You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. There must be other limits. The purpose of a college education is to teach critical thinking, to exemplify the value of reasoned debate, to maintain civility when there are strong disagreements, to be open to learning.

This morning, Columbia University announced that it is offering online classes because the campus is unsafe for learning, especially for Jewish students. This is outrageous. Campuses must be safe places for all students and faculty. Civility matters.

Colleges and universities should, in my opinion, establish clear rules about the speech that stifles others from speaking, about speech that diminishes freedom of discussion, about speech that threatens the physical safety of others, about speech that undermines free speech and civility. And most certainly for behavior that makes the campus unsafe for students and faculty.

Pro-Palestinian students should argue their cause without shutting down discussion and threatening Jewish students. Closing down debate, antagonizing those who disagree, creating a climate in which “academic freedom” is used to negate academic freedom is simply wrong.

There must be clear guidelines about the kind of conduct that is not permitted because it destroys the fundamental purpose of higher education, which is the freedom to teach, to learn, and to debate.

We have heard repeatedly since October 7 that expressions and behavior that are anti-Israel are not anti-Semitic. But the widespread harassment of Jewish students, even Jewish faculty, gives the lie to this claim. Such harassment is anti-Semitic.

I deplore the barbarism of October 7. I deplore the brutality of the war in Gaza and the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. I hope that peace negotiations bring about two states and a just peace.

I deplore the surge of Jew-hatred on American campuses. Jewish students and all other students, as well as Jewish faculty and all faculty, should be able to learn and teach without fearing for their safety.

Colleges and universities must establish rules that promote and protect civility. Students who harass and endanger others cancel the purpose of higher education. They should be warned and if they persist, they should be suspended, and if they continue in their actions, expelled.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

Thom Hartmann: Bill Barr, the Master Fixer of GOP Crimes

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2024 //
4

Thom Hartmann writes here about the nefarious role played by former Attorney General William Barr in his two different stints, first, when he worked as Attorney General for President George H.W. Bush, and later when he protected Trump from the damning findings of the Mueller Report about Russian interference in the election of 2016; Barr sat on it, summarized its conclusions inaccurately, and misled the public. Bill Barr was, Hartmann writes, “the master fixer” for “the old GOP.”

He writes:

Congressman Jim Jordan wanted revenge on behalf of Donald Trump against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for charging Trump with election interference in Manhattan. 

He threatened Bragg with “oversight”: dragging him before his committee, threatening him with contempt of Congress; putting a rightwing target on Bragg’s back by publicizing him to draw sharpshooters from as far away as Wyoming or Idaho; and facing the possibility of going to jail if he didn’t answer Jordan’s questions right. Jordan, James Comer, and Bryan Steil — three chairmen of three different committees — wrote to Bragg:

“By July 2019 … federal prosecutors determined that no additional people would be charged alongside [Michael] Cohen. … [Y]our apparent decision to pursue criminal charges where federal authorities declined to do so requires oversight….”

They were furious that Bragg would prosecute Trump for a crime that the federal Department of Justice had already decided in 2019 and announced that they weren’t going to pursue. 

But why didn’t Bill Barr’s Department of Justice proceed after they’d already put Michael Cohen in prison for a year for delivering the check to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet at least until after the election, and then lying about it? Why didn’t they go after the guy who ordered the check written, the guy who’d had sex with Daniels, the guy whose run for the presidency was hanging in the balance?

Why didn’t the Department of Justice at least investigate (they have a policy against prosecuting a sitting president) the then-president’s role in the crime they put Cohen in prison for but was directed by, paid for, and also committed by Donald Trump? 

Turns out, Geoffrey Berman — the lifelong Republican and U.S. Attorney appointed by Trump to run the prosecutor’s office at the Southern District of New York — wrote a book, Holding the Line, published in September, 2022, about his experiences during that era. 

In it, he came right out and accused his boss Bill Barr of killing the federal investigation into Trump’s role of directing and covering up that conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. Had Barr not done that, Trump could have been prosecuted in January of 2021, right after he left office. And Jim Jordan couldn’t complain that Alvin Bragg was pushing a case the feds had decided wasn’t worth it. 

As The Washington Post noted when the book came out:

“He [Berman] says Barr stifled campaign finance investigations emanating from the Cohen case and even floated seeking a reversal of Cohen’s conviction — just like Barr would later do with another Trump ally, Michael Flynn. (Barr also intervened in the case of another Trump ally, Roger Stone, to seek a lighter sentence than career prosecutors wanted.)”

Which is why Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg had to pick up the case, if the crime was to be exposed and prosecuted. 

After all, this crime literally turned the 2016 election to Trump. Without it, polling shows and political scientists argue, Hillary Clinton would have been our president for at least four years and Trump would have retired into real estate obscurity.

But Bill Barr put an end to Berman’s investigation, according to Berman. The DOJ pretended to be investigating Trump for another few months, then quietly announced they weren’t going to continue the investigation. The news media responded with a shrug of the shoulders and America forgot that Trump had been at the center of Cohen’s crime. 

In 2023, the New York Times picked up Bill Barr’s cover story and ran with it, ignoring Berman’s claims, even though he was the guy in charge of the Southern District of New York. The article essentially reported that Main Justice wouldn’t prosecute because Cohen wouldn’t testify to earlier crimes, Trump might’ve been ignorant of the law, and that the decision was made by prosecutors in New York and not by Barr. 

Incomplete testimony and ignorance of the law have rarely stopped prosecutors in the past from a clear case like this one appears to be (Trump signed the check and Cohen had a recording of their conversation, after all), but the story stuck and the Times ran with it.

In contrast, Berman wrote:

“While Cohen had pleaded guilty, our office continued to pursue investigations related to other possible campaign finance violations [including by Trump]. When Barr took over in February 2019, he not only tried to kill the ongoing investigations but—incredibly—suggested that Cohen’s conviction on campaign finance charges be reversed. Barr summoned Rob Khuzami in late February to challenge the basis of Cohen’s plea as well as the reasoning behind pursuing similar campaign finance charges against other individuals [including Trump]. …

“The directive Barr gave Khuzami, which was amplified that same day by a follow-up call from O’Callaghan, was explicit: not a single investigative step could be taken, not a single document in our possession could be reviewed, until the issue was resolved. …

“About six weeks later, Khuzami returned to DC for another meeting about Cohen. He was accompanied by Audrey Strauss, Russ Capone, and Edward “Ted” Diskant, Capone’s co-chief. Barr was in the room, along with Steven Engel, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and others from Main Justice.”

Summarizing the story, Berman wondered out loud exactly why Bill Barr had sabotaged extending their investigation that could lead to an indictment of Trump when he left office:

“But Barr’s posture here raises obvious questions. Did he think dropping the campaign finance charges would bolster Trump’s defense against impeachment charges? Was he trying to ensure that no other Trump associates or employees would be charged with making hush-money payments and perhaps flip on the president? Was the goal to ensure that the president could not be charged after leaving office? Or was it part of an effort to undo the entire series of investigations and prosecutions over the past two years of those in the president’s orbit (Cohen, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn)?”

In retrospect, the answer appears to be, “All of the above.”

And that wasn’t Barr’s only time subverting justice while heading the Justice Department. Berman says he also ordered John Kerry investigated for possible prosecution for violating the Logan Act (like Trump is doing now!) by engaging in foreign policy when not in office. 

Barr even killed a federal investigation into Turkish bankers, after Turkish dictator Erdoğan complained to Trump. 

Most people know that when the Mueller investigation was completed — documenting ten prosecutable cases of Donald Trump personally engaging in criminal obstruction of justice and witness tampering to prevent the Mueller Report investigators from getting to the bottom of his 2016 connections to Russia — Barr buried the report for weeks. 

He lied about it to America and our news media for almost a full month, and then released a version so redacted it’s nearly meaningless. (Merrick Garland, Barr’s heir to the AG job, is still hiding large parts of the report from the American people, another reason President Biden should replace him.)

While shocking in its corruption, as I noted here last month, this was not Bill Barr‘s first time playing cover-up for a Republican president who’d committed crimes that could rise to the level of treason against America.

He’s the exemplar of the “old GOP” that helped Nixon cut a deal with South Vietnam to prolong the War so he could beat Humphrey in 1968; worked with Reagan in 1980 to sell weapons to Iran in exchange for holding the hostages to screw Jimmy Carter; and stole the 2000 election from Al Gore by purging 94,000 Black people from the voter rolls in Jeb Bush’s Florida.

Instead of today’s “new GOP,” exemplified by Nazi marches, alleged perverts like Matt Gaetz, and racist rhetoric against immigrants, Barr’s “old GOP” committed their crimes wearing $2000 tailored suits and manipulating the law to their advantage…and still are.

For example, back in 1992, the first time Bill Barr was U.S. Attorney General, iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him as “Coverup-General Barr” because of his role in burying evidence of then-President George H.W. Bush’s involvement in Reagan’s scheme to steal the 1980 election through what the media euphemistically called “Iron-Contra.”

On Christmas day of 1992, the New York Times featured a screaming all-caps headline across the top of its front page: Attorney General Bill Barr had covered up evidence of crimes by Reagan and Bush in the Iran-Contra “scandal.” (see the bottom of this article)

Earlier that week of Christmas, 1992, George H.W. Bush was on his way out of office. Bill Clinton had won the White House the month before, and in a few weeks would be sworn in as president.

But Bush Senior’s biggest concern wasn’t that he’d have to leave the White House to retire back to one of his million-dollar mansions in Connecticut, Maine, or Texas: instead, he was worried that he may face time in a federal prison after he left office, a concern nearly identical to what Richard Nixon faced when he decided to resign to avoid prosecution.

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh was closing in fast on Bush and Reagan, and Bush’s private records, subpoenaed by the independent counsel’s office, were the key to it all.

Walsh had been appointed independent counsel in 1986 to investigate the Iran-Contra activities of the Reagan administration and determine if crimes had been committed.

Was the criminal Iran-Contra conspiracy limited, as Reagan and Bush insisted (and Reagan said on TV), to later years in the Reagan presidency, in response to an obscure hostage-taking in Lebanon?

Or had it started in the 1980 presidential campaign against Jimmy Carter with treasonous collusion with the Iranians, as the then-president of Iran asserted? Who knew what, and when? And what was George H.W. Bush’s role in it all?

In the years since then, the President of Iran in 1980, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, has gone on the record saying that the Reagan campaign reached out to Iran to hold the hostages in exchange for weapons.

“Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan,” President Bani-Sadr told the Christian Science Monitor in 2013, “had organized a clandestine negotiation, later known as the ‘October Surprise,’ which prevented the attempts by myself and then-US President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 US presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan.”

That wouldn’t have been just an impeachable and imprisonable crime: it was every bit as much treason as when Richard Nixon blew up LBJ’s 1968 peace talks with North and South Vietnam to win that November’s election against Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

Please open the link to finish reading this fascinating article.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Fraud, History, Justice, Lies, Politics, Republicans

Georgia: 50CAN Targets Atlanta’s Public Schools for Privatization

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2024 //
16

Ed Johnson is a systems thinker and consultant in Atlanta. He cares passionately about the public schools of his city and keeps watch over the actions of the Atlanta Public School Board. Johnson is an adherent of the work of W. Edwards Deming; he believes in thinking of about how to change systems, not in quick fixes or the panacea of the day. In this letter to the Atlanta Public School Board, he takes them to task for their commitment to 50CAN, a school privatization group that was started in Connecticut as ConnCAN and funded largely by the Sackler family.

Ed Johnson writes:

“Join GeorgiaCAN for an informative session on the vision of Atlanta Public Schools!  Gain insights from APS Board member [Dr.] Ken Zeff as he shares his perspective and engages in a parent discussion regarding APS’s vision.  Let’s unite as a community to ensure that our children and the APS community have the resources and support necessary to pave the way for a brighter future.”

—GeorgiaCAN

 We now know GeorgiaCAN is a state-level affiliate of 50CAN, do we not?

 We now know 50CAN stands for 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now, do we not?

 We now know GeorgiaCAN, as a 50CAN affiliate, pushes destroying public education and public schools with school choice, charter schools, and vouchers, do we not?

 We now know, in December 2019, we had AJC parroting and giving prominent voice to GeorgiaCAN spouting free market school choice ideology, do we not?

 We now know, in August 2023, we had Atlanta school board members Katie Howard, District 1, and Erika Mitchell, District 5 and current school board chair, involved with GeorgiaCAN, do we not?

 And we now know, in September 2023, we had The King Center giving the 50CAN CEO a platform for some inscrutable reason, do we not?

 So, let’s consider Ken Zeff in the way The King Center was considered last September:

 50CAN evolved from ConnCAN (Connecticut CAN).  ConnCAN was funded pretty much wholly by Sackler Family fortunes earned as ill-gotten profits from over-prescribed sales of Oxycontin by the family’s Purdue Pharma.  Because of such greed for profits, hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and worldwide have died, and continue to die, from opioid addiction.

 As with similar other organizations and their local operatives—for example, The City Fund and its local operatives, Ed Chang leading reformED Atlanta—it is fairly well-known that 50CAN and its state-level operatives aim to dismantle hence destroy public education as the common good that is foundational to sustaining democracy, so as to transform destroyed public schools into privatized and commodified schools composing competitive education marketplaces.  Think Milton Friedman and the “invisible hand of the market.”

 It is also fairly well-known that 50CAN, like similar other organizations, has advanced its aim to destroy public education by expressly targeting and catalyzing Black communities to demand school choice and charter schools that will magically deliver “achievement now.”

 In effect, 50CAN and such others “politrick” Black communities into facilitating their own destruction and that of their own children.  Again, while “It takes a village to raise a child,” it also takes a village to destroy a child.

 The usual assumption is that charter schools transformed from destroyed public schools are inherently better than “failing public schools.”  This is a lie, plain and simple.  It is impossible for charter schools to be inherently better or worse than “failing public schools.”  Because entropy is a fact of life, our public schools need improvement, have always needed improvement, and always will need improvement.  Reality offers charter schools no grace from the entropy fact of life.

 To assert that charter schools are inherently better than “failing public schools” is like asserting members of a certain group of human beings are inherently superior to members of other groups of human beings, based solely on expressions of variation in some few arbitrarily-chosen human physical features said to signify “race,” which is another lie.

 Charter schools do, however, appeal to certain retributive justice, behaviorally emulative, and selfish consumerist mindsets for which improvement-thinking has always been meaningless, at worst, and theoretical, at best.  50CAN knows this, and so uses it to catalyze Black communities to demand “achievement now.”  “Instant pudding,” the late, great systems thinker W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) might say.

 Consequently, “Our children can’t wait!” has been a decades-long handy refrain that has always begged easy, quick, learningless change but never improvement with knowledge, which requires learning and unlearning.

 Unfortunately, systems thinking teaches through a nonviolence lens that the more often easy, quick, learningless change happens, the less improvement becomes possible; then, the less improvement becomes possible, the less sustainable democracy becomes; then, the less sustainable democracy becomes, the more societal dysfunctions develop and emerge, after a time, in Black communities and elsewhere; then, the more societal dysfunctions show up, the more the refrain, “Our children can’t wait!”

 It is all a destructively vicious, self-reinforcing feedback loop that 50CAN and similar other destroyers of public education are happy to catalyze in Black communities, in particular, and to support its playing out, if only continually, but continuously, ideally.

 With systems thinking, it really is not hard to understand why some out-of-control-for-the-worse aspects of violent crime in City of Atlanta involving ever more “Black” teenaged children and younger other persons in Black communities has become such a challenge.

 Currently, Atlanta’s culture predictably produces a homicide every 2.3 +/- 4.0 days, while predictably producing an aggravated assault every 3.7 +/- 10.7 hours.

 These are realities Atlanta Police Department data reveal when viewed through a Deming kind of systems thinking lens instead of through a financial accounting-style lens that invariably creates an incomplete or false narrative that the media and others then report as fact.

 Although some are quite capable to look below the performative surface, or show stage, of the proverbial iceberg and down into its greater depths to see and know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was also a profound systems thinker, systems thinking seems generally absent in Black culture; certainly, children labeled “Black” seem never to learn about this deeper and critically important aspect of Dr. King.

 All too often the children learn to conserve racism and so-called white supremacy rather than learn to help humanity relieve itself of these scourges.  The children learn and internalize racial categorization, the false narrative at the heart of racial violence.  It seems the children never learn to internalize an understanding of human variation, the truth at the heart of nonracial nonviolence.

 It is quite puzzling that some fight and rail against racism, all the while conserving it and the “race” lie racism needs in order to exist, in truth.

 Therefore, a question for The King Center must be, why is The King Center giving a platform to 50CAN?

 50CAN and GeorgiaCAN, private organizations known to be about making “Beloved Community” a virtual impossibility, in all respects.

 Given this, we now know Dr. Ken Zeff lied when he swore, in taking the Oath of Office the Charter of the Atlanta Independent School System requires, “I will be governed by the public good and the interests of said school system,” do we not?

 Being involved with GeorgiaCAN necessarily and unavoidably means Dr. Ken Zeff exercises, well, the “choice” to be governed by a private goodand the interests of GeorgiaCAN, hence 50CAN.

 In a discussion during this month’s regularly scheduled school board meeting, Dr. Ken Zeff voluntarily professed quite enthusiastically to being a school choice proponent.

 Well, he was at least honest about it—something we might appreciate, when some other Atlanta Board of Education members have shown they are not so honest about their being in the school choice camp.

 

Ed Johnson

Advocate for Quality in Public Education

Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com

Categories Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Georgia, Privatization
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