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Scandal in Texas: IDEA Charter Schools Placed Under Conservatorship

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2024 //
19

IDEA, the largest charter chain in Texas, was just placed under conservatorship by the state education agency because of ongoing financial transgressions, self-dealing and conflicts of interest.

The state of Texas gave more than $800 million last year to IDEA. The federal Charter Schools Program—which is rank with waste, fraud, and abuse—has gifted IDEA with $300 million. It was a favorite of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

For years, both the state and the U.S. Department of Education have been aware of IDEA’s profligate spending. This is the charter chain that wanted to lease a 6-passenger private jet for $15 million for its executives. This is the chain that bought luxury box seats for the San Antonio Spurs basketball games. This is the chain that gave its founder a golden parachute of $900,000 when financial abuses forced him out.

When there is so much that is fraudulent in the chain’s spending, can you trust its reports about enrollment, grades, test scores, and graduation rates? Business leaders in San Antonio saw IDEA as a great replacement for public schools. They were hoodwinked.

The Texas Tribune reported:

Texas’ largest charter school network has been placed under conservatorship by the Texas Education Agency after a years-long investigation into improper spending within the system of 143 schools.

The arrangement, announced Wednesday, is part of a settlement agreement between IDEA Public Schools and the TEA. IDEA had been under investigation since 2021 following numerous allegations of financial and operational misconduct.

It was revealed that IDEA officials used public dollars to purchase luxury driver services as well as $15 million to lease a private jet, just two weeks after promising TEA it would be “strictly enforcing” new fiscal responsibility policies put in place in response to ongoing investigations, as reported by San Antonio Express-News.

The revelations led the district to conduct an internal investigation, resulting in the firing of JoAnn Gama, former superintendent and co-founder of IDEA. Gama later filed a lawsuit against IDEA claiming wrongful termination. IDEA came to a $475,000 settlement with Gama in January. This followed co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson’s departure in 2020; he was given a $900,000 severance package.

The charter school district serves about 80,000 students in K-12. The schools are independently run but publicly funded with state dollars, having received about $821 million in state funding in 2023-2024 school year.

Under conservatorship, the conservators will have the authority to oversee and direct any action of the district, facilitate a needs assessment, conduct onsite inspections and support the creation of a plan to address corrective action concerns. They will also report back to the agency regarding the district’s progress in completing necessary corrective activities.

The conservators will not fully take over the governance of the district. But if the district doesn’t make the necessary corrective measures that the conservators outline for them, a takeover could be possible in the future…

The news follows the TEA takeover of Houston Independent School District in June following years of poor academic performance at a single campus within the district, among other factors.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Fraud, Funding, Texas

Robert Hubbell: The Supreme Court’s Latest Decision Was a Disgrace: Vote!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2024 //
47

Robert Hubbell is outraged by the Supreme Court’s latest decision regarding the insurrection clause (Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment). The conservative majority on the Court usually claim to be “originalists” who scrutinize the language in the Constitution and divine the intent of those who wrote it.

In this case, the language was crystal clear. Any officer of the federal government who swore an oath to defend the Constitution and then participated in an insurrection against the Constitution was disqualified from running again for office. But the majority said that the official who had engaged in insurrection must first be subject to a Congressional vote; that language is not in the Constitution although there is specific language about the vote needed to remove the disqualification.

Hubbell was furious that Clarence Thomas was allowed to vote in this case since his wife was an active participant in the plot to overturn the election. He should have recused himself but that would require an ethical compass that the justice lacks.

Here is an excerpt from Hubbell’s post. You should open the link and read it in full.

He writes:

The most important lesson from Monday’s disqualification ruling is that the Supreme Court is broken beyond repair. The reactionary majority made that fact abundantly clear by unilaterally amending the Constitution to remove the Insurrection Clause from the 14th Amendment. 

Those sworn to protect the Constitution are dismantling it. The protectors of the Constitution have become its adversary in order to protect a failed insurrectionist who has promised a second effort to overthrow the Constitution. (“I said I want to be a dictator for one day.”)

There are many reasons to ensure that Donald Trump is not elected to the presidency in 2024. Rehabilitating and reforming the Court is chief among them. Sadly, reforming the Court is below the radar for most voters. But the lawless reactionary majority has already denied women the full protection of the liberty clause of the 14th amendment; it is refusing to enforce the clear intent of the 14th to ensure that descendants of enslaved people have a meaningful right to vote and equal protection under law. And the logical force of the Dobbs opinion strongly suggests that the Court will withdraw existing protections for same-sex marriage, contraception, and “inter-racial” marriages.

Monday’s opinion is a clear warning to all Americans that the threat to their liberties is immediate and real. Those who seek to protect existing liberties (and reclaim those already abrogated Court) must vote as if their freedoms depend on the outcome of the 2024 election—because they do! 

The Court has abandoned the Constitution; the last line of defense is the American people exercising their most fundamental right—the right to elect their representatives, who can (in turn) enlarge the Court and limit its jurisdiction.

There is abundant evidence that many Americans are not inspired by either presidential candidate or feel betrayed, forgotten, or ignored by the political process. But one candidate will seek to defend their freedoms by preserving and enforcing the Constitution (in part, by reforming the Court). The other has promised to overturn the Constitution “for one day”—which means “overturn the Constitution” period. The duration of a suspension of the Constitution is irrelevant.

Feelings of anger and upset over Monday’s ruling are understandable and warranted. But the most appropriate response is to redouble our efforts to defeat Trump. Nothing else matters. If we achieve that goal, we can work to advance all other goals. If we do not, we will be at the mercy of a renegade majority on the Court and an out-of-control, aspiring dictator for four years.

What happened?

On Monday, the Court overruled the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision removing Trump from the Colorado primary ballot. The opinion is here: 23-719 Trump v. Anderson (03/04/2024).

The ruling was ostensibly 9-0 with three justices writing a concurring opinion that reads like a dissent and a concurrence by Amy Coney Barrett that criticized the overreach of reactionary majority. In fact, as explained below, the ruling was 5-4, meaning that Justice Thomas’s refusal to recuse himself (as required by statute and rule) was outcome-determinative. Justice Thomas’s corruption saved Donald Trump’s slot on the Colorado ballot.

Distilled to its essence, the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson removed the Insurrection Clause from Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

How did the Court effectively remove the Insurrection Clause from the 14th Amendment?

The 14th Amendment creates a self-executing disqualification for insurrectionists who previously took an oath to support the Constitution. The self-executing nature of that disqualification is consistent with other provisions of the 14th Amendment (equal protection, due process) that are likewise self-executing—as are other qualifications on the presidency (such as age, citizenship, and tenure of residency in the US).

Despite the plain language of the 14th Amendment—which creates a bar to holding federal office based on the conduct of the insurrectionist standing alone—the Court ruled that the Insurrection Clause is ineffective unless Congress affirmatively passes legislation that conforms to narrow prescriptions of the Court’s opinion in Trump v. Anderson.

The reactionary majority ignores that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment speaks to the role of Congress in enforcing the Insurrection Clause. It says that Congress can remove an insurrectionist’s disqualification by a two-thirds vote. But under the Court’s ruling in Trump v. Anderson, Congress can prevent any disqualifications of insurrectionists by simply refusing to pass the enabling legislation prescribed by the reactionary majority.

As Justice Sotomayor wrote in her concurring opinion,

It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by . . . declining to pass implementing legislation.

As George Conway noted on Monday on MSNBC, the reactionary majority arrived at its conclusion by simply ignoring the language of the Constitution. The reactionary majority regularly uses the text of the Constitution as a cudgel when they want to deny liberties embraced by the language of the Constitution. But when they seek to ensure that a failed insurrectionist and aspiring dictator remains on the ballot, they act as if the text of the Constitution does not exist.

A reader wrote to me after the issuance of the opinion and asked, “What can we do?” My answer is this:

Elect Democrats. Reform the Court. Defend the Constitution. Preserve Democracy.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, History, Justice, Trump

Tennessee: Lobbyist Warned Anti-Voucher Republicans of “Public Hangings” if They Don’t Support Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2024 //
6

A secret recording of a lobbyist’s meeting in 2016 showed the true face of the voucher movement in Tennessee and elsewhere.

The lobbyist, an official with Betsy DeVos’s Tennessee Federation for Children, made clear that Republican legislators who opposed vouchers would face harsh retribution. He pledged that anti-voucher Republican legislators would be challenged in a primary by well-funded opponents committed to pass vouchers. Money would come in from out-of-state billionaires and millionaires to knock off Republicans who voted against vouchers.

The story came from NewsChannel 5 in Nashville.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A secret recording reveals how ultra-wealthy forces have laid the groundwork for the current debate in the Tennessee legislature over school vouchers by using their money to intimidate, even eliminate, those who dared to disagree.

In the recording obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates from a 2016 strategy session, Nashville investment banker Mark Gill discusses targeting certain anti-voucher lawmakers for defeat as a form of “public hangings.” At the time, Gill was a member of the board of directors for the pro-voucher group Tennessee Federation for Children.

Using their vast resources to defeat key incumbents, Gill argues, would send a signal to other lawmakers in the next legislative session…

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has teed up the issue this year with a plan for school vouchers that would send hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to private schools.

It follows a years-long effort by school privatization forces to elect lawmakers who would vote their way and to destroy those who would not.

In the 2016 recording, Mark Gill discusses the prospect of turning against Republican Rep. Eddie Smith from Knoxville because Smith had voted against a bill designed to cripple the ability of teacher groups to have dues deducted from teachers’ paychecks.

Gill has served on the Tennessee Board of Regents overseeing the state’s community and technical colleges since 2019.

“Think about it,” Gill says.

“What better way to say to people, OK, you want us to fall on our sword for you, to spend thousands of dollars — which I did personally — to get you elected, and you come up here and do this sh*t. Let me just show you what the consequences of that are,” Gill says…

At the time, Gill was also considering targeting Republican Judd Matheny from Tullahoma because Matheny was viewed as being too close to Tennessee teachers and would be a good “scalp” to hang on the school privatizers’ efforts.

“He also has, I think, put himself in a position where his scalp could be very valuable to all school reformers,” Gill says, noting Matheny’s relationship with the Tennessee Education Association. “He is one of the people who has bought the TEA line that you need to side with the TEA because of the teachers and that’s your safest route.”

The reporter for NewsChannel 5 played the recording for J.C. Bowman, leader of the Professional Educators of Tennessee.

Bowman was stunned.

“Judd Matheny was a conservative — a big Second Amendment guy. Some of the names they mention in there — conservative all the way through. So you are going to eat your own…”

NewsChannel 5 Investigates noted to Bowman that Gill was not talking about convincing lawmakers that the Tennessee Federation for Children was right on the issue of school vouchers.

“No, they are not even making that comparison,” the teacher lobbyist agreed.

“If you put this issue on the ballot — and that’s what I would say, put it on the ballot — vouchers would lose.”

A March 2022 NewsChannel 5 investigation revealed how the battle over education in Tennessee is largely financed by out-of-state billionaires and millionaires.

Last fall, NewsChannel 5 Investigates obtained a proposal — submitted to a foundation controlled by the billionaire Walton family of Walmart fame — detailing a plan by school privatization forces to spend $3.7 million in 2016 on legislative races in Tennessee.

That same year, The Tennessean reported on an Alabama trip where Gill had hosted five pro-voucher lawmakers for a three-day weekend at his Gulf Shores condo.

“I don’t think anybody is going to get unseated without some substantial independent expenditures coming in there,” Gill says, acknowledging that wealthy special interests would need to spend a lot of money to knock off lawmakers who did not vote their way.

That strategy was apparent in 2022 when Republicans Bob Ramsey and Terri Lynn Weaver were targeted and defeated. 

Weaver was among those Republicans who in 2019 refused to bow to pressure to vote for school vouchers.

And like these ads taken out against Bob Ramsey, Weaver also faced attacks from school privatization forces for supposedly being a corrupt career politician — attacks funded by so-called dark money.

“Tremendous amounts of money, much of which is outside money, [the] money was not from my district,” Weaver said. “They slander you. They want to win — and they’ll do anything to do it.”

Bowman said Gill’s strategy represents “the absolute destruction of people.”

We wanted to know, “Is there anyone on the public education side of the debate playing this sort of hardball politics?”

“None that I know of,” Bowman said. “I know of nobody playing that.”

To read the complete article and to listen to the recording, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Tennessee, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Thom Hartmann: How the Bork Doctrine Promoted Monopolies and Billionaires

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2024 //
40

If you are old enough to remember a different America, an America of neighborhood shops, of local bakeries, butchers, drugstores (with a soda fountain), shoe stores, bookstores, and dress shops, you may have wondered why most of them have been replaced by national chain stores and anonymous strip malls. Now we see even neighborhood public schools replaced by national charter chains, some even operated by for-profit corporations. Thom Hartmann explains the roots of this change in his new book The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream. He is releasing the book a chapter at a time on his blog, which should whet our appetite to buy and read the book. This chapter describes the legal ploy that resulted in crushing local enterprise and creating billionaires.

He writes:

Robert Bork was Richard Nixon’s solicitor general and acting attorney general and had a substantial impact on the thinking in the Reagan White House—so much so that Reagan rewarded his years of hard work on behalf of America’s monopolists with a lifetime appointment to the federal bench in the DC Circuit, frequently a launching pad for the Supreme Court.

In the years following Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo, as numerous “conservative” and “free market” think tanks and publications grew in power and funding, Bork’s ideas gained wide circulation in circles of governance, business, and the law.

In 1977, in the case of Continental T.V., Inc. v. GTE Sylvania, the Supreme Court took up Bork’s idea and, for the first time in a big way, embraced the “welfare of the consumer” and “demonstrable economic effect” doctrines that Bork had been promoting for over a decade.

Neither of those phrases exists in any antitrust law, at least in Bork’s context. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court embraced Bork’s notion that the sole metric by which to judge monopolistic behavior should be prices that consumers pay, rather than the ability of businesses to compete or the political power that a corporation may amass.

When Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1981, bringing with him Bork’s free market philosophy and a crew from the Chicago School, he ordered the Federal Trade Commission to effectively stop enforcing antitrust laws even within the feeble guidelines that the Supreme Court had written into law in GTE Sylvania.

The result was an explosion of mergers-and-acquisitions activity that continues to this day, as industry after industry concentrated down to two, three, four, or five major players who function as cartels. (A brilliant blow-by-blow cataloging of that decade is found in Barry C. Lynn’s book Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction.)

Bork’s reasoning—that antitrust law should defend only the consumer (through low prices), and not workers, society, democracy, or local communities—has become such conventional wisdom that in the 2014 Supreme Court case of FTC v. Actavis, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a virtual word-for-word parroting of Bork: “The point of antitrust law is to encourage competitive markets to promote consumer welfare.”

Barak Orbach, professor of law at the University of Arizona, is one of a small number of scholars today who are genuine experts in the field of antitrust law. In a 2014 paper published by the American Bar Association, he wondered if Bork knew he was lying when he wrote that the authors of the Sherman Antitrust Act intended to reduce prices to advance “consumer welfare,” instead of protecting the competitiveness of small and local businesses, and the independence of government at all levels.

His conclusion, in “Was the ‘Crisis in Antitrust’ a Trojan Horse?” was that Bork was probably just blinded by ideology and had never bothered to go back and read the Congressional Record, which, he noted, says nothing of the kind.74

While Bork wrote that “the policy the courts were intended [by the Sherman Antitrust Act] to apply is the maximization of wealth or consumer want satisfaction,” Orbach said, “Members of Congress . . . were determined to take action against the trusts to stop wealth transfers from the public.” So much for that: today the Walton (Walmart) family is the richest in America and one of the richest in the world. They’re worth more than $100 billion, having squirreled away more wealth than the bottom 40% of all Americans. And they spend prodigiously on right-wing political causes, from the national to the local.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is now wealthier than any Walton; with a registered net worth of $112 billion, he is the richest single person in the world. Bezos is so rich that when he divorced his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, she received 19.7 million shares of Amazon worth $36.8 billion. She instantly became the world’s third-richest woman, and Jeff Bezos remained the world’s wealthiest man.75 While local newspapers are shutting down or being gobbled up all over the country, Bezos personally purchased the 140-year-old Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. Now Bezos, like the Walton family, can use his sub- stantial wealth to obtain political ends that protect his wealth and allow Amazon to continue to grow.

Categories Billionaires, Competition, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, History

Trump’s Debt to Putin

By dianeravitch
March 3, 2024 //
35

Our occasional commenter, who uses the sobriquet “Democracy” posted the following analysis of Putin’s involvement in the 2016 election. Russia and Wikileaks crippled Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and at least eight Republican Senators knew it. They endorsed a report which reached that conclusion. Yet they continued to defend Trump.

Democracy posted:

Volume V of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigative report on the 2016 election:

“the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s highlevel access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat…”

“Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process…While the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”

Click to access report_volume5.pdf

And if you’ve not read it before, here’s Adam Silverman, a national security expert, on that investigative report:

The Real Takeaway From the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence’s Bipartisan Report On Russia’s Active Measures Campaign and Interference In the 2016 Election: They All Knew Before They Voted To Acquit!!!!!

It’s quite clear…Trump and Republicans (and the NRA) are enthralled by and beholden to Putin.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Hillary Clinton, Republicans, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The GOP is a Dying Party

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2024 //
43

Historian Heather Cox Richardson brilliantly analyzes the current moment.

She writes:

Behind the horse race–type coverage of the contest for presidential nominations, a major realignment is underway in United States politics. The Republican Party is dying as Trump and his supporters take it over, but there is a larger story behind that crash. This moment looks much like the other times in our history when a formerly stable two-party system has fallen apart and Americans reevaluated what they want out of their government.

Trump’s takeover of the party has been clear at the state level, where during his term he worked to install loyalists in leadership positions. From there, they have pushed the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and have continued to advance his claims to power. 

The growing radicalism of the party has also been clear in Congress, where Trump loyalists refuse to permit legislation that does not reflect their demands and where, after they threw House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) out of office—dumping a speaker midterm for the first time in history—Trump lieutenant Jim Jordan (R-OH) threatened holdouts to vote him in as speaker. Jordan failed, but the speaker Republican representatives did choose, Mike Johnson (R-LA), is himself a Trump loyalist, just one who had made fewer enemies than Jordan. 

The radicalization of the House conference has led 21 members of the party who gravitate toward actual lawmaking to announce they are not running for reelection. Many of them are from safe Republican districts, meaning they will almost certainly be replaced by radicals.  

The Senate has tended to hang back from this radicalization, but in a dramatic illustration of Trump’s takeover of the party, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell today announced he would step down from his leadership position in November. McConnell is the leading symbol of the pre-Trump party, a man whose determination to cut taxes and regulation led him to manipulate the rules of the Senate and silence warnings that Russian disinformation was polluting the 2016 campaign so long as it meant keeping a Democrat out of the White House and Republicans in control of the Senate.

The extremist House Freedom Caucus promptly tweeted: “Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine). No need to wait till November…Senate Republicans should IMMEDIATELY elect a *Republican* Minority Leader.”

Trump has also taken control of the Republican National Committee (RNC) itself. On Monday, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel announced that she is resigning on March 8. Trump picked McDaniel himself in 2016 but has come to blame her both for the party’s continued underperformance since 2016 and for its current lack of money.

Now Trump has made it clear he wants even closer loyalists at the top of the party, including his own daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. She has suggested she is open to using RNC money exclusively for Trump. This might be what has prompted the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity to pull support from Nikki Haley in order to invest in downballot races. 

But the party that is consolidating around Trump is alienating a majority of Americans. It has abandoned the principles that the party embraced from 1980 until 2016. In that era, Republicans called for a government that cut taxes and regulations with the idea that consolidating wealth at the top of the economy would enable businessmen to invest far more effectively in new development than they could if the government interfered, and the economy would boom. They also embraced global leadership through the expansion of capitalism and a strong military to protect it. 

Under Trump, though, the party has turned away from global leadership to the idea that strong countries can do what they like to their neighbors, and from small government to big government that imposes religious rules. Far from protecting equality before the law, Republican-dominated states have discriminated against LGBTQ+ individuals, racial and ethnic minorities, and women. And, of course, the party is catering to Trump’s authoritarian plans. Neo-nazis attended the Conservative Political Action Conference a week ago. 

But these changes are not popular. Tuesday’s Michigan primary revealed the story we had already seen in the Republican presidential primaries and caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Trump won all those contests, but by significantly less than polls had predicted. He has also been dogged by the strength of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. With Trump essentially running as an incumbent, he should be showing the sort of strength Biden is showing—with challengers garnering only a few percentage points—but even among the fervent Republicans who tend to turn out for primaries, Trump’s support is soft.

It seems that the same policies that attract Trump’s base are turning other voters against him. Republican leadership, for example, is far out of step with the American people on abortion rights—69% of Americans want the right to abortion put into law—and that gulf has only widened over the Alabama Supreme Court decision endangering in vitro fertilization by saying that embryos have the same rights as children from the moment of conception. That decision created such an outcry that Republicans felt obliged to claim they supported IVF. But push came to shove today when Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) reintroduced a bill to protect IVF that Republicans had previously rejected and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) killed it again. 

The party has also tied itself to a deeply problematic leader. Trump is facing 91 criminal charges in four different cases—two state, two federal—but the recently-decided civil case in which he, the Trump Organization, his older sons, and two associates were found liable for fraud is presenting a more immediate threat to Trump’s political career.

Trump owes writer E. Jean Carroll $88.3 million; he owes the state of New York $454 million, with interest accruing at more than $100,000 a day. Trump had 30 days from the time the judgments were filed to produce the money or a bond for it. Today he asked the court for permission to post only $100 million rather than the full amount in the New York case, as required by law, because he would have to sell property at fire-sale prices to come up with the money.

In addition to making it clear to donors that their investment in his campaign now might end up in the hands of lawyers or the victorious plaintiffs, the admission that Trump does not have the money he has claimed punctures the image at the heart of his political success: that of a billionaire businessman.   

Judge Anil C. Singh rejected Trump’s request but did stay the prohibition on Trump’s getting loans from New York banks, potentially allowing him to get the money he needs.  

As Trump’s invincible image cracks with this admission, as well as with the increased coverage of his wild statements, others are starting to push back on him and his loyalists. President Biden’s son Hunter Biden testified behind closed doors to members of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees today, after their previous key witness turned out to be working with Russian operatives and got indicted for lying.

Hunter Biden began the day with a scathing statement saying unequivocally that he had never involved his father in his business dealings and that all the evidence the committee had compiled proved that. In their “partisan political pursuit,” he said, they had “trafficked in innuendo, distortion, and sensationalism—all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face. You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any.” 

After an hour, Democratic committee members described to the press what was going on in the hearing room. They reported that the Republicans’ case had fallen apart entirely and that Biden had had a “very understandable, coherent business explanation for every single thing that they asked for.” While former president Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself more than 440 times during a deposition in his fraud trial, Biden did not take the Fifth at all. 

The discrediting of the Republicans continued later. When Representative Tim Burchett (R-TN) tried to recycle the discredited claim that “$20 million flowed through” to then–vice president Biden, CNN host Boris Sanchez fact-checked him and said, “I’m not going to let you say things that aren’t true.” 

That willingness to push back on the Republicans suggests a new political moment in which Americans, as they have done before when one of the two parties devolved into minority rule, wake up to the reality that the system has been hijacked and begin to reclaim their government. 

But can they prevail over the extremists MAGA Republicans have stowed into critical positions in the government? Tonight the Supreme Court, stacked with Trump appointees, announced that rather than let the decision of a lower court stay in place, it would take up the question of whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution for his actions in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That decision means a significant delay in Trump’s trial for that attempt. 

“This is a momentous decision, just to hear this case,” conservative judge Michael Luttig told Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC. “There was no reason in this world for the Supreme Court to take this case…. Under the constitutional laws of the United States, there has never been an argument that a former president is immune from prosecution for crimes that he committed while in office.” 

–- 

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Republicans, Trump

Should Anonymous Comments Be Permitted Online?

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2024 //
44

Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade writes on the website Cafe Insider that social media should require commenters to use their real name. Anonymity enables trolls and invective.

We have seen what happens on this blog. Anonymous posters attack others, make wild accusations, and vent their inner demons. I take down as many of these comments as I can, but I’m not online 24/7. One Trump troll repeatedly changes his IP address to evade being blocked.

There are a number of rules in this blog. First, I don’t allow comments that insult me; the blog is my online living room and I eject offensive visitors. Second, I don’t tolerate conspiracy theories: Sandy Hook happened, 9/11 was not “an inside job,” Trump lost the 2020 election. I also will not post racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, or homophobic comments.

The reason I allow anonymous comments is because many educators are afraid to speak their mind about what they know. They fear retribution from their superior.

What do you think?

McQuade writes:

Dear Reader,

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons depicts two dogs sitting at a computer with one saying to the other, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” 

This image came to mind recently when one of my hometown newspapers, The Detroit Free Press, announced it would no longer post reader comments on its website. In a letter to readers, Editor Nicole Avery Nichols explained the decision was necessary “due to the time investment needed to produce a safe and constructive dialogue.” The real culprit, I believe, is anonymity. 

Reader comments became commonplace when news outlets went online in the 1990s. The idea for such comments is laudable. Members of the community may engage with writers, editors, and each other to discuss a matter in the news, adding to the discussion the perspectives of other voices and experiences. 

Yet, the Free Press has decided to eliminate reader comments, following the lead of other media outlets such as NPR, CNN and the Washington Post. The Free Press now invites readers to comment on social media, where it has no duty to moderate the conversation, or through letters to the editor, which are screened before publication. Letters to the editor of the Free Press also require one important component that online comments do not – the identity of the author. To have a letter considered for publication, writers must include their “full name, full home address and day and evening telephone numbers.” The Free Press may be onto something. 

In researching my forthcoming book on disinformation, Attack From Within, one of the things I learned was the danger of anonymity online. When people can hide behind a false name, they have license to say all manner of inappropriate things. As Free Press columnist Mitch Albom wrote regarding the new policy, a typical commenter can use a pseudonym like SEXYDUDE313 and say all manner of despicable things with no accountability. And so, instead of a thoughtful discussion exchanging diverse viewpoints, the conversation quickly devolves into a barrage of insults aimed at not only the reporter, but also other readers posting comments. Commenters typically attack one another with slurs based on their presumed political affiliation, their level of education, or even their race. Comments have become a sort of online heckling, but in real life, even hecklers can be thrown out of the nightclub. 

The danger of anonymity online was a key finding of Robert Mueller’s special counsel report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller’s report noted that members of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization alleged to have engaged in a disinformation campaign, used false names, such as “Blacktivist,” “United Muslims of America,” and “Heart of Texas,” to pose as members of various groups and sow discord in American society. Operatives, posing as members of certain racial or ethnic groups, would post inflammatory content to provoke outrage. Some posts were designed to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, and some discouraged minority voters from casting a ballot at all. While we will never know the full extent to which Russia’s influence campaign affected the outcome of that election, this kind of foreign interference in political discourse is a danger to our democracy. 

To combat disinformation on social media, one easy step could be to eliminate anonymous users. The Free Press’s example demonstrates that anonymity enables behavior that is rude, harassing, and deceptive. Congress could mandate that social media platforms require users to verify their identities. At one time, before Twitter became X, a user could become verified by providing identifying information to the platform. A blue check signaled that the person was who they said they were. Mandatory verification could help reduce threats, trolling, and the spread of disinformation. Although it would be resource-intensive, to be sure, it should be part of the cost of doing business for social media platforms. 

Such a policy could face First Amendment challenges. As a general matter, the First Amendment protects anonymous speech because it permits people to engage in political speech even when it’s unpopular, and to criticize powerful people without fear of retribution. But, like all rights, the right to free speech is not absolute. The Supreme Court has routinely held that fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech, may be limited when the government has a compelling interest in the restriction and the measure is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Here, Congress could investigate whether eliminating anonymity online effectively reduces threats, harassment, and disinformation, serving a compelling government interest. By limiting the restriction to social media, and not all speech, the law could be sufficiently narrow. 

Requiring people to use their real names when posting comments online could make digital spaces safer. It would also allow readers to assess the credibility of those posting comments, making it much more difficult to be fooled by manipulative political operatives and hostile foreign actors. 

And perhaps even by dogs.

Stay Informed, 

Barb

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fake

Anand Giridharadas: The Supreme Court’s Attempted Suicide

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2024 //
155

Anand is a brilliant writer and thinker who blogs at The Ink. Consider subscribing.

Here is his take on the Supreme Court’s decision to delay judgment on Trump’s claim of absolute immunity for criminal actions while he was president.

Yesterday the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court decided to step in and rescue Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations, agreeing to hear his claim of broad immunity and to delay his federal trial on charges of election interference stemming from his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. But it’s much worse than that. We agree with Timothy Snyder that this is no simple stalling tactic. By taking up the question of whether a single American citizen is above the law — simply by entertaining a question that shouldn’t be — the right-wing justices are undermining the legitimacy of the Court itself, and the very notion of a nation of laws.

The Supreme Court is attempting to end its own life as an institution above politics. If it has been doing moving in this direction for some time, this week it came to a head.

This can only be read as a blow to democracy itself. With this stay now in place, it’s unlikely that any trial could be concluded by (and even more likely that it will be delayed entirely until after) Election Day. Of course, at that point, should Trump win re-election, the case would not move forward at all: the Justice Department would be unlikely to pursue a case against a newly elected president, and of course in his second term Trump could stop the proceedings entirely. Which, of course, is the plan.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Trump

Florida: “Surgeon General” Fails to Tell Students to Get Vaccinated Against Measles

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2024 //
29

Certain counties in Florida are experiencing an outbreak of measles, a highly contagious and sometimes lethal that was supposedly under control due to widespread vaccination.

Florida’s top doctor, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has thus far failed to instruct students in the affected schools to get vaccinated because he and Governor DeSantis took a strong stand against getting vaccinated for COVID.

The Miami Herald editorial board criticized Dr. Ladapo for putting students at risk:

Is there one mainstream piece of public health advice — no matter how long-standing — that Florida’s top doctor won’t buck?

Joseph Ladapo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-vaxx surgeon general, has spread misinformation about COVID-19 and has advised against coronavirus vaccines, citing debunked claims. 

Perhaps Ladapo saw, in the novelty and divisiveness of the pandemic, an opportunity to become the go-to, Ivy League-educated doctor for vaccine deniers. Now, he’s turned his focus to a long-known virus — up until now, largely non-controversial, but highly contagious and dangerous for children: measles.

Following an outbreak at Manatee Bay Elementary in Weston, where six measles cases have been confirmed, Ladapo sent a letter to parents that pediatricians, immunologists and infectious disease experts have criticized. The letter acknowledged what has been common practice to contain measles outbreaks — that unvaccinated children or those without immunity should remain home during the incubation period of the virus, or up to 21 days. 

Ladapo, then, however, wrote that, “due to the high immunity rate in the community,” the Department of Health “is deferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance.”

This should have been Ladapo’s opportunity to tell parents, “Get your children vaccinated — now!”

The MMR vaccine, approved by the federal government more than 50 years ago, offers 98% protection against measles after two full doses. That’s a widely known statistic that not even Ladapo can deny — he acknowledges it in his letter but stops short of recommending the vaccines. 

Instead, Florida’s top doctor is telling parents it’s OK to send kids to school sans immunization, even though they could contract a potentially lethal virus or spread it to others who are also not immunized. Worse, the Broward County school outbreak could spread to other communities…

The vaccine skepticism that gained force during the pandemic, thanks in part to public figures like DeSantis and Ladapo, is a threat to not only public-health efforts to keep COVID at bay but other diseases we thought belonged in a bygone era.

Many states (most?) require children to get vaccinated against a long list of diseases before they can start school. Apparently, Florida is not one of them. The state lets parents decide. Public health, be dammed!

Categories DeSantis, Ethics, Florida, Health, Science

Florida: Orlando Sentinel Denounces a Bill to Declare “Fetal Personhood”

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2024 //
17

The editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel spoke out against a bill that would declare fetuses to be persons from the instant of conception. Not only would this extend Florida’s draconian six-week ban on abortion, it would outlaw abortion for any reason—rape, incest, the life of the mother. Even if a woman learns early in her pregnancy that the fetus will be born without a brain or has some other fatal defect, she will not be able to terminate the pregnancy. At this time, the Florida Supreme Court is deciding whether to allow a referendum on abortion to proceed; its sponsors have collected over one million signatures. Will the people of Florida have a chance to express their views?

The editorial board wrote:

For Floridians who are already deeply uneasy about women losing the right to control their own bodies, what happened Wednesday in the House Judiciary Committee was truly terrifying. One by one, lawmakers voted yes on legislation that would, for the first time, declare fetuses to be people from the moment of conception — turning wombs into war zones before most people even know they are pregnant.

Bill sponsor Jenna Persons-Mulicka, R-Fort Myers, did her best to hide the radical nature of her legislation, which creates civil liability for anyone who causes the “wrongful death” of a fetus in utero. But everyone in that committee hearing room — and those watching remotely — knew exactly what was at stake. Conveying full rights on a fetus would be a shattering blow to reproductive independence for Floridians capable of becoming pregnant, reaching past debates over viability and bans on abortion at a specified number of weeks. HB 651 would kick in at the very start of a pregnancy, and create an easy stepping stone from wrongful deaths (including from abortions) to anything that threatens the health of a fetus, even if it is meant to benefit the mother’s health.

Floridians should bombard their state senators and representatives with messages letting them know that this potential law is far too radical for anyone who cares about freedom. Then they should turn to their congressional representatives and call on them for legislation to nip this hazardous movement in the bud.

They can start by letting lawmakers know they see through the pretense here. Persons-Mulicka pointed out, more than once, that the language of her legislation (HB 651) specifically excludes a pregnant person. But that’s a nearly negligible speed bump, especially if Florida’s Supreme Court picks up this theme and uses it to obliterate abortion rights in Florida.

Think they won’t? Think again. Justice Carlos Muniz was already hinting in that direction last week, during oral arguments over a ballot question that would (with voters’ approval) explicitly protect abortion rights in Florida.

But advocates of so-called “fetal personhood” think they’ve found a way around that language. By declaring a fetus to be a person, the Legislature and/or court would at best set up a collision course between two competing interests that just happen to share a body — along with the well-being of medical personnel being asked to care for both.

Because the fetal personhood bill does not protect the doctors, nurses and other people who perform abortions, even if the procedure is otherwise legal. Taken in context, that looming threat is clearly a large portion of the intention behind this bill…

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Science
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