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The Case of Shani Robinson, Wrongly Accused of Cheating in Atlanta, Is Finally Resolved

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2024 //
27

In 2009, Atlanta’s school superintendent, Dr. Beverly Hall, was honored by the American Association of School Administrators as National Superintendent of the Year for the city’s amazing progress in the past ten years.

The scores seemed too good to be true for skeptical journalists. So that same year,the Atlanta Journal Constitution analyzed test results in the city’s schools and found some extraordinary gains that seemed improbable. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation launched a probe and released a report in July 2011 claiming that there was cheating in 44 out of 56 schools. The GBI charged 178 educators with changing answers to raise scores.

Dr. Hall was charged with multiple crimes in 2013. She was accused of putting pressure on teachers to raise scores and creating an atmosphere of intimidation and fear. She never went to trial. She died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 68.

Ultimately 35 educators were indicted and punished with jail time, fines or both. Twelve educators refused a plea deal, insisting on their innocence. Using the RICO statute, intended for racketeering, District Attorney Fani Willis continued to prosecute the 12 holdouts.

One of them, Shani Robinson, wrote a book insisting on her innocence. The book is titled None of the Above. I read the book and was persuaded that she had suffered a grave injustice. Shani was a first-grade teacher. Her students’ scores did not affect the district’s ratings. There were no stakes, no rewards or punishments attached to them.

She was offered a deal: Confess or turn someone else in, and all charges would be dropped. Because Shani refused to do either, she was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison, four years of probation,a fine of $1,000, and 1,000 hours of community service. She believes someone else named her to escape punishment. She has appealed repeatedly and has spent a decade in limbo, worrying about whether she would be sent to prison. Meanwhile, she married and has two children.

I wrote the following posts on her behalf and sent an affidavit to the judge.

In April 2019, I reviewed Shani’s book and became persuaded of her innocence.

In September 2019, I posted a video in which Shani insisted that she was innocent.

In February 2022, at Shani’s request, I wrote a post about my letter to the judge, in which I said,

Shani taught first grade, where the tests have no stakes for students or teachers. She had no motive or reason to cheat. 

I believe she was unjustly prosecuted by overzealous investigators. She could have pleaded guilty or accused others to avoid prosecution but she insisted on her innocence. 

I believe her.

In February 2023, I wrote an update, quoting two Atlanta lawyers who excoriated the prosecution, calling the case “a textbook example of overcriminalization and prosecutorial discretion gone amok…”

In October 2023, Shani wrote an update on the case for my blog.

She wrote:

This RICO indictment has hung over my head for the past 10 years, leading to a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The impact of PTSD and the fallout from the trial has taken a significant toll on my family. I have 2 small children, sothe thought of going to prison and being separated from them is agonizing. There are 6 defendants, including me, still appealing convictions. We’ve all been able to remain out of prison thus far due to being on appeal bonds. But the case has been handled so poorly; the entire appeals process restarted this year with no end in sight. Millions of tax players dollars have already been spent on this trial. 

 Last year brought a ray of hope: Judge Jerry Baxter granted a new sentence for a principal who was convicted, enabling her to avoid prison and do community service instead. I’m hopeful that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Judge Jerry Baxter will come to the realization that RICO was misused in our case and find a peaceful resolution. 

The long ordeal is finally over.

A few days ago, Shani and the other holdouts arrived at a plea deal. They had to make a public apology to the children of Atlanta, admitting their guilt, in exchange for no prison time. In addition, she is required to pay a fine of $1,000 and give 1,000 hours of community service.

I believe Shani. I believe she is innocent. I think it’s a travesty that she had to admit guilt in order to avoid prison. That was the deal. I wish she could sue the city of Atlanta for destroying her profession and ruining 15 years of her life.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Cheating, Cruelty, Ethics, Fraud, Georgia, Teachers

Chris Hayes: What Is Project 2025? A Frightening Plan for Trump’s Next Term: LINK ADDED

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2024 //
50

It occasionally happens that I forget to add a link. I forgot to add the link for this great segment by Chris Hayes. I was embroiled in a computer glitch all day (my computer and printer are not communicating). Please watch the segment to learn what horrors Trump has in store for us.

Chris Hayes has a regular evening news program on MSNBC.

In this short video, he explains Project 2025, which spells out plans for major changes in the government and in our freedoms.

It’s a short video. Please watch.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Civil Rights, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Privatization, Shame, Trump

Nancy Bailey: Project 2025 Will Hurt Students with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2024 //
2

Nancy Bailey, retired teacher and veteran blogger, explains how Trump’s Project 2025 will strip away the federally-guaranteed rights of students with disabilities.

She writes:

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is generally troubling, and its education plan is worrisome. It involves Milton Friedman’s undemocratic ideas to privatize public education, and its voucher plan for students with disabilities will continue to end public school services as we know them.

Project 2025 will eliminate the costs and hard-fought legal protections for children with special education needs instead of strengthening the public school programs.

The All Handicapped Children Education Act

Since its start in 1975, The All Handicapped Children’s Education Act, now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), has opened public schools to children with disabilities. Before then, children had limited services, and many were mistreated in poor institutions.

The momentous passage of this act was a proud moment for America! For years afterward, public education focused on improving education for students with disabilities.

However, many politicians and policymakers have worked to undermine these school programs, believing this law is too expensive or wanting to privatize those services.

They reauthorized the Act in 1997 and 2004, when it changed to IDEA. They shuttered long time programs, turning a blind eye to states and local school districts that have pushed children out of services.

Consider how Texas officials denied children services for years, as did New Orleans  by converting public schools to charters after Hurricane Katrina. Those reading this might have their own examples of how their local schools reneged on the necessary services.

In these cases the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) did not perform due diligence to stop states from rejecting students. A stronger federal department should have ensured that students who needed disability services got them.

As disability services have been whittled down throughout the years, parents have become increasingly frustrated with public schools and convinced they should remove their students with a voucher, even though other school options lack accountability and are often less than ideal.

Project 2025 is correct that there are too many lawsuits by parents unhappy with public school programs, but without public schools, parents will have no rights!

Please open the link and read the post in full to learn how Project 2025 will hurt the most vulnerable children.

Categories Bigotry, Education Industry, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Special Education, Trump

The New Republic: If Joe Biden Were as Ruthless as Trump

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2024 //
46

The New Republic published a hypothetical speech by Sidney Blumenthal that Joe Biden might give if were as ruthless as Trump. However, he won’t because he is an institutionalist. He believes in the law and the Constitution. He believes, despite the Roberts Court, that no one is above the law, not even the President.

Here is the hypothetical Biden speech:

Good evening, my fellow Americans. With the close of the current session of the Supreme Court, I want to report to you on my compliance with their decisions, especially in the case involving presidential immunity, United States v. Trump.

When I took the oath of office, I swore that I would “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The Supreme Court has now reinterpreted that document. The court, for all intents and purposes, has also reinterpreted the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” to replace the “absolute tyranny” of a king. 

I have read the court’s majority opinion that an official act of the president is “presumptively” immune from all prosecution during and after his term, and that the president’s motive cannot be questioned. I have read, according to the majority, that a president who orders the Department of Justice and his vice president to commit election fraud is immune. I have read that a president who incites a mob to attempt to assassinate the vice president for failing to follow those instructions is immune. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”

Fellow Americans, I have taken the court’s opinion to heart. I am not one to defy the court. I am, as many have remarked, an institutionalist. I believe with all my soul in our institutions. And now, following the letter and the spirit of the court’s ruling, I have acted swiftly, decisively, and enthusiastically to enforce it. I will not, I cannot, shirk my constitutional duty. As Justice Sotomayor states, “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.” 

To begin with, certain “gratuities,” as we shall call them, have been paid to the court majority as a token of appreciation. In their ruling in the case of Snyder v. United States, the majority decided that James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, who cajoled $13,000 from a trucking company after he granted it a city contract, was not liable for bribery. The court stated that it was a “gratuity.” “Gratuities are typically payments made to a public official after an official act as a reward or token of appreciation,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the majority opinion.

Payment of “gratuities” to the justices who ruled in the majority in y follows the court’s decision in Snyder. It cannot be considered a bribe because it was not promised beforehand. But I do hope, as Justice Kavanaugh wrote, that there is “appreciation.” 

Now, following my strict construction of the court’s ruling on immunity, I can report to the nation that the threat to national security posed by my former political opponent, my late predecessor, has been eliminated. It was an official act. It was, to quote the court, “presumptive.”

The reasons for his removal do not need to be explained. Under the court’s decision, as an official act, it is more than privileged. I hope you understand that I need not disclose the reasons. I must respect the Supreme Court. I can assure the American people that there will be a thorough report that is currently being written by the intelligence community. It is classified. The substance cannot be disclosed—and never can be.

But I do want to tell you that he did have sex with a porn star. She didn’t like it. And he lied about his golf handicap.

Why am I doing this? That’s not admissible. The state of mind of the president, according to the court, is not admissible. My state of mind falls under an official act, so it’s nobody’s business but my own. I am proud of my official acts. I must respect the precedent of keeping secret all my reasons. Otherwise, I would be damaging the presidency for others who might follow in this office.

I regret to inform you that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has been arrested. A number of other members of the House Republican Conference have been taken into custody. Jim Jordan, unfortunately, attempted to resist arrest. After wrestling with an FBI agent, he met a tragic fate. In the sudden absence of those members, there is a new majority in the House. I look forward to a long and cooperative relationship. I can say proudly, gridlock is at last broken. And we can all give thanks to the Supreme Court.

I further regret to inform you that 10 members of the Republican Senate caucus have been arrested. Again, unfortunately, Josh Hawley attempted to run away and was wounded in the leg. The incident was entirely his fault: if only he had submitted to the authorities. Lindsey Graham was arrested in his office. He has renounced all of his former allegiances, and I have issued him a pardon—a conditional pardon. There will be no more obstruction from filibusters. Again, we can thank the court. 

Now, about the court itself, with the present available members of the Congress, I have proposed that the Supreme Court be expanded by 26 justices. I can report that those new justices have already been nominated and approved. Advise and consent is on the fast track. All 26 will be here tomorrow. A longer bench is already under construction.

Tragically, Chief Justice John Roberts has been arrested for his treasonous comment that the president is doing something illegal, based on his very own opinion. I will name a new chief justice after the new 26 members take their posts.

More reform is on the way. The Twenty-Second Amendment prohibiting the president from holding more than two terms will be replaced by the Twenty-Eighth Amendment, which rescinds it. The new amendment has been proposed in the states. I have no doubt that three-quarters of the states, through their legislatures, will be cooperative. In fact, I can promise you that I expect 100 percent cooperation from each and every state legislature on a bipartisan basis. I have alerted FBI offices in every state to assist in our plan to extend democracy. 

To that end, I am creating a new Cabinet department, the Department of Official Acts, to coordinate, simplify, and centralize the far-flung activities of the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Defense, and other departments and agencies. I am committed to eliminating waste and abuse in official acts.

Moreover, the vice president will head a new office here at the White House, the Office of Reimagining Official Acts, to spur innovation, creativity, and efficiency, and above all the execution of justice. That office will review all of the acts that I take so that they qualify as official.

The Office of Reimagining Official Acts has already held a Zoom conference this morning with all of the Fortune 500 CEOs. Each and every executive without exception has released a statement in support of my official acts and promised full cooperation, with gusto. By the way, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee will hold a press conference to announce the details of the amazing news that our campaign has just received new contributions of $43 billion and counting. 

I can also report that Rupert Murdoch has been arrested for seditious conspiracy, along with his accomplices at Fox News, who have previously been liable for defamation. They have been spewing libels every hour of every day since. That’s as much as I can say. I cannot give another reason without breaking the strictures laid down by the court.

The Supreme Court’s immunity decision has also had a big impact on international relations. I have had a conversation with Vladimir Putin, who told me that he misunderstood me all along, and that after the day’s events here at home, he has decided to withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine. He told me he has the greatest admiration for our form of government now. He said, we can do business, strongman to strongman. 

As for the rest of the campaign, when the Republican National Committee decides on its candidate, I would consider a debate with the ground rules that candidates adhere to national security guidelines, which will be presented as needed—before, during, and after such an event, consistent as official acts.

If any reader of this column can show where anything described here would be illegal under the Supreme Court immunity ruling, please turn yourself in to the nearest FBI bureau to avoid yet another tragic result. Thought is mother to the deed. Thought must be included among the potential threats to be countered by presidential official acts. “Presumptive,” as the court stated, must mean presumptive. And the reason? The president does not need to explain. 

As we celebrate this Fourth of July, in a fervent prayer that the court’s ruling will work out for the best of all possible worlds, I want to say in conclusion, what goes around comes around.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Fascism, Justice, Trump

Politico: RFK Jr.’s Unsavory Past, Reported in Vanity Fair

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2024 //
16

Politico recounts a story in the new issue of Vanity Fair about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and what makes him tick:

WOWZA — Vanity Fair’s Joe Hagan is out with a buzzy profile of ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. through the lens of his close friends and family, who describe the presidential candidate as a man whose life story is “marked by personal trauma and addiction to drugs, sex, and, perhaps most perniciously of all, public adulation.”

In some of the more alarming stories, Hogan’s report includes …

  • An on-the-record allegation of sexual assault from ELIZA COONEY, who was a young woman Kennedy had hired in the late 1990s to work as a babysitter and personal assistant.
  • A photo of Kennedy posing with the cooked remains of a dog while traveling in Korea. “The photo was taken in 2010, according to the digital file’s metadata — the same year he was diagnosed with a dead tapeworm in his brain.”
  • Allegations that he sent friends sexually explicit photos of women that may not have been taken consensually. 

Writes Hogan: “Theories about Kennedy’s reckless behaviors abound. Long before it was reported, members of the family knew about the brain worm … But more often his family points to Kennedy’s 14 years as a heroin user.”

Categories Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Health, History

Senator Sanders Releases Report Assailing Billionaire-Funded Voucher Movement

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2024 //
24

Senator Bernie Sanders issued a report lambasting the billionaires who are funding the voucher movement. It’s good that someone in Washington, D.C., is paying attention to this mean spirited effort to shift public money to private and religious schools. As scholar Josh. Owen has repeatedly demonstrated, voucher schools have been a disaster for low-performing kids. The main beneficiaries are students from wealthy families whose children are already enrolled in no public schools. Texas is not mentioned in the Sanders release, but billionaires DeVos, Yass, and native Texan billionaires used their wealth to oust anti-voucher Republicans.

Common Dreams reports:

Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report Tuesday detailing how right-wing billionaires are bankrolling coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs that siphon critical funding away from already-underresourced public schools.

The report notes that last year, the American Federation for Children (AFC)—an organization funded by former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—”ousted state lawmakers in Iowa and Arkansas who resisted proposals to subsidize private education in states and passed expansive private school vouchers.”

Aided by millions of dollars in funding from DeVos and her husband, “AFC’s political affiliates and allies spent $9 million to win 277 out of 368 races to remove at least 40 incumbent lawmakers,” the report adds.

The DeVos family is hardly alone in using its wealth to undercut U.S. public education. The Bradley Foundation, which has been knee-deep in efforts to privatize education in Wisconsin and across the country, spent $7.5 million in 2022 “to fund 34 state affiliates of the State Policy Network to push conservative policy agendas, including privatizing education, and $8.3 million to building a youth movement to ‘win the American Culture War.'”

“The Koch-sponsored group, American Encore, has funneled substantial amounts into state governor races and ballot initiatives around the country, including more than $1.4 million to elect Arizona’s former governor Doug Ducey in 2014 (who led the efforts to create the nation’s first universal private school voucher),” the report adds.

“For too long, there’s been a coordinated effort to sabotage our public schools and privatize our education system. Unacceptable.”

The analysis also names billionaires Jess Yass of Susquehanna International Group, Richard Uihlein of Uline, and Bernard Marcus of Home Depot, all of whom have recently donated to the School Freedom Fund—a PAC that supports voucher programs and shuttering the U.S. Education Department.

School voucher programs disproportionately benefit wealthy families, analyses have shown, while undercutting the goal of serving all students within a community.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Vouchers

John Thompson: Is AI a Boon or a Danger?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
16

John Thompson is a retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma. I admit that I steer clear of AI, in part because of my innate aversion to “thinking machines” replacing humans. I am biased towards people deciding for themselves, but as I watch the polling numbers in the race for President, I wonder if artificial intelligence might be more trustworthy than people who support a man with Trump’s long record of lying and cheating others.

John Thompson writes:

We live in a nation where reliable polling data reveals that 23% of respondents “strongly believe” or “somewhat believe” that the attacks on the World Trade Center were an “inside job.” Moreover, 1/3rd of polled adults believe that COVID-19 vaccines “caused thousands of sudden deaths,” and 1/3rd also believe the deworming medication Ivermectin was an “effective treatment for COVID-19.” Moreover, 63% of Americans “say they have not too much or no confidence at all in our political system.”

Such falsehoods were not nearly as common in the late 1990s when I first watched my high school students learn how to use digital media. But, I immediately warned my colleagues that we had to get out in front of the emerging technological threat. Of course, my advocacy for digital literacy, critical thinking, and digital ethics was ignored. 

But who knew that misuse of digital media would become so harmful? As Surgeon General Vivek Murthy now explains: 

It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. 

As a special issue of the Progressive  reports, our  digital ecosystems, with their deepfakes and disinformation are distorting reality, and increasing “human tendencies toward cognitive biases and groupthink.”  It further explains that since 2019 the number of people “who cite social media as their number one source for news has increased by 50 percent.” Moreover:

Half of American adults report that they access their news from social media sometimes or often. For Americans under the age of thirty-four, social media is the number one source for news.

The Progressive further explains that young people “don’t necessarily trust what they read and watch.” They “know that private corporations manipulate political issues and other information to suit their agendas, but may not understand how algorithms select the content that they see.”

We in public education should apologize for failing to do our share of the job of educating youth for the 21st century. Then we should commit to plans for teaching digital literacy.

It seems likely that the mental distress suffered by young people could be a first driver toward healthy media systems. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information:

According to data from several cross-sectional, longitudinal, and empirical research, smartphone and social media use among teenagers relates to an increase in mental distress, self-harming behaviors, and suicidality. Clinicians can work with young people and their families to reduce the hazards of social media and smartphone usage by using open, nonjudgmental, and developmentally appropriate tactics, including education and practical problem-solving.

According to the Carnegie Council:

Social media presents a number of dangers that require urgent and immediate regulation, including online harassment; racist, bigoted and divisive content; terrorist and right-wing calls for radicalization; as well as unidentified use of social media for political advertising by foreign and domestic actors. To mitigate these societal ills, carefully crafted policy that balances civil liberties and the need for security must be implemented in line with the latest cybersecurity developments.

Reaching such a balance will require major investments – and fortitude – from the private sector and government. But it is unlikely that real regulatory change can occur without grassroots citizens’ movements that demand enforcement.

And we must quickly start to take action to prepare for Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). In a New York Times commentary, Evgeny Morozov started with the statement by 350 technology executives, researchers and academics “warning of the existential dangers of artificial intelligence. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority.” He then cited a less-alarming position by the Biden administration which “has urged responsible A.I. innovation, stating that ‘in order to seize the opportunities’ it offers, we ‘must first manage its risks.’” 

Morozov then argued, “It is the rise of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., that worries the experts.” He predicted, “A.G.I. will dull the pain of our thorniest problems without fixing them,” and it “undermines civic virtues and amplifies trends we already dislike.”

Morozov later concluded that A.G.I. “may or may not prove an existential threat’ but it has an “antisocial bent.” He warned that A.G.I. often fails “to grasp the messy interplay of values, missions and traditions at the heart of institutions — an interplay that is rarely visible if you only scratch their data surface.”

I lack expertise in A.I. and A.G.I. but it seems clear that the dangers of data, driven by algorithms and other impersonal factors, must be controlled by persons committed to social values. It is essential that schools assume their duty for preparing youth for the 21st century, but they can only do so with a team effort. I suspect the same is true of the full range of interconnected social and political institutions. As Surgeon General Murthy concludes his warning to society about social media:

These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability.

The moral test of any society is how well it protects its children.

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Freedom, Technology

“Democracy”: Jeff Bezos Is Betraying the Guiding Principles of The Washington Post

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
13

One of our readers uses the sobriquet Democracy. In response to posts about Jeff Bezos’ decision to put the Washington Post in the hands of Will Lewis, a Murdoch-trained publisher and editor, Democracy writes:

When Eugene Meyer bought The Washington Post in 1933 he established a set of guiding principles for the newspaper and its employees.

The first was” to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained.”

The other principles included:

*  “The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”

*  “The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it.”

*  “In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.”

*  “The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs.”

I think it’s fair to say that there has been some genuine “slippage” under Jeff Bezos.

Categories Ethics, Media

Seth Abramson: Why MAGA Wants Biden to Step Down

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2024 //
142

Seth Abramson is a veteran journalist. He writes here about why MAGA is trying to push Biden out of the race: He’s the best candidate against Trump.

He begins:

Let’s cut to the chase: President Joe Biden is not going to end his 2024 campaign over a single poor debate performance, any more than Donald Trump did in 2020 after a first-in-the-cycle debate performance that voters conclusively told pollsters was worse than the one yesterday by this sitting president.


President Biden will stay in the race not simply because he’s already the nominee; not simply because there’s no mechanism to force him to exit; not simply because major media’s and politicos’ hyperventilating response to his debate performance yesterday—about 40% of voters appear to think he won the debate, and only 5% said it changed their vote (a sentiment unlikely to survive beyond a day in any case)—fails to take into account that the president had a cold, is a lifelong stutterer, performed much better as the debate went along, told a fraction of the number of lies his rival did, and saw his intermittent “old man” optics repeatedly belied by his conspicuous command of facts, policy, and history (check the transcript of the debate if you doubt this); no, Joe Biden will not step away from the 2024 election cycle because it would hand the presidency, beyond any doubt, to a confirmed rapist, serial sexual assailant, active insurrectionist, convicted felon, pathological liar, malignant narcissistic sociopath, gleeful adulterer, career criminal, unrepentant con man, traitorous would-be U.S. dictator, misogynist, antisemite, racist, homophobe, transphobe, Islamophobe, and budding war criminal.


Why would a Biden exit ensure a Trump victory?

Let us zoom through some reasons:


(1) Nobody now polls, or has ever polled, better against Trump than Biden. Rightly or not, it appears that at present American independents prefer one particular old white man to Donald Trump over any other option available to them. It is true now, and it was true in 2018 when Joe Biden first floated a presidential run and behind the scenes Trump and his team concluded that Biden was the biggest threat to his re-election. Team Trump thought so then—and turned out to be right—and it thinks so still. Why? Because all the polls say so. No poll has anyone else close to Trump, and Republicans are well aware of this.

(2) Biden has beat Trump before. Even if we ignore polls, we cannot ignore results. Joe Biden beat the pants off Trump in the popular vote and Electoral College in 2020, and the results weren’t that close. Biden picked up states Democrats thought they couldn’t get, more than doubled Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote margin over Trump, and did all this while, well, old. Was he less old in 2020 than today? Yes, of course. But he was still a stutterer who sometimes loses his train of thought, misspeaks, and underperforms in many debates and interviews. Nevertheless, voters decided that they liked him, trusted him, and believed he’d surrounded himself with great advisers. Which he did.


(3) Biden has had—unlike Trump—a successful presidency. Nonpartisan historians now universally rank President Biden in the Top 20 presidents ever. Yes, really; feel free to Google it. They do this because the Biden administration has gotten results, even when and as they have not been widely reported by the media. But the results are there even if you’re not a historian: inflation is easing, the economy is healthy, crime is down, COVID-19 is under control, we’re out of Afghanistan, NATO is stronger than ever, and the Executive Order the president just signed on the border has clearly had a major and immediate effect on reducing border crossings. Unemployment’s low and Biden has avoided any major scandals. Foreign leaders like him and trust him. By comparison, nonpartisan historians universally rank Donald Trump among the worst five presidents in American history due to his rank incompetence, deceit, corruption, and moral depravity. Why would the Democrats trade a Top 20 president for some as-yet unnamed pol who is untested on the national stage and has no POTUS track record?

Please open the link and finish reading.

Categories Biden, Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The Supreme Court Amended Our Constitution

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2024 //
18

Heather Cox Richardson brilliantly dissected the U.S. Supreme Court’s shocking decision about Presidential immunity. The Court abandoned the foundational principle of our country that “no one is above the law.” As she points out, even the justices reiterated that principle at their hearings. To read the sources, open the link or subscribe.

She wrote:

Today the United States Supreme Court overthrew the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law. 

It decided that the president of the United States, possibly the most powerful person on earth, has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well, unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.

This is a profound change to our fundamental law—an amendment to the Constitution, as historian David Blight noted. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president has ever asserted that he is above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law. 

But this extraordinary power grab does not mean President Joe Biden can do as he wishes. As legal commentator Asha Rangappa pointed out, the court gave itself the power to determine which actions can be prosecuted and which cannot by making itself the final arbiter of what is “official” and what is not. Thus any action a president takes is subject to review by the Supreme Court, and it is reasonable to assume that this particular court would not give a Democrat the same leeway it would give Trump. 

There is no historical or legal precedent for this decision. The Declaration of Independence was a litany of complaints against King George III designed to explain why the colonists were declaring themselves free of kings; the Constitution did not provide immunity for the president, although it did for members of Congress in certain conditions, and it provided for the removal of the president for “high crimes and misdemeanors”—what would those be if a president is immune from prosecution for his official acts? The framers worried about politicians’ overreach and carefully provided for oversight of leaders; the Supreme Court today smashed through that key guardrail. 

Presidential immunity is a brand new doctrine. In February 2021, explaining away his vote to acquit Trump for inciting an insurrection, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had also protected Trump in his first impeachment trial in 2019, said: “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office…. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation, and former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

But it was not just McConnell who thought that way. At his confirmation hearing in 2005, now–Chief Justice John Roberts said: “I believe that no one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law, the Constitution, and statutes.” 

In his 2006 confirmation hearings, Samuel Alito said: “There is nothing that is more important for our republic than the rule of law. No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law.” 

And in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh told the Senate: “No one’s above the law in the United States, that’s a foundational principle…. We’re all equal before the law…. The foundation of our Constitution was that…the presidency would not be a monarchy…. [T]he president is not above the law, no one is above the law.”

Now they have changed that foundational principle for a man who, according to White House officials during his term, called for the execution of people who upset him and who has vowed to exact vengeance on those he now thinks have wronged him. Over the past weekend, Trump shared an image on social media saying that former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who sat on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, was guilty of treason and calling for “televised military tribunals” to try her. 

Today, observers illustrated what Trump’s newly declared immunity could mean. Political scientist Norm Ornstein pointed out that Trump could “order his handpicked FBI Director to arrest and jail his political opponents. He can order the IRS to put liens on the property of media companies who criticize him and jail reporters and editors.” Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted that a president with such broad immunity could order the assassination of Supreme Court justices, and retired military leader Mark Hertling wrote that he was “trying to figure out how a commander can refuse an illegal order from someone who is issuing it as an official act.” 

Asha Rangappa wrote: “According to the Court, a President could literally provide the leader of a hostile adversary with intelligence needed to win a conflict in which we are involved, or even attack or invade the U.S., and not be prosecuted for treason, because negotiating with heads of state is an exclusive Art. II function. In case you were wondering.” Trump is currently under indictment for retaining classified documents. “The Court has handed Trump, if he wins this November, carte blanche to be a ‘dictator on day one,’ and the ability to use every lever of official power at his disposal for his personal ends without any recourse,” Rangappa wrote. “This election is now a clear-cut decision between democracy and autocracy. Vote accordingly.”

Trump’s lawyers are already challenging Trump’s conviction in the election interference case in which a jury found him guilty on 34 counts. Over Trump’s name on social media, a post said the decision was “BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN AND WISE, AND CLEARS THE STENCH FROM THE BIDEN TRIALS AND HOAXES, ALL OF THEM, THAT HAVE BEEN USED AS AN UNFAIR ATTACK ON CROOKED JOE BIDEN’S POLITICAL OPPONENT, ME. MANY OF THESE FAKE CASES WILL NOW DISAPPEAR, OR WITHER INTO OBSCURITY. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife was deeply involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, also took a shot at the appointment of special counsels to investigate such events. Thomas was not the only Justice whose participation in this decision was likely covered by a requirement that he recuse himself: Alito has publicly expressed support for the attempt to keep Trump in office against the will of voters. Trump appointed three of the other justices granting him immunity—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—to the court.

In a dissent in which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that because of the majority’s decision, “[t]he relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

“Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy,” she wrote, “I dissent.” 

Today’s decision destroyed the principle on which this nation was founded, that all people in the United States of America should be equal before the law.

The name of the case is “Donald J. Trump v. United States.” 

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