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Dark Money Pushes Weakening of Child Labor Laws

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2023 //
15

The Washington Post revealed the organization promoting the dilution of child labor laws. Iowa and Arkansas, both solid red states, were first to remove protections for children to meet the needs of employers.

To learn more about the gutting of child labor law in Iowa, watch this chilling video, thanks to reader Greg B.

Remember, the GOP is the party that loves the unborn but disdains the born. They value life in the womb but not actual children.

Investigative reporter Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post wrote:

When Iowa lawmakers voted last week to roll back certain child labor protections, they blended into a growing movement driven largely by a conservative advocacy group.
At 4:52 a.m., Tuesday, the state’s Senate approved a bill to allow children as young as 14 to work night shifts and 15 year-olds on assembly lines. The measure, which still must pass the Iowa House, is among several the Foundation for Government Accountability is maneuvering through state legislatures.
The Florida-based think tank and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, have found remarkable success among Republicans to relax regulations that prevent children from working long hours in dangerous conditions. And they are gaining traction at a time the Biden administration is scrambling to enforce existing labor protections for children.
The FGA achieved its biggest victory in March, playing a central role in designing a new Arkansas law to eliminate work permits and age verification for workers younger than 16. Its sponsor, state Rep. Rebecca Burkes (R), said in a hearing that the legislation “came to me from the Foundation [for] Government Accountability.”
“As a practical matter, this is likely to make it even harder for the state to enforce our own child labor laws,” said Annie B. Smith, director of the University of Arkansas School of Law’s Human Trafficking Clinic. “Not knowing where young kids are working makes it harder for [state departments] to do proactive investigations and visit workplaces where they know that employment is happening to make sure that kids are safe.”

That law passed so swiftly and was met with such public outcry that Arkansas officials quickly approved a second measure increasing penalties on violators of the child labor codes the state had just weakened.
In Missouri, where another child labor bill has gained significant GOP support, the FGA helped a lawmaker draft and revise the legislation, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
The FGA for years has worked systematically to shape policy at the state level, fighting to advance conservative causes such as restricting access to anti-poverty programs and blocking Medicaid expansion.


But in February, the White House announced a crackdown on child labor violators in response to what activists have described as a surge in youths — many of them undocumented immigrants — working at meat packing plants, construction sites, auto factories and other dangerous job sites.
The administration’s top labor lawyer called the proposed state child labor laws “irresponsible,” and said it could make it easier for employers to hire children for dangerous work.
“Federal and state entities should be working together to increase accountability and ramp up enforcement — not make it easier to illegally hire children to do what are often dangerous jobs,” Labor Solicitor Seema Nanda said. “No child should be working in dangerous workplaces in this country, full stop.”
Congress in 1938 passed the Fair Labor Standards Act to stop companies from using cheap child labor to do dangerous work, a practice that exploded during the Great Depression….

On the surface, the FGA frames its child worker bills as part of a larger debate surrounding parental rights, including in education and child care. But the state-by-state campaigns, the group’s leader said, help the FGA create openings to deconstruct larger government regulations.
Since 2016, the FGA’s Opportunity Solutions Project has hired 115 lobbyists across the country with a presence in 22 states, according to the nonpartisan political watchdog group Open Secrets.
“The reason these rather unpopular policies succeed is because they come in under the radar screen,” said David Campbell, professor of American democracy at the University of Notre Dame. “Typically, these things get passed because they are often introduced in a very quiet way or by groups inching little by little through grass-roots efforts.”
Minnesota and Ohio have introduced proposals this year allowing teens to work more hours or in more dangerous occupations, such as construction. A bill in Georgia would prohibit the state government from requiring a minor to obtain a work permit.

The FGA-backed measures maintain existing child labor safety protections “while removing the permission slip that inserts government in between parents and their teenager’s desire to work,” Nick Stehle, the foundation’s vice president, said in a statement.
“Frankly, every state, including Missouri, should follow Arkansas’s lead to allow parents and their teenagers to have the conversation about work and make that decision themselves,” said Stehle, who is also a visiting fellow at the Opportunity Solutions Project.
The FGA declined to make Stehle and other representatives available for interviews.
It’s one of several conservative groups that have long taken aim at all manner of government regulations or social safety net programs. The FGA is funded by a broad swath of ultraconservative and Republican donors — such as the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and 85 Fund, a nonprofit connected to political operative Leonard Leo — who have similarly supported other conservative policy groups.
The youth hiring or employment bills, as they are often titled, represent growing momentum among conservatives who contend that parents and not government policy should determine whether and where 14- and 15-year-olds should work.
“When you say that a bill will allow kids to work more or under dangerous conditions, it sounds wildly unpopular,” Campbell said. “You have to make the case that, no, this is really about parental rights, a very carefully chosen term that’s really hard to disagree with….”

Supporters of the child worker proposals say they reduce red tape around the hiring process for minors. A spokeswoman for Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a rising Republican star, said her state’s law relieved parents of “obsolete” and “arbitrary burdens.”
“The main push for this reform didn’t come from big business,” Stehle, the FGA vice president, wrote in an essay for Fox. “It came from families like mine, who want more of the freedom that lets our children flourish…”

Tarren Bragdon, a former Maine state legislator, founded the FGA in 2011 with a focus on cutting social safety net and anti-poverty programs. It quickly tapped into conservative political fundraising networks and grew from $50,000 in seed funding to $4 million in revenue by its fourth year, according to tax filings and the group’s promotional materials.

In 2020, the most recent year for which the FGA and its funders’ full financial disclosures are available, more than 70 percent of its $10.6 million in revenue came from 14 conservative groups.

The FGA joined the State Policy Network, a confederation of conservative state-level think tanks that practice what leaders call the “Ikea model” of advocacy, its president said during the group’s 2013 conference. Affiliates such as the FGA display prefabricated policy projects for state officials, then provide the tools — including research and lobbying support — to push proposals through legislative and administrative processes.
In 2021, for example, Arkansas legislators passed 48 measures backed by the FGA, according to the foundation’s end-of-year report. It identified Arkansas, Missouri and Iowa among its five “super states” where it planned to increase its advocacy presence.
In 2022, the FGA claimed 144 “state policy reform wins,” including 45 related to unemployment and welfare, across a slew of states.
“Success in the states is critical for achieving national change, as it often opens the door to federal regulatory reform,” Bragdon wrote in the group’s 2021 report. “Once enough states successfully implement a reform, we can use the momentum and proven results to build pressure for regulatory change.”
Yet even legislators who support the FGA’s policies expanding child labor have found their limits.
Missouri’s bill was amended to require a parental permission form for children aged 14 to 16 who want to take a job. The original legislation, edited by the FGA, did not contain any such provision.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Childhood, Cruelty, Dark Money, Economy, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Health, Injustice, Iowa, Jobs

Peter Greene: The True Purpose of Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2023 //
9

It is well known that the idea of vouchers was launched in response to the Brown decision of 1954. Southern states wanted to avoid desegregating their schools, so they created voucher laws so that white students would not be forced to go to school with Black students. (A useful history is Steve Suitts’ Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement.) Some “credit” libertarian Milton Friedman as the godfather of the voucher movement, but his 1955 essay advocating vouchers would have disappeared into the mists of time without the legislation passed across the South.

The voucher idea was stigmatized for many years because of its association with segregation. But it was revived in 1990 by a scholarly book by John Chubb and Terry Moe called Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, in which they theorized that vouchers were actually a panacea. (Their word.)

We now know they were wrong. As multiple studies have reported, student academic performance is worse in voucher schools than in public schools. we also know that most vouchers are used by students who were already enrolled in private and religious schools, so vouchers are an expensive subsidy for families that like the subsidy but don’t need it.

So, why is there continued advocacy for vouchers? why do voucher advocates say that “all families should have the same choice as the rich” when the value of vouchers don’t pay for elite schools attended by the rich? Why are they sold as salvation for children when they are not?

Peter Greene sees a nefarious goal behind the voucher movement. He originally wrote this post two years ago, but recently reposted it because it was prescient.

The purpose of vouchers is to abandon public schools. As choice prevails, the community sees no reason to tax itself for private choices. Bond issues will lose. Parents whose children are no longer in school will not pay taxes for other people’s children. People without children will think, “that’s not my responsibility.” People will not want to pay for religious schools for those of a different faith. Schooling will become a personal responsibility, not a civic responsibility.

Peter writes:

We need to find another way to talk about vouchers.

As the GOP mounts a multi-state initiative to implement vouchers or super-voucher education savings accounts in many states across the country, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we’ve been looking at the voucher movement through the wrong lens (which is to day, the lens that voucheristas have promoted).

Vouchers are not about freeing or empowering parents. They are about empowering private interests to chomp away at the giant mountain of education money in this country. They are about dismantling any sort of oversight and accountability; it’s striking how many of these voucher bills/laws very specifically forbid the state to interfere with the vendors in any way, shape or form.

Think of voucher programs this way.

The state announces, “We are dismantling the public education system. You are on your own. You will have to shop for your child’s education, piece by piece, in a marketplace bound by very little oversight and very few guardrails. In this new education ecosystem, you will have to pay your own way. To take some of the sting out of this, we’ll give you a small pocketful of money to help defray expenses. Good luck.”

It’s not a voucher system. It’s a pay your own way system. It’s a you’re on your own system. The voucher is not the point of the system; it’s simply a small payment to keep you from noticing that you’ve just been cut loose.

Freedom and empowerment will come, as always, in direct proportion to the amount of money you have to spend.

The voucher amount will dwindle. That amount is based on what the public school system spends to educate a child, and taxpayers will shrink that amount going forward as the schools themselves shrink to holding facilities for students who can’t find a private vendor to accept them, or whose parents can’t afford what the voucher won’t cover. And remember, we’ve seen this movie before– after Brown v. Board of Education, white families in some states moved their children into private segregation academies, and then they cut public school taxes (because why keep paying taxes on the system that your child no longer used).

Vouchers are the tail, not the dog. They are the public-facing image of privatization– and not just privatization of the “delivery” of education. Voucherization is also about privatizing the responsibility for educating children, about telling parents that education is their problem, not the community’s.

We need another term for discussing this family of policies; “voucher” doesn’t begin to capture what’s truly at stake. I can imagine a world in which charter schools are a viable, even useful part of a robust pubic education system; it’s not at all the world we currently live in, but I can imagine it. But the system that voucher proponents want is absolutely incompatible with a functioning public education system. And it has nothing to do with freedom.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization, Propaganda, Vouchers

Misty Griffin: Religious Rights Should Not Outweigh Children’s Human Rights

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2023 //
44

Misty Griffin has an important story to tell, based on her dreadful personal experience. Her story is important especially at this moment when so many politicians are repeating the mantra of “parent rights.” Misty reminds us that children too have rights, and not all parents are trustworthy. Misty wrote her story in a book titled Tears of the Silenced: An Amish True Crime Memoir of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Brutal Betrayal, and Ultimate Survival.

I asked her to write her story for you.

She wrote:

In the United States, freedom of religion has the ability to cancel out every single child safety law/regulation on the books. Children across the nation are cloistered into strict religious communities that either have their own private religious schools or homeschool their children. Most of these groups do not believe in reporting child abuse and stress the importance of severe corporal punishment and view sexual abuse as a moral failing rather than a serious crime. Children in such religions/churches/cults are left with no one in their orbit who will help them out of abusive situations. Many of these children suffer greatly on a daily basis and seem forgotten by regular society.

A bit of my story.

My stepdad was a wanted pedophile who fled the Seattle area in the late 70s after a warrant was put out for his arrest for molesting the neighbor’s 2 small daughters. My mom met him in 1986 when I was 4. My sister and I became isolated and cut off from society. We were sexually abused and severely beaten multiple times a day.

When I was 7 years old, we started dressing in long dresses and scarves. When I was 10 years old we were dressing like the Amish. My mom told everyone we were being homeschooled (in reality we just did sporadic math and reading lessons here and there in case anyone from the state wanted to see schoolwork.) When I was 11 we moved to a remote mountain ranch in northern WA. At 18 yrs old, I tried to escape and was taken to a real Amish community. Three and half years later I fled the Amish community after 6 months of sexual abuse by the bishop.

My entire church knew that the bishop was a sexual predator. They had shunned him for six weeks for molesting his daughter a few years before I landed in the community. I reported the bishop to the police because I was suspicious he was molesting the children. The police drug their feet and told me point blank that they had to be careful not to trample on the religious rights of the Amish community. The bishop ended up escaping to Canada with his whole family and went on to molest almost all of the 11 children. Eleven years later he was finally sent to prison after one of his daughters asked a neighbor for help. They had come back to the United States by that time.

Child Rights Act

I had approximately a third-grade education when I came out into the “world.” It’s so sad that stories like mine are allowed to happen, but my story is not the only one, In recent years I have received thousands of emails from people who grew up in strict religions/cults. We must call out this religious aspect of child abuse because no matter how many laws and regulations we put on the books if this issue is not addressed and children are not given rights, children in strict religions and cults will never be reached.

I am not anti-religion; I am a non-denominational Christian, but religion should not allow anyone to bypass child safety measures. If you agree please sign my Child Rights Act Petition and share it on social media. Religious Rights should not outweigh children’s Human Rights.

photo

Misty Griffin

www.mistygriffin.com

mistyegriffin@gmail.com

Pasadena, CA

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Corruption, Cruelty, Discipline, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Injustice, Lies, Parents, Religion

Mercedes Schneider: DeSantis Better Build More Prisons in Florida

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2023 //
22

Mercedes Schneider points out that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis believes he can win over the Republican base by turning stuff he doesn’t like into felonies. With so many new laws on the books that carry criminal penalties, Florida will need more prison cells.

Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and the Republican supermajority in the Florida House and Senate are passing incredibly extreme, right-wing legislation, which will surely help DeSantis to curry favor with an extreme, right-wing Republican base in order for DeSantis to become Republican nominee for president in 2024….

Imposing felonies seems to be the legislative way in Florida of late; as a result of a new law in January 2023, the state’s teachers, librarians, and other school officials are packing up library books for fear of being charged with a third-degree felony for allowing the public access to non-government-approved books. But freedomand liberty.

The abortion ban cited above imposes possible third-degree felonies for any medical professional who assists, say, a woman who discovers at 10 weeks that her fetus has no skull. According to DeSantis’ law, since this woman’s life is not in danger, she should (must!) carry the pregnancy to term and give birth to a child without a skull (a child with a 5 percent chance of living one full week and no more).

Surely such cruelty is not good for any forthcoming DeSantis-as-Prez campaign.

A man who sneaks into town to sign such a bill into law under cover of darkness surely knows as much….

So, here’s the rub:

In order to get the Republican nomination, DeSantis needs all of this punitive, “felony” legislation. However, in order to win the presidential election, such fascist extremism is DOA.

Republican megadonors are noticing DeSantis’ extremism.

On April 15, 2023, the Financial Times published an article, entitled, “Top Republican Donor Sours on Florida Governor’s Stance on Social Issues.” From the article:

Top Republican donor Thomas Peterffy [worth $26B] is halting plans to help finance the US presidential bid of Florida governor Ron DeSantis due to his extreme positions on social issues. 

“I have put myself on hold,” the billionaire told the Financial Times. 

“Because of his stance on abortion and book banning . . . myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.” …

In January, Peterffy told the FT that he was a fan of DeSantis and was “looking forward” to backing a presidential bid by the governor.

But now, he says: “I am more reluctant to back him. We are waiting to see who among the primary candidates is most likely to be able to win the general, and then put all of our firepower behind them.”

Ahh, the DeSantis quandary: How to sell out to the base and also win the general election?

Might be a good idea to sign into law Florida legislation that does not include the words, “third-degree felony.”

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Politics

Iowa: Legislature Will Spend Millions to Kick Poor People Off Food Stamps

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2023 //
41

This is a story I don’t understand, so I’m sharing and hoping someone can explain my questions. Iowa is a red state. The legislature is about to make it harder for poor people to gain access to federal aid for food, a program called SNAPor . Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal government’s most effective food assistance pipeline. The legislature knows that about 300,000 Iowans rely on SNAP to feed themselves and their family. But they think that Iowa can save money by reducing SNAP beneficiaries, also that getting food aid reduces the incentive to work.

So here are my questions:

How can people be so cruel?

Why do these legislators get re-elected?

As a reader of this blog, you will not be surprised to see which billionaires are behind this effort to take food access away from hungry families.

Kyle Swenson of the Washington Post reported:

The state legislature, with the support of the Republican supermajority, was poised to approve some of the nation’s harshest restrictions on SNAP. They include asset tests and new eligibility guidelines. By the state’s own estimate, Iowa will need to spend nearly $18 million in administrative costs during the first three years — to take in less federal money. The bill’s backers argue the steps would save the state money long term and cut down on “SNAP fraud.”

The measure is part of a broader national crackdown on SNAP, the federal program at the heart of the nation’s welfare system. The proposed legislation was not a homegrown effort but the product of a network of conservative think tanks pushing similar SNAP restrictions in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and other states. But experts say Iowa’s represents the boldest attack yet on SNAP, and Republicans in Congress have signaled a similar readiness to impose limits on federal food assistance.


“There are pockets where you are seeing a movement toward more restrictions to kick people off SNAP,” said Diane Schanzenbach, a professor at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy. “But the SNAP program is really well-designed. It’s effective and efficient, and it does a tremendous amount of good. Generally, proposals to change it usually are going to make it worse…”

Iowa’s food bank operators say any new restrictions on food stamps are likely to fuel a surge in demand. But they are not sure whether they can absorb it because they are still reeling from a decision last year to scale back SNAP benefits.


When the coronavirus pandemic started in 2020, the federal government temporarily raised its allotment of SNAP dollars for the 41 million Americans in the program. Then in April 2022, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) decided to end those emergency SNAP benefits a year early, leaving the 286,874 Iowans with less money each month for food.


Nonprofits also felt the impact when the federal money disappeared. Data collected by the food banks show the smaller SNAP payouts drove more Iowas to seek their help than at any point during the pandemic emergency. After April 2022, the 15 food banks that fall under the umbrella of the Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC) began seeing “numbers that we hadn’t seen for the past two years,” said Daniel Beck, the network’s data coordinator.


“When people get more SNAP, they don’t need food pantries as much,” Beck said. “That just a fact…”

Iowa ended 2022 with a general-fund budget surplus of $1.91 billion. But at the start of the 2023 legislative session, Republicans made clear that limiting access to SNAP was a priority because of cost concerns.


“It’s these entitlement programs,” House Speaker Pat Grassley (R), grandson of Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R), told reporters in January. “They’re the ones that are growing within the budget, and are putting pressure on us being able to fund other priorities. And so I think it’s time for us to take a serious look at what they are.”
If budget concerns were not driving the legislation, political opportunity was. In November 2022, Republicans expanded their majorities in both statehouse chambers.


In January, 39 Republican House members sponsored a bill that would require an asset test, meaning families and individuals are barred from accessing SNAP, Medicaid, and other assistance programs if the value of their cars, farm equipment or other items are too high. The measure would also create more paperwork for recipients, and ban those using SNAP from buying candy and soda, as well as fresh meat, white bread, baked beans or American cheese, among other items. None of the 39 legislators, including Grassley, responded to requests for comment.

The proposal’s backers argued that SNAP assistance de-incentivized families from working or from taking on more hours at the jobs they already had. They also pressed the case that the current program would eliminate “SNAP fraud.”
Republican supporters point to Iowa’s SNAP error rate of 11.81 percent in 2019, which the state was fined for, even though it was in line with the national standard in 2021. (The Agriculture Department warns that the error rate is “not a fraud rate” because it also includes underpayments and eligibility mistakes.)

Northwestern’s Schanzenbach noted that other states are moving toward fewer eligibility requirements, not more, because around 40 percent of SNAP recipients nationally are either elderly or disabled. “They have stable incomes then, so there is just not really much of an upside to having them certify more often,” she said.
Eventually, Iowa legislators stripped the food restrictions from the SNAP bill after a number of prominent players in state business — including the Iowa Beverage Association, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry and Tyson Foods — lobbied against the bill.


But the version of the proposal that the legislature would later vote on kept the assets test, tasked the state with contracting with a third-party vendor to conduct rigorous identity verification and authentication on recipients, raised the monthly income threshold of SNAP participants to 160 percent of the federal poverty level for households and gave recipients only 10 days to respond to paperwork mistakes or discrepancies before they are cut from the program.

Enacting the bill is expected to cost Iowa more than $17 million in the first three years, far more than the $2.2 million the state spends each year to administer SNAP. (The federal government funds SNAP and splits administrative costs 50-50 with the state. Last year, Iowa received $60.4 million in federal SNAP funds).


Most of that amount would go toward hiring workers and installing systems to process, authenticate and monitor compliance.
Opponents in the Iowa Capitol and beyond wonder if the expense is really necessary to police the rolls of a federal program that for many recipients is still not enough to live on….

As the SNAP bill wove through the statehouse, a long list of interest groups came out against it, including the Iowa Grocery Industry Association, the Iowa Catholic Conference, and the Iowa Farmers Union.


Its biggest proponent was the Opportunity Solutions Project, a Florida think tank that has successfully shepherded similar bills through other statehouses.


The nonprofit says it shares “high-quality research and data analysis with state lawmakers to ensure new laws are carefully crafted to expand opportunity and freedom for all.” According to OpenSecret, the group had registered 57 active lobbyists in 22 states in 2022.


The OSP is the lobbying arm of the Foundation for Government Accountability. Both groups are run by Maine state legislator Tarren Bragdon, who started the FGA in 2011 with three employees and less than $60,000 in the group’s bank account. According to tax records, that money was a grant from the State Policy Network, a major funder for right-wing think tanks and organizations that has been linked to conservative superdonors such as Charles Koch and the DeVos family. OSP did not respond to calls for comment.

Categories Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Iowa

Paul Waldman: FOX “News” Is Controlled by the Monster It Created

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2023 //
3

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post shows how the FOX “personalities” lied to their audience because they were afraid the audience would go to other sites that fed the audience’s hunger for conspiracy theories. The FOX talking heads created the monster, and now they are owned by the monster. All of this is especially interesting because Dominion Voting Systems is suing FOX and others for libel, and the FOX statements show that they knew their on-air statements were lies.

On screen, Fox News personalities paint a world of clear heroes and villains, where conservatives are always strong and right and liberals are weak and wrong. But the extraordinary private communications revealed in the $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox show who they really are. Panicked over Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, those same hosts, and the executives who run the network, cowered in abject terror.

They feared the same monster that keeps House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) up at night, the monster that conservative media and Republican politicians created: base voters who are deluded, angry and vengeful.

McCarthy has sought to appease the beast by granting exclusive access to 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to Fox News host Tucker Carlson. But with each capitulation, McCarthy and Fox News only make the monster stronger.

To see how, begin with the Dominion lawsuit. The company, which makes election software and voting machines, alleges that Fox defamed its business by repeatedly claiming that its systems were used to steal the 2020 presidential election. To win this kind of case against a news organization, a plaintiff must show that the organization acted with “actual malice” — that it said things it knew were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Mistakes alone are not enough.

Emails and texts sent in the days after the election appear to show exactly that. On air, Fox was spreading lies about supposed election fraud and bringing on guests without concern for their credibility, including Rudy Giuliani and GOP lawyer Sidney Powell. Meanwhile, Fox’s stars and executives privately belittled those same people and the claims they were making.

“Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson wrote in one email. Giuliani was “acting like an insane person,” host Sean Hannity declared.

At the same time, Fox News tried to suppress the truth. Reporters for the organization who corrected false claims were reprimanded and threatened. One reporter who fact-checked Powell and Giuliani was told by her boss that executives were not happy about it and that she should do a better job of “respecting our audience.” When Fox truthfully reported Joe Biden’s victory, Carlson texted his producer: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real.” When another reporter fact-checked a Trump tweet spreading lies about stolen votes, Carlson demanded that the reporter be fired.

These documents make clear not only that Fox News stars and executives think their audience is a bunch of half-wits but also that they live in fear that the audience will turn on them unless they tell viewers exactly what they want to hear regardless of the facts.

Who taught that audience to believe conspiracy theories and to assume that any unwelcome information must be a sinister lie? Fox News, of course.

Now consider Jan. 6. McCarthy knows the facts. The Capitol insurrection wasn’t a false-flag operation by antifa or the FBI. Indeed, McCarthy initially blasted Trump for his role in stirring the rioters and dismissed conspiracy theories. So why has he given exclusive access to surveillance footage to Carlson, the constant purveyor of conspiracy theories?

There’s no mystery. Carlson’s producers will comb through endless pixels to find images with which to mislead viewers: to convince them that the riot wasn’t so bad or that Trump’s supporters weren’t to blame or that the whole thing was a setup.

That will only further convince Carlson’s audience to deny the truth about Jan. 6, and punish any Republican officeholder who disagrees. As for McCarthy, will this exercise help him by making it more likely that Republicans will reinforce his thin House majority in the next election — or take the Senate or the White House? Quite the opposite. It only makes it more likely that voters will view his party as extremists and loons who are far more interested in the obsessions of a spectacularly unpopular ex-president than in the genuine problems the country faces.

Like the trembling dissemblers of Fox News, McCarthy must feel that he has no choice: Feed the beast or be eaten by it. Winning the future is an idea they cannot latch on to because they are so frantic to survive one more day.

Republican elites are not powerless. They helped make this mess and could nudge their base back toward reality if they chose. But they’re too afraid to try.

Categories Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Fake News, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Lies, Media, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

Texas: The Disgrace of Long-Term Solitary Confinement

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2023 //
23

Michael Barajas wrote a while back in The Texas Observer about an inhumane practice that is especially notorious in Texas prisons: long-term solitary confinement. He spoke with prisoners who had been in solitary for 22-24 hours a day for decades. They described losing their sense of reality, depression, thoughts of suicide.

He began:

Three years ago, guards came to Roger Uvalle’s cell to tell him he was “catching chain”—being shackled and transferred to another prison. As the guards escorted him to the chain bus with about 60 other inmates, Uvalle began trembling, overcome by anxiety. He turned so pale another prisoner told him he looked like a ghost. He didn’t relax until guards put him in his new solitary confinement cell, a 6-by-10-foot space where he’d spend 22 to 24 hours each day, alone, just as he had every day for the past two-plus decades.

Years of almost no human contact have warped Uvalle’s sense of time. Weeks, months, even years blend together. He says his memory has degraded to the point where he now struggles to keep track of the few personal items he’s allowed to have. He sometimes spends hours turning over his cell looking for stamps, letters, art supplies.

Roger Uvalle.

ROGER UVALLE. LAUREN CROW

His recollection of the time before 1992, when he went to prison for two armed robberies, is hazy. He knows he spent time in state hospitals; that his family struggled to find him mental health care growing up in San Antonio; and that as a teenager, he once tried to kill himself by swallowing a bottle of Valium. He knows that he was self-medicating on a cocktail of booze and whatever drugs he could find at the time. He knows that when he first went to prison, he was housed with the rest of the general inmate population and received mental health treatment, which he says helped.

And he knows that about 12 months into his 40-year sentence, guards sent him to solitary confinement after they accused him of being involved in back-to-back fights and hiding a makeshift knife in his cell. Two years later, while he was still in isolation, guards accused him of being affiliated with the Mexican Mafia prison gang, a scarlet letter officials use to justify keeping people in solitary.

About five years in, Uvalle says, he stopped getting medication for his mental illness, started hallucinating, and then struggled to keep himself and his cell clean. “I couldn’t care for myself and didn’t care about much and was experiencing psychotic behavior on a regular basis,” he wrote in a letter to me. When I visited him in prison recently, he talked about his most recent hunger strike, his third in the past two years. He had refused food for seven days before giving up this time. “Most of the time, they don’t acknowledge your hunger strike if you don’t have outside help,” Uvalle says. “They’ll let you die right there. They don’t care.” It reminds me of a line from one of the letters he sent me before our visit, when he described how some inmates set fires in protest. “There’s fires literally every day,” he wrote. “Never been in a place where there are fires every day.”

During our conversation, Uvalle seems shaken to be speaking with a stranger. His slow, soft speech hardly carries through the buzzy closed-circuit phone that connects us through the cracked plexiglass pane. He tells me he’s worried he’s getting worse. He’s struggling again to keep himself and his cell clean. He cries randomly sometimes, but doesn’t know why.

Uvalle went into solitary confinement in 1993, when he was 21 years old. Now, at 47, he’s been in solitary for 26 years—more than half his life…

Solitary confinement is a uniquely American form of punishment. It began as a misguided attempt at rehabilitation. America’s first prisons, built in the 1800s, housed inmates in near total isolation based on a Quaker belief that solitude fostered penitence and reformation—hence the word “penitentiary.” In reality, foreign attachés dispatched to study American prisons in 1831 were horrified after witnessing a degree of isolation “beyond the strength of man.” Charles Dickens was revolted by what he saw while touring an American penitentiary in 1842, writing, “I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.” In 1890, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a prisoner who challenged his placement in solitary for 45 days, stating that inmates subjected to even brief isolation tended to slip into a “semi-fatuous condition” or became violently and irreversibly insane.

By the turn of the century, solitary had mostly gone out of style as a core correctional model in America. But in Texas, as convict leasing and prison farms replaced slavery as the primary tool for black oppression after the Civil War, solitary was still reserved as a severe punishment. Inmates on Texas’ prison plantations were locked in pitch-dark boxes, sometimes for so long or in such great numbers that they suffocated to death. In 1947, Oscar Byron Ellis, who had operated a money-making penal farm in Tennessee, took over the Texas prison system and built a new “segregation unit” in Huntsville to quarantine “hopeless cases.” Under Ellis, the authoritarian control Texas exerted over its prisoners became the model other states tried to emulate. Penologists drooled over what they called the “Texas Control Model.”

Please open the link and read the rest of this horrifying article.

Categories Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Injustice, Texas

Texas: Republicans Hate Education: Dumb and Dumberer

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2023 //
5

The Texas Signal has figured out the Republican plan for education. Defund the public schools. Send public money to greedy charter operators who have their eye on the bottom line. Send public money to voucher schools that indoctrinate their students. The goal: Dumb and Dumberer. Members of the Texas House of Representatives—both Democrats and Republicans—voted against public funding for private schools just a few days ago (after this article was posted), but the Governor is likely to try again.

For decades, Texas Republicans have been hoping you won’t notice how much public education is underfunded. Now that the far right is in the driver’s seat, we can see it was a failure by design.

Under Republican leadership, Texas has long underfunded our teachers and schools. For a while, this worked for Texas Republicans – at least politically. If someone complained, they could always point their fingers at the need for property tax relief or blame our failing schools on underpaid teachers. And if that didn’t work– blame Black and Brown communities. And if that didn’t work – hell blame the kids themselves. 

Of course, they could also avoid the topic altogether. Instead of allowing the light to shine on our school, they could simply redirect their high beams to some unfortunate Texas group as a distraction in their signature Texas Republican culture war two-step. Anything to avoid responsibility.

Texas Republicans have been happy to keep up this understanding during their 6-month stay in Austin every odd year. The Texas Republican culture war two-step: bully some women or LGBTQ kids and do the bare minimum so that they can say they’ve done their part for our kids while they find ways to build personal wealth. 

That worked for a while until the failures of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) started to show. 

Republican failures, TEA Takeovers, and Privatization

In 2018, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was placed under federal oversight by the Department of Education for its failings regarding special education. This was due to the illegal actions of the Texas Education Agency that put a limit on the percentage of students it would allow into special education programs, impacting countless kids.  

This normally would be a wake-up call for any elected official who had the interests of their constituents at heart. But then again, we’re dealing with Greg Abbott. 

Instead of fixing the root of most issues, underfunding, Governor Greg Abbott made a hard right turn led by party extremists. Greg Abbott decided to turn to Republicans’ trusted distracted dance, except now he created a new cultural war two-step. Step 1: Blame teachers at struggling schools in our most diverse cities and 2) funnel money into the pockets of his rich donors who put their kids to private Christian schools through the scheme known as vouchers.

While Abbott has been on a statewide tour pushing his voucher scheme, he simultaneously had TEA take over the Houston Independent School District (HISD) takeover earlier this year. The takeover was blasted by civil and racial rights advocates, including the ACLU of Texas. “The state takeover of HISD is not about public education — it’s about political control of a 90 percent Black and brown student body in one of the country’s most diverse cities,” they wrote on Twitter.

Then in late March, Abbott continued his strategy with a new diverse (and Democratic-run) city: Austin. State Representative Gina Hinojosa (D- Austin) is a leading voice on public education and sits on the prominent House committee. And late on the last Friday of March, she sent an explosive alert on social media to activate pro-public education Texans. She announced that the TEA recommended conservatorship over Austin Independent School District (AISD). 

This means that a team selected by Commissioner Morath will have the power to take action over our local school district indefinitely, similar to the Houston Independent School District (HISD) takeover earlier this year. 

According to Rep. Hinojosa, the agency has cited the district’s failings regarding students receiving special education. And in November, the voters of Austin elected four new trustees and an interim superintendent has since been hired. Most folks agree AISD is heading in the right direction. “Specifically, we know that many of AISD’s challenges are due to staffing shortages, “ said Hinojosa. “Additionally, the TEA has acknowledged that the state underfunds special education in AISD by close to $80 million annually.” 

Of course, facts would only matter if Republicans cared about improving the lives of children. The solution seems simple: more funding equals better results. However, this is all a ruse toward the larger direction right back to the voucher scheme pushed by the extreme right. 

As we’ve noted, current proposals that could become law give families enrolling in private or parochial schools $8,000 per student, per year to cover tuition and other related expenses. 

This would be devastating to our public schools. Texas ranks near the bottom of national rankings of per-student funding, with the basic allotment totaling around $6,160 per student. 

The Governor and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick are fully on board, leaving only the Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan left as a question mark. While Phelan generally is a pushover when it comes to right-wing agenda items, some rural Republicans may force his hand into a fight. 

The solution to most of our public education problems is simple: funding. Simple solutions are usually welcome news. However, with the growing issues of sexual assault problems for Texas Republicans and other issues that plague the state, Republicans go for what they’re most familiar with for answers. The ole’ culture war two-step.

Are you tired of Texas Republicans pushing big lies and trying to steal your vote? So are we, that’s why we’re fighting back against the right-wing lie machine. Our commitment to ethical, fact-based journalism is vital to our democracy, and we can’t do it without you. Consider donating today to help us stay in this fight.

CONTINUE READING

Musings: How Ted Cruz helped turn politics into pro wrestling
Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Education Industry, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Ignorance, Privatization, Propaganda, Stupid, Texas

Indiana: Bill Would Criminalize Librarians, Allow Parents to Censor Books

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2023 //
16

The Indiana legislature is considering a bill that would empower parents to censor books they find objectionable and to criminalize librarians who allow such books in libraries. The story was originally reported on WYFI, the NPR station in Indiana.

Chalkbeat reported:

The House Education Committee heard hours of testimony Wednesday from school employees, librarians, and others across Indiana who expressed opposition to a proposed amendment to a bill that would strip these employees of a legal defense against charges they distributed material harmful to minors.

The hearing was the latest evolution in a months-long legislative process driven by concerns among some parents that pornography is rampant in schools. While lawmakers have drafted legislation to address these concerns, they’ve presented little evidence to suggest it’s a widespread problem. The latest iteration of the legislation also targets public libraries.

Rep. Becky Cash (R-Zionsville), who crafted the amendment, said she’s heard from “thousands” of parents who have lodged complaints with their schools over books they believed were objectionable.

“Parents have testified in school board meetings and come to me, and many members of this committee and assembly many, many times over the last couple of years saying that the system did not work for them,” Cash said.

She explained that the amendment mandates schools and public libraries lay out a transparent process for parents and residents to lodge complaints.

But several Democratic members of the committee expressed concern that the bill would empower some parents and disempower others by creating a system in which some parents could control access to books for all children. They also expressed opposition to a portion of the amendment that strips librarians and school employees from a legal defense.

“We are not the court of appeals from parents who are unhappy with school board decisions,” said Rep. Ed DeLaney (D-Indianapolis). “But if we were the Court of Appeals, we would want evidence. What parent? What school? What book? What hearing? What process? Not this vague discontent.”

These attacks on librarians and on the freedom to read are despicable. The red states are empowering ignorant censors who want to impose their values on people who don’t share them.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Ignorance, Indiana, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy, Literature

Florida Plans to Eliminate Tenure in Higher Education

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2023 //
16

Florida is the state where freedom goes to die. The state university system intends to eliminate tenure and replace it with a five-year evaluation system. Theoretically, the review won’t include political views, but all professors will be expected to comply with state laws. Anyone who teaches courses about race, racism, gay studies, or inequality is unlikely to get a favorable evaluation because those subjects are banned by state law. Anyone who teaches or defends critical race theory is likely to be ousted.

Florida’s state university system is making major changes to long-time tenure protections, meaning that established professors would have to undergo a review every five years to determine the faculty members’ “productivity.”

However, Florida-based professors and other advocates say that the new rule, approved by the Florida Board of Governors Wednesday, could hurt academic freedom and impact a faculty members’ livelihood.

The issue of Florida’s five-year post-tenure evaluations, among other changes to the state’s universities, is getting nationwide criticism from multiple organizations, including American Association of University Professors, the American Psychological Association, Modern Language Association, and American Historical Association and a dozen others.

Faculty in other states are even voicing their opposition to Florida’s new higher education policies, such as the University of Rhode Island Faculty Senate and the Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York.

“Over the past two years, Florida elected officials have attacked the independence and integrity of the state’s public higher education institutions…introducing a requirement for five-year post-tenure reviews, they have undermined tenure and academic freedom,” the Professional Staff Congress said in a written statement.

The American Association of University Professors explains that tenure serves as a “safeguard” for a professor’s academic freedom.

“A tenured appointment is an indefinite appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency and program discontinuation,” the AAUP explains on its website.

It continues: “When faculty members can lose their positions because of their speech, publications, or research findings, they cannot properly fulfill their core responsibilities to advance and transmit knowledge.”

But new rules adopted Wednesday by the Florida Board of Governors tasks each university board of trustees to adopt policies that evaluate tenured professors on a handful of unified goals from a statewide standpoint.

The rule adoption is due to a new law from the 2022 legislative session, which was pushed by then-Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., who added in a last-minute amendment calling for the 5-year tenure review. Then Sen. Ray Rodrigues was a co-sponsor. Diaz is now the Florida Education Commissioner. Rodrigues is the Chancellor of the university system.

Under this new rule, faculty are to be evaluated on “productivity,” “meeting the responsibilities and expectations associated with assigned duties,” and “compliance with state laws, Board of Governors’ regulations, and university regulations and policies.”

The chief academic officer of the university, often referred to as the ‘provost,’ would make the final call on a professor’s performance, according to the rule.

But the Florida higher education system has experienced an overhaul by the DeSantis administration, facing a mountain of changes that cater to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ conservative views regarding a variety of concerns, including tenure protections. That’s why some Florida professors are concerned that the state is becoming a hostile environment for current and prospective faculty.

The rule says that a professor evaluation “shall not consider or otherwise discriminate” based on a professor’s “political or ideological viewpoints,” but some are skeptical on whether that provision will be adhered to.

“The way that many of our faculty are looking at it is that this is intentionally designed from the ground up to allow bad actors to cull faculty from departments with whom they personally disagree or who have politics that are inconvenient to the institution,” Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida, told the Phoenix.

“Or, as we’ve seen with the narrative that’s been coming out of Tallahassee, who have politics that disagree with those of the governor,” he added.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Higher Education
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