Archives for category: Extremism
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E.J. Dionne: The Moral Failure of Those Who Refuse to Criticize Hamas’ Terrorism

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2023 //
40

E.J. Dionne is a thoughtful columnist for the Washington Post. He writes here about the extremists on the left who defend the terrorism and butchery by Hamas. I repost his article because his views are similar to my own. I deplore the callousness and undemocratic policies of the Netanyahu regime. I support a two-state solution. I hope for the day that Israel and its neighbors are willing and able to collaborate to improve the standard of living for everyone in the region. And I deplore the horrific terrorism that Hamas inflicted on Israeli civilians of all ages on October 7. Hamas knew that their attack would provoke a ferocious response by Israel, and that the world would react with fury towards Israel. Hamas uses the Gazans as human shields.

I hope that Netanyahu is permanently disgraced by his failure to seek reconciliation and by the security lapses that allowed Hamas to slaughter civilians. I hope that everyone involved in the attack on Israel is captured and punished. I am deeply concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and pray for the safety of innocent Palestinians and for a swift end to the Army’s incursion. Above all, I pray for peace among the Israelis and their neighbors.

He writes:

A conversation I had last week with a progressive Jewish friend is, I think, representative of many discussions happening on the left. Most liberals are horrified and outraged over Hamas’s killings and kidnappings in southern Israel but also strongly support a Palestinian state and are deeply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

My friend anguished over parts of the left — yes, they are very vocal online but a tiny minority of a broader movement — that not only failed to condemn Hamas’s atrocities but in some cases justified terrorist acts against innocents, many of them left-wing Israelis in kibbutzim who long for peace based on justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike. For my friend, this moral failure signaled that antisemitism had embedded itself in the wing of politics with which she has long identified.

To comment on this intra-left controversy risks distorting the political stakes, since there is a rare consensus in mainstream politics that Hamas’s terrorism was “an act of sheer evil,” as President Biden said in his powerful speechon Tuesday. Little pockets of sympathy for Hamas will have no effect on U.S. politics going forward. The important contrast is between the moral and strategic seriousness of Biden’s response and the petty, unhinged and self-involved rantings of Donald Trump. Maybe, just maybe, Americans pondering a vote for the former president will see more clearly that returning him to the White House would be an act of democratic suicide.

But liberals and supporters of the democratic left like to pride ourselves on being sensitive to injustice, decent in our instincts and capable of making distinctions. To rationalize the sadistic crimes of Hamas meets none of these standards. Doing so also undercuts the arguments that the vast majority on left wants to make about the future of Israel and Palestine.

It’s true that years of right-wing governance in Israel, the spread of settlements on the West Bank and the assault on democracy by the Netanyahu government have altered the balance of forces on the left. Older liberals such as Biden (and, yes, I’m in that camp) have an unshakable and ingrained sympathy for the survival of a Jewish homeland in Israel, while also empathizing with the injustices and suffering that Palestinians confront. We continue to support an increasingly distant two-state solution precisely because we want the Jewish homeland to be democratic and we want Palestinians to have a democratic government of their own.

But the destruction of Israel would be a moral catastrophe, and Hamas longs for that outcome.

Unlike the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Palestinian citizens of Israel, Hamas is explicitly antisemitic and will accept nothing short of the end of Israel. Netanyahu thought he could keep Hamas in check and ignore Palestinians, who, like so many of the Israelis slaughtered in the south, were willing to take risks for peace. The strategy of containing Hamas and privileging settlements on the West Bank has failed in an abysmal and tragic way.

The sharp turn to the right in Israel that Netanyahu engineered has undercut support for the country among younger Americans in the United States. Most of these increasingly vocal critics have resisted supporting Hamas, but the gut liberal sympathy for Israel has largely disappeared among those born after Biden’s generation and mine. If Hamas’s shameful attack has mostly restored consensus in the Democratic Party around the need to defend Israel against mass terrorism, the underlying opposition to Israel’s settlement policies and its refusal to engage with Palestinian demands for self-determination remains.

The shock of these traumatic events should shake everyone into a reassessment rooted in moral realism. As my Post colleague Max Bootargued last week, the imperative of accountability should lead eventually to Netanyahu’s ouster. Even as supporters of Israel stand up for its right to self-defense, analysts with long experience in the Middle East, including Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times and The Post’s David Ignatius, warn of the dangers of overreach in Gaza. Having reported alongside them and learned from them during the war in Lebanon in the 1980s, I share their skepticism of grand military plans that promise to settle a conflict for good. We have seen too many such promises fail in the Middle East. And Biden was right in his speech to call attention to moral obligations that apply even in legitimate wars of self-preservation.

The left should not stop advocating on behalf of justice for Palestinians. And Israel’s center and left should not stop demanding that Netanyahu’s plans to undercut the country’s judiciary be shelved permanently. But terrorism will not create a more democratic Israel or lead to self-determination for Palestinians. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is rife with ambiguities and conflicting moral claims. This cannot be said of what Hamas did. Its actions are, exactly as Biden said, unambiguously evil.

Categories Censorship, Disruption, Education Industry, Evil, Extremism, Hypocrisy, Justice

Randi Weingarten On “”The War on Woke”

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2023 //
11

The New Republic convened a meeting to discuss Trump, book banning and the culture wars. Randi Weingarten described the attack on schools as a coordinated strategy to destroy public schools and promote vouchers. Edith Olmsted of The New Republic interviewed her. None of this is new to readers of this blog, but the American public needs to hear this message. Again and again.

Book Bans Are a Conservative Plot to Destroy Public Schools, Says Randi Weingarten, The teachers union head denounced the “extremist strategy,” which also includes voucher campaigns and manufactured outrage over critical race theory.

DANIEL BOCZARSKI/GETTY IMAGES FOR MOVEON

Teachers union head Randi Weingarten says that the campaign by conservatives to ban books isn’t about the books at all, but part of a broader strategy to destroy public schools—one that was supercharged by the pandemic.

“You take the agita and the anxiety that people had at Covid, that fear, and you combine it with a right wing who has wanted to kill public schools for years and take that money for vouchers, and you have the scenario we have,” Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Wednesday at The New Republic’s Stop Trump Summit.

Vouchers, which use public education dollars to fund private and religious school attendance, are just one pillar of the conservative campaign to “undermine, destroy, and defund” public schools, she said. The other two are book banning and manufactured outrage over critical race theory.

Weingarten pointed to conservative activist Chris Rufo and a comment he made at Hillsdale College, a Christian nationalist school, in which he admitted that focusing on these issues was all part of a master plan to promote universal vouchers: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

In an interview with TNR after the event, Weingarten explained the “extremist strategy” Rufo and other conservatives have used to defund public schools. “The hook was trust. If you really create as much distrust as possible in public schooling, then parents will look at privatization as an option,” she said.

That’s where critical race theory comes in.

“[Rufo] tried to make a term that nobody knows so toxic, so that you can weaponize it and make fear,” she said. “Conversations about hard subjects became weaponized as indoctrination. Which is patently ridiculous, and dangerous.”

Race, as well as gender, is the subject conservatives have focused on in their campaigns to ban books in public schools and libraries.

“What [Republican Governor Ron] DeSantis is doing in the so-called ‘war on woke,’ is exactly part of their playbook—to make people afraid of books, and afraid of what we do in school,” Weingarten said. According to Pen America, Florida passed 15 “educational intimidation” bills in the last two and a half years.

The “parents’ rights” movement is made up of a loud minority, Weingarten said, and actively undermines what most parents want. “What we see in Florida is that 60 percent of the book banning has been done by 11 people,” she said.

The AFT has partnered with The New Republic in fighting back against such bans. TNR’s Banned Books Tour has been delivering thousands of banned books across the country this month, most recently in Florida.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom to Read, Privatization, Racism, Vouchers

The Man Who Selected the Rightwing Supreme Court Justices

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2023 //
16

ProPublica researched the power of Leonard Leo, the man most responsible for the rightwing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and other levels of the federal judiciary. Few people know who he is. Now you are among them.

ProPublica writes:

The party guests who arrived on the evening of June 23, 2022, at the Tudor-style mansion on the coast of Maine were a special group in a special place enjoying a special time. The attendees included some two dozen federal and state judges — a gathering that required U.S. marshals with earpieces to stand watch while a Coast Guard boat idled in a nearby cove.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ decadeslong friendship with real estate tycoon Harlan Crow and Samuel Alito’s luxury travel with billionaire Paul Singer have raised questions about influence and ethics at the nation’s highest court.

Caterers served guests Pol Roger reserve, Winston Churchill’s favorite Champagne, a fitting choice for a group of conservative legal luminaries who had much to celebrate. The Supreme Court’s most recent term had delivered a series of huge victories with the possibility of a crowning one still to come. The decadeslong campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade, which a leaked draft opinion had said was “egregiously wrong from the start,” could come to fruition within days, if not hours.

Over dinner courses paired with wines chosen by the former food and beverage director of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., the 70 or so attendees jockeyed for a word with the man who had done as much as anyone to make this moment possible: their host, Leonard Leo.

I can’t think of anybody who played a role the way he has.

– Richard Friedman, a law professor and historian at the University of Michigan

Short and thick-bodied, dressed in a bespoke suit and round, owlish glasses, Leo looked like a character from an Agatha Christie mystery. Unlike the judges in attendance, Leo had never served a day on the bench. Unlike the other lawyers, he had never argued a case in court. He had never held elected office or run a law school. On paper, he was less important than almost all of his guests.

If Americans had heard of Leo at all, it was for his role in building the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. He drew up the lists of potential justices that Donald Trump released during the 2016 campaign. He advised Trump on the nominations of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Before that, he’d helped pick or confirm the court’s three other conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But the guests who gathered that night under a tent in Leo’s backyard included key players in a less-understood effort, one aimed at transforming the entire judiciary.

Many could thank Leo for their advancement. Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled to loosen gun laws and overturn Obamacare’s birth-control mandate. Leo had put Hardiman on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist and helped confirm him to two earlier judgeships.

Kyle Duncan and Cory Wilson, both on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, both fiercely anti-abortion, were members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the network of conservative and libertarian lawyers that Leo had built into a political juggernaut. As was Florida federal Judge Wendy Berger, who would uphold that state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Within a year of the party, another attendee, Republican North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. (no relation), would write the opinion reinstating a controversial state law requiring voter identification.

Duncan, Wilson, Berger and Berger Jr. did not comment. Hardiman did not comment beyond confirming he attended the party.

The judges were in Maine for a weeklong, all-expenses-paid conference hosted by George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, a hub for steeping young lawyers, judges and state attorneys general in a free-market, anti-regulation agenda. The leaders of the law school were at the party, and they also were indebted to Leo. He had secured the Scalia family’s blessing and brokered $30 million in donations to rename the school. It is home to the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, named after the George H.W. Bush White House counsel who died this May. Gray was at Leo’s party, too.

A spokesperson for GMU confirmed the details of the week’s events.

The judges and the security detail, the law school leadership and the legal theorists — all of this was a vivid display not only of Leo’s power but of his vision. Decades ago, he’d realized it was not enough to have a majority of Supreme Court justices. To undo landmark rulings like Roe, his movement would need to make sure the court heard the right cases brought by the right people and heard by the right lower court judges.

Leo began building a machine to do just that. He didn’t just cultivate friendships with conservative Supreme Court justices, arranging private jet trips, joining them on vacation, brokering speaking engagements. He also drew on his network of contacts to place Federalist Society protégés in clerkships, judgeships and jobs in the White House and across the federal government.

He personally called state attorneys general to recommend hires for positions he presciently understood were key, like solicitors general, the unsung litigators who represent states before the U.S. Supreme Court. In states that elect jurists, groups close to him spent millions of dollars to place his allies on the bench. In states that appoint top judges, he maneuvered to play a role in their selection.

And he was capable of playing bare-knuckled politics. He once privately lobbied a Republican governor’s office to reject a potential judicial pick and, if the governor defied him, threatened “fury from the conservative base, the likes of which you and the Governor have never seen.”

To pay for all this, Leo became one of the most prolific fundraisers in American politics. Between 2014 and 2020, tax records show, groups in his orbit raised more than $600 million. His donors include hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, Texas real estate magnate Harlan Crow and the Koch family.

Leo grasped the stakes of these seemingly obscure races and appointments long before liberals and Democrats did. “The left, even though we are somewhat court worshippers, never understood the potency of the courts as a political machine. On the right, they did,” said Caroline Fredrickson, a visiting professor at Georgetown Law and a former president of the American Constitution Society, the left’s answer to the Federalist Society. “As much as I hate to say it, you’ve got to really admire what they achieved.” Belatedly, Leo’s opposition has galvanized, joining conservatives in an arms race that shows no sign of slowing down.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Civil Rights, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans

My Visit to a Transformed Germany, Which Faces Its Past with Truth

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2023 //
35

As a young person and a Jew, I swore I would never visit Germany. Growing up in Houston in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I occasionally met people who had a blue number tattooed on their arm, a legacy of their time in a Nazi concentration camp. I learned about the Holocaust at religious school, not public school. With my knowledge of the Holocaust, I was determined to avoid the nation that sought to eliminate the Jews of Europe. I was fortunate that my father’s parents came to America from Poland in the 19th century, and my mother arrived from Bessarabia after World War 1. Every member of their families who remained in Europe was slaughtered. Not one survived.

In 1984, I received an invitation from the State Department to visit West Germany and Yugoslavia to speak about education. I decided to go. It was a fascinating trip, and I overcame my phobia about visiting Germany.

Years later, after the Wall had come down, I went to Germany as a tourist with my partner and our Brooklyn neighbors. The wife, an emergency room nurse, was born in Germany, and is one of the kindest people I know. For the first time, I saw Germany as a vibrant and thriving nation. I visited the Holocaust Museum in Berlin and saw the honesty with which Germany was confronting its past. Every town we visited had its memorials to those who had perished because of Hitler’s genocide.

A few days ago, I was again in Berlin. Frankly, I fell in love with Berlin. The German people acknowledge the horrors of their past. They don’t sugar coat it. Their contrition is impossible to ignore. There are memorials scattered across the city to those who were unjustly murdered—Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others.

Right near our hotel was a field of 2,711 stelae of different sizes that looked like coffins. We stopped to view the site where Hitler’s bunker once existed. It’s now just blank ground with a large marker explaining what it was. It was where Hitler and Eva Braun married, knowing all was lost. She killed herself. Hitler killed himself. When the Soviets entered Berlin, they totally destroyed the bunker.

Several readers corrected my statement that Hermann Göring and his wife and children died in the bunker. They are right. It was Joseph Goebbels and his family who committed suicide in the bunker. Göring committed suicide in Nuremberg the night before he was to be executed by hanging.

As the war drew to a close and Nazi Germany faced defeat, Magda Goebbels and the Goebbels children joined Hitler in Berlin. They moved into the underground Vorbunker, part of Hitler’s underground bunker complex, on 22 April 1945. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. In accordance with Hitler’s will, Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany; he served one day in this post. The following day, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide, after having poisoned their six children with a cyanide compound. (Wikipedia)

On our last day in Berlin, we intended to go to the museum of the Stasi, the secret police that monitored every East German’s life. But we decided instead to visit the memorial center of the German resistance.

The museum tells the story of Germans who opposed the rise of Hitler in the 1930s, who worked against him during the war years, who anticipated that he would destroy Germany’s struggling democracy, and who worked to end his brutal tyranny. There were stories of opposition to Hitler by trade unionists and Communists, by Jews and Catholics and Protestants. The museum identified religious leaders, scholars, scientists, educators, students, social workers, and others who worked against Hitler. Most were killed. It went into great detail about the failed assassination attempt by leading German officers on July 20, 1944. All of them were murdered.

My partner, a former teacher of history and social studies, wondered why Holocaust studies in the schools do not tell their stories. In some sick way, the constant focus on bodies and atrocities was not having its intended effect; it was desensitizing the students to cruelty and inhumanity.

Of course, the brutality must be shown and remembered. But why not make resistance to evil the centerpiece? Why not focus on courage and heroism in the face of overwhelming force? Why not tell the story of Georg Esler, the German carpenter who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1939? Or the story of the White Rose Society, the college students who bravely distributed flyers about Nazi atrocities in 1942-43, who were captured and executed? They should be celebrated for their courage and conviction.

Meanwhile, back home, our own nation is convulsed by battles about teaching the past. Some insist on whitewashing history because the truth might make young people “uncomfortable.”We see the rising influence of groups like “Moms for Liberty,” who demand censorship and oppose honest teaching of the past and the present. They have a right to speak, but they should not have the right to impose their bigotry and intolerance on others. Moms for Liberty should learn from Germany about the importance of teaching truth.

If you visit Berlin, don’t miss this tribute to the resistance.

Categories Accountability, Extremism, Fascism, History, International

Texas: State Commissioner Cracked Down on Houston While Ignoring Low-Performing Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2023 //
5

The Texas Tribune reports on the blatant hypocrisy of State Commissioner of Educatuon Mike Morath. He used a sledgehammer on the Houston Independent School District because of one low-rated school (whose rating improved before Morath acted). But he allows failing charter schools to expand with no corrective action. His heart belongs to Governor Greg Abbott and the charter industry. His hostility to public schools, attended by 90% of Texas students, is obvious. The takeover of HISD was vengeful and partisan, motivated by politics, not the well-being of students.

The story was written by Kiah Collier and Dan Keenahill on behalf of THE TEXAS TRIBUNE AND PROPUBLICA.

In June, Texas Commissioner of Education Mike embarked on the largest school takeover in recent history, firing the governing board and the superintendent of the Houston Independent School District after one of its more than 270 schools failed to meet state educational standards for seven consecutive years.

Though the state gave Houston’s Wheatley High School a passing score the last time it assigned ratings, Morath charged ahead, saying he had an obligation under the law to either close the campus or replace the board. He chose the latter.

Drastic intervention was required at Houston ISD not just because of chronic low performance, he said, but because of the state’s continued appointment of a conservator, a person who acts as a manager for troubled districts, to ensure academic improvements.

When it comes to charter school networks that don’t meet academic standards, however, Morath has been more generous.

Since taking office more than seven years ago, Morath has repeatedly given charters permission to expand, allowing them to serve thousands more students, even when they haven’t met academic performance requirements. On at least 17 occasions, Morath has waived expansion requirements for charter networks that had too many failing campuses to qualify, according to a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of state records. The state’s top education official also has approved five other waivers in cases where the charter had a combination of failing schools and campuses that were not rated because they either only served high-risk populations or had students too young to be tested.

Only three such performance waivers had been granted prior to Morath, who declined numerous requests for comment. They had all come from his immediate predecessor, according to the Texas Education Agency.

One campus that opened because of a waiver from Morath is Eastex-Jensen Neighborhood School, which is just 6 miles north of Wheatley High School. Opened in 2019, Eastex didn’t receive grades for its first two years because the state paused all school ratings due to the adverse impacts of the pandemic. In 2022, the last time the state scored schools, Eastex received a 48 out of 100, which is considered failing under the state’s accountability system. The state, however, spared campuses that received low grades from being penalized for poor performance that year.

“The hypocrisy here seems overwhelming,” said Kevin Welner, an education policy professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. “This is the same education commissioner who justified taking over the entire Houston school district based largely on one school’s old academic ratings.”

Open the link to read more about Mike Morath’s hypocrisy. Texas Republicans are determined to turn the state into a playground for edupreneurs. If only the parents of public school students voted against them, they would all be out of office. Governor Abbott and his appointees take instructions from the evangelical billionaires, Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Houston, Hypocrisy, Privatization, Texas

Gary Rayno: The World Moral Order Is in Tatters

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2023 //
41

I read the NHInsider regularly to follow the doings of the libertarians and rightwing Republicans who currently control the state. The education articles are written by veteran journalist Gary Rayno. I was very impressed by this article posted yesterday, which aptly summarizes the mess the world is in today, relying on the wisdom of William Butler Yeats. Religious zealots and intolerance are steering events.

He writes:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

This quote from the William Butler Yeats poem “The Second Coming” — written in 1919 just after World War I — often appears in times like these when the world’s moral order crumbles and more resembles “Lord of the Flies.”

Today human tragedy is on the front pages of newspapers, on television and radio news programs, on Twitter (X) and other social media.

The world is teetering on the edge of World War III as some nations try to pull the world’s superpowers into a conflict that millions of people will not survive.

Today’s conflicts in the Mid East and Europe are made more dangerous by technology that can pinpoint artillery shells to blow up a tank or to kill civilians in large numbers depending on the depravity of the shooters.

The Mid East is the founding place of three of the world’s major religions and has seen its share or wars in the last century not just between Arabs and Israelites, but among Arab nations as well.

The region’s long history of conflicts did not prepare anyone for what happened last week on a Jewish holy day when the terrorist group Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip for years, invaded Israel, killed nearly a thousand people, including families with young children, beheaded some, tortured others and took about 150 hostages back to Gaza to use as bargaining chips.

They not only killed, tortured and maimed Israeli citizens, they used their own citizens as human shields by preventing them from leaving Gaza.

The absence of respect for human life and suffering is inconceivable but all too common in today’s polarized world as the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world talk about killing Democrats and Hamas leaders talk about eliminating all Jews.

The Israeli government, as it often does, retaliates with even more force than used against it, and has the stated goal of eliminating Hamas. That objective means lost Palestinian civilian lives seen as collateral damage.

Once the fighting begins, war produces few white hats.

The wars in the Mideast are often both ethnically and religiously driven pitting the Muslim Palestinians against the Jewish Israelites with centuries of history to solidify the beliefs of both sides.

While religion is not the biggest driver for war, intolerance is, it is in the Mideast.

And the problem with religious wars was aptly stated by former President Richard Nixon when he said “In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.”

The Mideast conflict has taken the focus away from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities the Russians have inflicted on the Ukrainians and their country.

The war in Eastern Europe is more ethnically driven than religious.

Until Putin decided to expand the Russian empire, Europe had been largely free of conflicts since World War II, but like the Mideast conflict, attempts are to draw the superpowers into the chaos and expand the carnage.

While the world’s eyes are on the Mideast and Eastern Europe, the United States government is being held hostage by a couple dozen extremists, particularly in the US House, but also the Senate, who want to see chaos and ensure the dysfunction of government as we know it.

The Christian Nationalist movement is the foundation of some of the extremists, but not all of them.

The House decided to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and since that time more than a week ago, nothing is moving and that prevents any help to fund the nation’s allies in the two conflicts or to keep government functioning beyond the middle of November.

Republicans and their slim majority in the House cannot agree on a new Speaker and probably won’t until the crisis threatens to explode and Republicans realize they will pay politically for their inability to solve the civil war within their ranks.

One member of the House Republican caucus called it a clown show.

In the Senate a former football coach, Tommy Tuberville, is holding up hundreds of military appointments at this crucial time over the abortion issue, while others like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are holding up key appointments like ambassadors etc. that will have a direct effect on what is happening in the world’s hot spots, mostly to create chaos and hits on their Twitter accounts.

The Grand Old Party appears to be more interested in creating chaos than governing.

At the state level, 19 Republican governors, and we all know governors are experts in foreign policy, criticize President Biden’s handling of the attacks on Israel including New Hampshire’s own Chris Sununu.

Not that long ago, politics was put aside when the nation faced serious threats such as the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC or the beginning of Desert Storm, but no more.

The head of the National Republican Committee, Ronna McDaniel, referred to the latest conflict in the Mideast as a “great opportunity” to attack Biden.

You did not hear Democrats criticizing President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attack, or President George H. W. Bush after he began Desert Storm.

The nation came together to support their leaders’ actions. And you did not see the demonstrations on college campuses and city streets that happened this weekend pitting Palestinian supporters against those backing Israel.

Like the Palestinians and Israelites, much of what divides the United States has a religious undertone incorrectly based on the notion the United States was established as a Christian country.

That would be very interesting because many early settlers to the “new world” came here to escape religious persecution in nations with state religions.

The Constitution guarantees religious freedom as well as the founding principle of “all men (women) are created equal.”

Many on the right are trying to impose their religious beliefs on issues like abortion or LGBTQ+ rights or what young people can read or watch.

And you don’t have to look to the Mideast to see what can happen when religious beliefs become a driving force in politics.

In Littleton, Theater Up received a $1 million grant to help fix up the town’s aging Opera House, which is on the National Historic Building list, through a long-term lease. The group currently uses the building, but its lease ends in May.

After discussions with the town’s selectmen, one of whom is the state Senator for District 1, Carrie Gendreau, and who objected to murals painted on a private building in town earlier this year saying she objected to its LGBTQ+ theme, the theater group was informed the selectmen were not inclined to help pay for a $2,500 building study to determine what could and could not be done in the historic building.

The decision was due to the group’s affiliation with the LGBTQ+ community and complaints about its production of La Cage aux Follies, the award-winning play about a gay couple, the group was told.

Theater Up was also informed the selectmen continue to explore a ban on public art in the community which would certainly impact the group’s ability to continue its mission.

This is religious oppression in reverse, much like the group that tried to block the state from distributing COVID-19 in a new program serving the elderly two years ago.

This is imposing one’s beliefs on those who do not share them.

The second half of Yeats poem is not so well known as the first, but is more telling about where we might be headed and what a “second coming” could really mean.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Garry Rayno may be contacted at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Religion

Texas Observer: McCarthyism Rides High Again at Texas Universities

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2023 //
12

Gabriel Arans of the Texas Observer writes about the revival of McCathyism at universities in Texas. Republicans are intent on pushing out professors they think are too liberal.

Arana writes:

Texas A&M University’s disgraceful treatment of celebrated journalism professor Kathleen McElroy should terrify anyone who cares about academic freedom, education, and equality in Texas. The state’s Republican leaders, along with Governor Greg Abbott, have launched a radical, McCarthyite crusade to purge education of liberal bias.

Only in Texas or Florida would decades of experience at the country’s most prestigious newspaper and a track record of championing newsroom inclusivity disqualify someone for a job relaunching A&M’s defunct journalism program, which was shuttered in 2004 after 55 years.

McElroy’s ordeal is just the beginning.

At first, A&M officials seemed to realize how lucky they’d been to snag McElroy, a Black woman who served in various managerial positions at the New York Times for 20 years before completing a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she served as the director of the School of Journalism and Media and now teaches.

McElroy didn’t want to draw attention to herself, but A&M insisted on a public ceremony to celebrate her appointment as head of the university’s new journalism program. On June 13, she signed an offer accepting a tenured position in front of a crowd gathered at the school’s academic building, pending approval from the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents.

Over the next few weeks, the deal unraveled. After conservative activist site Texas Scorecard published a scare-mongering article about McElroy’s work on newsroom diversity, right-wing ideologues on the board of regents started scrutinizing her hire. Six or seven regents called and texted now-disgraced University President Katherine Banks to express concerns.

“I thought the purpose of us starting a journalism program was to get high-quality Aggie journalist [sic] with conservative values into the market,” regent Jay Graham texted Banks. “This won’t happen with someone like this leading the department.”

Another regent, Mike Hernandez, added that McElroy was “biased and progressive-leaning” and called giving her tenure a “difficult sell” for the board.

Members of a conservative alum group called the Rudder Association and other right-wing Aggies flooded Banks’ office with calls and emails.

Text messages show that Banks—who initially denied any involvement in McElroy’s bungled hiring, then was caught lying—was fully behind conservatives’ efforts to rein in liberal academia: “Kathy [Banks] told us multiple times the reason we were going to combine [the colleges of] arts and sciences together was to control the liberal nature that those professors brought to campus,” Graham wrote.

So Banks watered down the offer to McElroy. Still eager to return to her alma mater to train the next generation of journalists, she agreed to accept a revised five-year, nontenured teaching position, which would not require the regents’ approval.

“You’re a Black woman who worked at the New York Times,” José Luis Bermúdez, the interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, warned McElroy. Her hire, he said, had been caught up in “DEI hysteria.”

But then, Banks diluted the offer further, offering McElroy a one-year, “at will” position. McElroy declined and spoke about how the university had treated her with the media.

“I’m being judged by race, maybe gender,” McElroy told the Texas Tribune. “I don’t think other folks would face the same bars or challenges.”

(Editor’s note: McElroy sits on the parent board of the Texas Observer. Because of our editorial independence policy, she has no say in our editorial decisions. Alongside this piece, today the Observerpublished a heartfelt essay from McElroy about her journalism journey and the irony of being the subject of media coverage rather than the one behind it. )

Over the summer, with the governor’s support, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 17 (SB 17), which requires institutions of higher education to do away with all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and initiatives by 2024. Already, the University of Houston has shut down its Center for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as well as disbanding its LGBTQ+ Resource Center (under pressure, however, it appeared to backtrack, but it is only a matter of time before the offices are officially closed). Public universities across the state have formed committees to implement the law and seek input from the academic community. It’s clear, however, that days are numbered for all the offices and programs that help students from different backgrounds.

While the ostensible goal of anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts is to prioritize merit over race in higher education—and get rid of all the “divisive” diversity stuff that liberal academics champion—the real intent is to put radical, uppity queers, minorities, and liberals in their place. A key part of the plan is to strip liberal academics of the protections that allow them to pursue research and speak publicly without fear of reprisal; this past session, right-wing legislators tried to get rid of tenure but settled on more modest restrictions. The Senate also passed a ban on “critical race theory,” an academic theory that posits racism is embedded in society, but the House failed to pass the measure….

Anti-DEI hysteria will lead to a brain drain at Texas’ public universities. Academics at most institutions enjoy the freedom to conduct scholarship without interference. To ensure they can pursue ideas that may be unpopular to the public and pursue knowledge for its own sake, they are granted protection after demonstrating excellence in their field. The best scholars don’t want to work in a place where they have to worry that criticizing wingnut politicians will get them put on leave—as A&M did when Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick complained to administrators about criticism levied against him by opioid expert Joy Alonzo—and the best students from around the country will choose institutions that value academic freedom, openness, and inclusion rather than those under siege by the radical right.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Disruption, Extremism, Higher Education, Republicans

The Plot to Take Down Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2023 //
9

Recently the Network for Public Education and the Education Law Center sponsored a zoom conversation with Nick Surgey. Nick is an experienced investigative journalist who works with an organization called Documented, which digs into the Dark Money groups undermining Public schools and other democratic institutions. Nick has done the legwork that identified the money and people behind the home schooling movement, as well as the rightwing Alliance for Defending Freedom. He has worked with the Center for Media and Democracy and other pro-democracy organizations.

This is a discussion you should definitely tune into.

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Hoax, Inequity, Koch Brothers

Florida: Miami-Dade Schools May Launch a “Classical School,” Hillsdale Style

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2023 //
17

Governor Ron DeSantis is a big supporter of the Hillsdale College model for K-12 education, which Hillsdale calls a “classical education.” The model focuses on white, European history and literature and minimizes issues of race, gender, and diversity.

The Miami-Dade School District is beginning the process of opening a Hillsdale-style classical school.

The Miami Herald reported:

Miami-Dade Schools is considering implementing a classical education curriculum in at least one elementary school for the upcoming school year — introducing a politically debated education model and potentially displacing students and teachers if they do not wish to participate.

The tentative plan, provided to the board ahead of its Wednesday committee meeting, calls for picking a school, recruiting students, selecting a curriculum and training staff and faculty during the current school year and rolling out the curriculum over the next three years.

The district could also collaborate with the University of Florida’s Hamilton Classical and Civic Education Center — an academic center that was proposed during the 2022 Legislative Session by a group whose representative had a long history of working with conservative groups and advancing the mission of religious organizations. (The University of Florida received $3 million when Gov. Ron DeSantis approved the state budget.)

The model has been championed by conservatives, including DeSantis. Supporters of the model say it offers an alternative education to the traditional public school, which in recent years has been accused of focusing too heavily on discussions of race, gender identity and other social issues.

Critics say the model’s spotlight on Western civilization teaches a whiter, glossier version of American history and leaves out more contemporary subjects, such as global warming.

District staffers maintain they’re exploring it to see if the curriculum model would be feasible. Chief Academic Officer Lourdes Diaz told board members Wednesday it’s just the “first layer to see what is potentially possible.”

The plan does include a three-year implementation schedule to begin next school year, but that timeline could change. Grade configurations, geographical locations and partners, if any, would be considered when determining the program’s feasibility, the district said.

The education model, which DeSantis and other conservatives have championed, was first brought before the board in June by board member Monica Colucci, whom DeSantis endorsed in last year’s election.

The curriculum, which emphasizes a return to core virtues and subjects like math, science, civics and classical texts, puts a strong emphasis on Western tradition — or a historical focus on white, Western European and Judeo-Christian foundations — and demands a school culture of “moral virtue, decorum, respect, discipline, and studiousness among both students and faculty,” according to Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Initiative. Hillsdale College, a private college in Michigan with ties to DeSantis, is one of the most prominent proponents of the model.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article280124494.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Curriculum, DeSantis, Education Reform, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Race, Religion

Florida: GOP Legislator Seeks to Weaken Child Labor Laws

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2023 //
7

Child labor laws have been in place for more than a century. Republican-controlled states are weakening so that children are “free” to earn some money. Florida is the latest state to entertain the idea that children need “freedom” to work, not protection from dangerous working conditions. This is not progress. This is turning back the clock.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

A proposed Republican bill to loosen child labor laws in Florida is part of a national trend aimed at repealing or weakening workplace protections for young people that have been in place for more than 100 years.

The bill could worsen graduation rates and hurt lower-income families, experts said, and could also be a way to replace some immigrant labor as Florida and other GOP-led states continue to crack down on undocumented workers.

“Are we willing to return to a world where we accept that children of the poorest families are working more than full-time jobs under hazardous conditions?” said Jennifer Sherer, director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.

State Rep. Linda Chaney, though, said in a statement that her bill “intends to provide teenagers with the flexibility to work whatever hours they deem fits best with their schedule and financial goals.”

“Families are struggling in the worst economy in decades and I want to do what I can to help by providing opportunity,” said Chaney, R-St. Petersburg. “Government should not be in the way of people wanting to learn skills and make a living.”

The bill (HB 49) would remove all work guidelines for 16- and 17-year-olds, including the current requirements that they can’t work more than eight hours on school nights and more than 30 hours a week during the school year.

It also prevents local governments from passing ordinances stricter than state law.

In addition, the measure includes what Sherer called a “confusing” change to the language about 14- and 15-year-olds.

Where the current law states 14- and 15-year-olds “shall not” work before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m. for more than 15 hours a week during the school year, or more than three hours per day on school days, the bill would replace “shall not” with “may not.”

Sherer said it was unclear whether the proposed language revision was meant to make work standards for younger teens “optional” rather than mandated.

Terri Gerstein, a fellow at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School who testified before Congress earlier this year about child labor, said she couldn’t see any other reason to change it.

“To me, as a normal human being, ‘shall not’ and ‘may not’ sound like the same thing, right?” Gerstein said. But, she added, “‘shall’ is obligatory and ‘may’ is optional. … I can only infer that there’s something nefarious [going on], because otherwise, why would you change the language? It makes no sense…”

Child labor laws were one of the premier achievements of the Progressive Era of the early 1900s, when presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson helped usher in major changes to social and public policy at the state and national levels.

Florida passed laws at the time to protect children working in cigar factories and in agriculture. But now, it’s the 16th state in the past few years to have legislation filed to roll back those protections, Sherer said.

“Those are state laws that have often been in place for over a century,” Sherer said. “States began regulating child labor before the federal government did. And they play a really important role in regulating certain aspects of child labor protections that the federal government doesn’t cover.”

The most notable rollback was in Arkansas, where Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee signed the Youth Hiring Act that repealed a Progressive Era law requiring employers to verify a child’s age, acquire a permit and get parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to work.

“The Governor believes protecting kids is most important, but this permit was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job,” Sanders’ communications director Alexa Henning told NPR.

Iowa also passed “what is probably the most extreme bill on child labor,” Sherer said, weakening guidelines on which work is considered too dangerous for minors.

“We know that certain jobs have proven dangerous and even fatal more often for youth and teens,” Sherer said. “That’s why those restrictions were put in place decades ago. So it’s a real slippery slope.”

The changes came as the Federal Labor Department has reported a significant increase in child labor violations over the past five years, Gerstein said, including minors working the night shift or being employed at places such as poultry processing plants and construction sites.

A meat-processing plant in Minnesota paid $300,000 in penalties after an investigation showed it employed children as young as 13, while a Michigan meat plant owner pleaded guilty to employing a 17-year-old in a dangerous job. The boy’s hand was severed by a meat grinder.

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, Deregulation, Economy, Evil, Extremism, Florida
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