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Elon Musk Blew Up the Bipartisan Deal to Fund the Government

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2024 //
17

Who elected Elon Musk?

Yesterday he fired off 100+ tweets demanding that Republicans reject a budget deal that House Speaker Mike Johnson negotiated to keep the government funded until March.

Musk ridiculed the deal. He called it calling it “terrible,” “horrible,” “criminal,” “outrageous,” “unconscionable,” “crazy” and “an insane crime.” Trump and Vance came out against it. The Republican members of the House scurried for cover. The deal collapsed.

Trump is back to his established practice of sowing chaos.

Politico reported that Musk tweeted lies to panic House Republicans and cause a stampede.

Musk claimed that the bill would give members of Congress a 40% raise. Untrue. Their salaries ($174,000) have not gone up since 2009. The bill would have given them an increase of 3.8% or $6,600. Musk lied.

Musk reposted a claim that the bill included $3 billion for a new stadium in DC. Another lie. It transferred title of the existing RFK stadium to the DC government. No federal cost.

Musk claimed that the deal shielded the January 6 Committee from future investigations. Another lie.

Musk retweeted a post claiming that the bill funded “bioweapons labs.” Another lie.

Musk approvingly tweeted a post saying that the government should be shut down until Trump’s inauguration in 33 days.

Read the article.

Musk demonstrated that he is reckless and dangerous. He leads Trump around by the nose.

An arrogant, ignorant billionaire leading a doddering, confused old man.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Economy, Funding, Lies, Musk, Elon, Republicans, Trump

Texas: Dan Patrick Wants to Replace Public Schools with Christian Schools

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2024 //
8

Dan Patrick is the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, a powerful position in the state. He used to be a rightwing radio talk show host, a little Rush Limbaugh. Now he’s in a position to do real damage, not just blow off steam. He recently told the superintendents of rural schools that the state couldn’t afford to give them any new money, although not long ago Governor Greg Abbott bragged about a $30 billion surplus and about cutting property taxes.

Chris Tomlinson, opinion writer for The Houston Chronicle, eviscerated Dan Patrick’s homegrown bull in this article.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has laid out his plan for dismantling public schools, even if it means failing to produce a workforce that will keep Texas’ economy going.

The man who calls himself a Christian first, a conservative second and a Republican third exercises an iron fist over the Texas Senate. He recently told the Texas Association of Rural Schools & Texas Association of Midsize Schools not to expect a significant increase in state funding, which has been unchanged since 2019 despite rampant inflation.

Instead, Patrick has promised to divert taxpayer money to private, mostly Christian schools backed by his billionaire benefactors.

Texas Republicans are heading into the 89thLegislature in honey-badger mode, heedlessly pursuing ideological goals regardless of public opinion. Because just like the honey badger that has become an Internet meme, Patrick “don’t care.”

“We’re not underfunding you in our view,” Patrick told school superintendents on Dec. 6, my colleague Jeremy Wallace reported in his newsletter. “We are funding you the most we can.”

Correction: it’s the most he’s willing to do.

The state provides a basic allotment of $6,160 per student, which is $4,000 less than the national average. School districts are slashing budgets and laying off staff due to inflation. Advocates have asked for another $1,000 per student to keep providing essential services.

“I’m just being honest with you; there is no way we can increase the student allotment by $1,000,” Patrick said.

That’s a lie. The state left $30 billion unspent in 2023 when Patrick refused to increase school funding until lawmakers approved taxpayer funding for religious private schools. An extra $1,000 per student would cost $14 billion, well within the budget.

Patrick frequently claims he supports public schools, but actions speak louder than words. He criticizes teachers, prioritizes tax cuts and praises religious education, falling back on a clichéd conservative playbook.

Step One: Underfund and hamstring a government service, in this case, public schools, until it starts falling apart. Step Two: Blame underpaid, under-resourced public servants for the failure and proclaim only the private sector can help. Step Three: Send taxpayer money to your cronies to provide the service, with a significant markup, and make the public pay more for it.

The biggest campaign donors to Texas’s Republican leaders in recent years have loudly demanded an end to public education as we know it. They believe government-run schools indoctrinate students with the wrong ideas about justice, equality and tolerance. They want private schools to teach their values with taxpayer subsidies.

Oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilks have spent tens of millions backing Christian nationalist activists and candidates to pass a school voucher bill. Patrick is one of the largest beneficiaries of their largesse and has backed taxpayer money for Christian schools since he was a senator.

A Pennsylvania billionaire who hates public schools, Jeff Yass, gave Gov. Greg Abbott $6 million, the largest campaign donation in state history, to punish rural Republican lawmakers who opposed school vouchers in 2023. Most of those lawmakers either retired or lost their seats in the GOP primary.

Abbott and Patrick say they have the votes necessary to pass a school voucher bill next year. Past promises to boost funding for public schools now appear off the table.

Public schools are much more than a benefit for parents; they create Texas’s workforce. Future success at work is directly tied to quality pre-kindergarten and good schools.

Private schools do not face the same regulation or scrutiny as public schools. Private schools are free to teach whatever the sponsoring group wants outside of a few minimum requirements. Private school students are not required to take the state’s standardized STAAR Test.

Polls show most Texans support public schools and want the state to spend more. But with a handful of donors writing multimillion-dollar checks, Patrick has entered the honey-badger stage of one-party rule.

Most Texans and major corporations think women should have more reproductive rights. Patrick don’t care.

Most Texans support legalized gambling to boost local economies. Patrick don’t care.

Most Texans support legalizing marijuana. Patrick don’t care; he wants to ban the $4 billion-a-year hemp industry.

Republicans have controlled every statewide office for 30 years. At the state and national level, conservatives control every branch of government. The GOP is feeling strong, like they honey badger.

Patrick wants Texas and the United States to be a Christian nation and Texas laws to reflect his interpretation of the Bible. Sabotaging public schools is a key step to fulfilling that dream.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Ohio: Laws Advance to Protect Voucher Schools While Punishing Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2024 //
3

David Pepper blasts the Republican legislators in Ohio for relieving private voucher schools of any burdens associated with transparency and accountability, while simultaneously threatening to close the public schools with the lowest test scores every year.

He writes about the dangerous shenanigans of the gang in the Legislature that hates public schools:

So the bill that impressed me was an attempt to do something about this growing black hole. 

Specifically, the bill would have:

2) required that private schools receiving vouchers administer the same standardized tests that public school students take, allowing an apples to apples comparison of the private school’s performance;

1) required that private schools receiving vouchers provide an annual report on how they are spending the public dollars they receive (and post that report on-line);

3) required that schools provide data on the income of students/families that receive vouchers along with other scholarships. (In states like Ohio, where they have removed all income limitations on vouchers recipients, the vast majority of voucher recipients were already attending, and could already afford, the private school they now use the voucher to pay for).

Again, these would be the bare minimum of safeguards for this out-of-control approach.

Which is, of course, exactly why the provisions were ultimately stripped out of the bill that ultimately passed the House Education Committee (where the original bill had been submitted).

Note: One of the points made by private school advocates was that the tests used to measure public school outcomes were not a good measure of the work they did.

So as the billions flow to private schools through vouchers, we taxpayers still don’t know how the funds are actually being spent. And we still don’t have an apples-to-apples comparison to see if all this unaccountable money is actually leading to improved or worse education results. (Other data show the answer is “worse”).

But for Public Schools…Shut them Down

So that’s the treatment of private schools receiving public dollars via vouchers. 

But wouldn’t you know it? For Ohio’s publicschools, constantly the target of attack and criticism, we see the exact opposite approach.

Rushing through the current “lame duck” Ohio legislative session is a brand new bill that takes seriously the same standardized tests the voucher-funded private schools convinced lawmakers they need not take (remember, they testified it’s not a good measure of their work). So seriously, the new bill proposes that all Ohio public school buildings that fall in the bottom five and 10 percent of two measures (both determined by standardized tests) for three years be shut down. 

Under the bill, local school boards would be forced either “to fire its principal and majority of staff or turn over operations to a private entity, charter, or another district.”

Public school advocates have pointed out many of the flaws of this approach, including that many of the entities that would “take over” these schools have no experience providing K-12 education at all. They’ve also pointed out that this approach bears similarities to the failed top-down approach from a 2015 bill which created Academic Distress Commissions for struggling districts. After stripping away local control, the Commissions did not generate improvements, and the approach was ultimately repealed.

But bigger picture, of course, is the differential treatment of the two systems: One type of publicly funded Ohio schools doesn’t have to provide even the bare minimum of accountability and transparency, while the other set would face turmoil and even shutdowns for failing to meet certain criteria not applied to the first group. 

It’s yet another blatant tipping of the scales towards privatizing public education.

Take Action

They are trying to rush this bill through the Ohio Senate’s Education Committee tomorrow. Here are steps you can take to stop it:

  • Contact your State Rep. Tell them the Ohio Senate is trying to pass a massive new school closure bill (SB 295) without any input from the House. Ask them, “Shouldn’t the House get a say on this issue??”
  • WHAT TO SAY:
    • SB 295 would remove local control from elected school board members and parents
    • The state should not be making big, closed-door decisions with little to no community involvement.
    • Our students deserve safe, equitable, fully-resourced, engaging schools in their own area! In most cases, closing local schools is bad for our communities and bad for Ohio. In ALL cases, parents and students should be heavily involved in the decision-making processes!
  • FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Categories Accountability, Corruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Inequity, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Florida: Candidate for Congress Wants to Cancel College Aid for Dreamers

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2024 //
2

Florida is one of 18 states that allow the children of undocumented immigrants to receive a lower tuition rate on state colleges. That law is under attack by Randy Fine, a state legislator who is running for Congress. Fine is an ardent supporter of Trump.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

TALLAHASSEE — For a decade, children brought into the country illegally by their undocumented parents could enroll in a state college or university for the same fee as in-state residents, if they attended a Florida high school for three years.

But now, State Sen. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who plans to resign mid-session to run for Congress, wants to repeal that law and end the educational benefit designed to help young immigrants known as “dreamers.”

Fine wants to end “sweetheart deals for college degrees to those who should not even be here,” he said in an email put out by his senate aide. “President Trump has made clear it is time to close the border and stop giving illegal immigrants rewards for breaking the law.”

His bill revives an effort to squelch the dreamers’ benefit that Gov. Ron DeSantis and some other Republicans tried — and failed — to make part of an immigration reform package in 2023.

Fine claimed the state spent $45 million to provide out-of-state tuition waivers to undocumented college and university students in 2021, but his staff did not respond to questions about the source of that figure.

Fine, a combative conservative who calls himself the “Hebrew Hammer,” filed a bill Monday that would repeal the waiver, which was signed into law in 2014 — two years before he was elected to the Legislature. The law was sponsored by Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez when she was a state senator. It was approved with bipartisan support and signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Scott, now the junior GOP senator from Florida.

Under the law, undocumented students who attended a Florida high school for three years and enrolled in a state college or university within 24 months of graduation would pay in-state tuition rates. But they are not eligible for state financial aid.

Without that waiver, they would pay out-of-state rates that are three to four times more. At the University of Central Florida, for example, the in-state rate is about $6,300 while out-of-state tuition is over $22,000…

More than 43,000 undocumented students are currently enrolled in Florida’s public colleges or universities, according to the American Immigration Council and the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. They make up just a sliver of the more than 1 million enrolled.

The state university system said it issued 2,005 nonresident tuition waivers last year but does not track how many of them went to undocumented students. The state also doesn’t track of the number of undocumented students enrolled in its universities.

Florida has already invested millions of dollars into the K-12 education of these students, and the 2014 law was seen as an incentive to get them to stay in Florida and complete their postsecondary education, said Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition.

The result is a “a higher educated population and individuals who can pursue a career while working on their immigration status,” Bozzetto said.

Florida’s undocumented workers contribute $1 billion in spending power and $113 million in state and local taxes, according to the American Immigration Council….

“It’s a publicity stunt,” Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando, said of Fine’s new bill. “I’d be surprised if my Republican colleagues in the Senate even give it a hearing. It’s a mean-spirited and petty attack on immigrants that really defines the MAGA base.”

All in-state residents pay a tuition rate lower than the cost of their education, so state taxpayers are subsidizing all of them, and there is not a limit on the number of students who can receive in-state tuition, he said.

“They are paying tuition like every other student ,” Smith said. “They are not taking something away from other Floridians.”

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Funding, Higher Education, Immigration

Peter Greene: Will Trump Achieve His Education Goals?

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2024 //
10

Peter Greene writes about the contradiction at the heart of Trump’s education goals. On the one hand, Trump says he will eliminate the Department of Education and turn federal funding over to the states, to use as they wish. At the same time, he says that he will punish schools if they persist in teaching liberal ideas that Trump dislikes, like diversity, equity and inclusion, or if they are insufficiently patriotic.

How will he punish schools if the federal funding has been relinquished to the states?

Greene writes:

It has been on the conservative To Do list for decades, and the incoming administration keeps insisting that this time it’s really going to happen. But will it? Over the weekend, Trump’s Ten Principles for Education video from Agenda 47 was circulating on line as a new “announcement” or “confirmation” of his education policy, despite the fact that the video was posted in September of 2023.

The list of goals may or may not be current, but it underlines a basic contradiction at the heart of Trump’s education plans. The various goals can be boiled down to two overall objectives:

1) To end all federal involvement and oversight of local schools.

2) To exert tight federal control over local schools

Trump has promised that schools will not teach “political indoctrination,” that they will teach students to “love their country,” that there will be school prayer, that students will “have access to” project-based learning, and that schools will expel students who harm teachers or other students. 

He has also proposed stripping money from colleges and universities that indoctrinate students and using the money to set up a free of charge “world class education” system.

Above all, he has promised that he “will be closing up” the Department of Education. Of course, he said that in 2016 with control of both houses of Congress and it did not happen.

Are there obstacles? The Department of Education distributes over $18 billion to help support schools that educate high-poverty populations, providing benefits like extra staff to supplement reading instruction. The Project 2025 plan is to turn this into a block grant to be given to the states to use as they wish, then zeroed out. Every state in the country would feel that pinch; states that decide to use the money for some other purpose entirely, such as funding school vouchers, will feel the pinch much sooner. The department also handles over $15 billion in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funding, which helps cover the costs of special education; Project 2025 also calls for turning it into an unregulated block grant to states with no strings attached, meaning that parents would have to lobby their state government for special ed funding.

Cuts and repurposing of these funds will be felt immediately in classrooms across the country, particularly those that serve poor students and students with special needs. That kind of readily felt, easily understood impact is likely to fuel pushback in Congress, and it’s Congress that has the actual power to eliminate the department.

Beyond the resistance to changing major funding for states and the challenge of trying to move the trillion-plus-dollar funding system for higher education, the Trump administration would also face the question of how to exert control over school districts without a federal lever to push.

Previous administrations have used Title I funding as leverage to coax compliance from school districts. In 2013, Obama’s education secretary Arne Duncan threatened to withhold Title I funds if a California failed to adopt an “acceptable” standardized testing program. In 2020, Trump himself threatened to cut off funding to schools that did not re-open their buildings. And on the campaign trail this year, Trump vowed that he would defund schools that require vaccines. That will be hard to do if the federal government has given all control of funds to the states.

The Department of Education has limited power, but the temptation to use it seems hard to resist. Nobody wanted the department gone more than Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, who was notably reluctant to use any power of her office. But by 2018, frustrated with Congressional inaction on the Higher Education Act, DeVos announced a plan to impose regulations on her own. In 2020, she imitated Duncan by requiring states to compete for relief money by implementing some of her preferred policies.

Too many folks on the Trump team have ideas about policies they want to enforce on American schools, and without a Department of Education that has control of a major funding stream, they’d have little hope of achieving their goals. Perhaps those who dream of dismantling the department will prevail, but they will still have to get past Congress. No matter how things fall out, some of Team Trump’s goals for education will not be realized.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Voters Defeated the Dark Money Behind Vouchers

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2024 //
3

David Armiak of the Center for Media and Democracy reviewed the recent defeat of vouchers in three states: Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska. He points out that vouchers have never won a state referendum. Voters have always said “No” to sending public money to private and religious schools.

Who pays for the state campaigns on behalf of vouchers?

Billionaires.

The two most reliable funders of voucher proposals are billionaires Betsy DeVos and Charles Koch.

The billionaires keep pushing vouchers even though we now know that they are subsidies for families whose children are already enrolled in private schools. And we now know that vouchers don’t help public school students who use them. And we now know that vouchers are a huge drain on state budgets and always cost more than predicted.

DeVos and Koch like to fund failure. Their goal is not to improve education but to destroy public schools.

Armiak writes:

The dark money group Advance Colorado Action (ACA, formerly Unite for Colorado) qualified the ballot measure, but most of the identifiable money spent pushing its passage came from a related advocacy group, Colorado Dawn.

Unite for Colorado was founded in 2019 by Dustin Zvonek, the former vice president for strategy and innovation and state director for Charles Koch’s astroturf operation Americans for Prosperity. As of 2022, Unite for Colorado provided Colorado Dawn with almost half of its revenue ($2.7 million out of $5.9 million).

Both groups have been hit with multiple campaign finance complaints in recent years, including one last month against Colorado Dawn for sending misleading text messages and spending money to influence a ballot measure without registering as an issue committee.

Colorado Dawn reported spending nearly $1.9 million as of October 23 to back Amendment 80, The Colorado Sun reported.

In Kentucky, voters in every county rejected Amendment 2 by a margin of almost two to one (65%).

If it had passed, the state constitution would have been amended to allow public funding to go to private schools.

A record-breaking $14 million was spent by groups in favor and against the amendment, Kentucky Public Radio reported. The Protect Freedom PAC pulled in $5 million from school privatization billionaire Jeff Yassand spent $4 million on ads supporting the measure.

Other groups spending in favor of the amendment included Kentucky Students First ($2.5 million); Empower Kentucky Parents ($1.25 million); Empower Kentucky Parents PAC ($800,000); and the state chapter of Koch’s Americans for Prosperity ($328,000).

Empower Kentucky Parents received $1 million from American Federation for Children, a group organized and funded by the billionaire DeVos family. Betsy DeVos served as secretary of education during Trump’s first term in office and now supports his plans to eliminate the department.

In Nebraska, 57% of voters supported a ballot measure (Referendum 435) to repeal a new state law that would have provided parents with $10 million in public funds per year in the form of vouchers for their children to attend private K–12 schools.

The Nebraska Examiner reported that Keep Kids First spent just $111,000 as of November 4 to prevent the repeal of the referendum in the Cornhusker state. The American Federation for Children is also the largest known donor so far to Keep Kids First, giving $561,500 in 2023–24.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Koch Brothers, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Watch as Republicans Grovel Before Elon and Vivek

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2024 //
24

This is a sickening article that appeared in The Irish Times about a meeting on Capitol Hill between Congressional leaders and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Why is it sickening? It shows our elected Congressional leaders preening and groveling in the presence of the world’s richest man and a man who is only very rich.

Our Leaders? Who elected Elon and Vivek?

Why an article from The Irish Times? My good friend and executive director of the Network for Public Education Carol Burris is spending the holidays there and sent it to me.

As you read the article, you can feel the obsequiousness that these elected officials are expressing as they wait for the phony Department of Government Efficiency to tell them what to cut.

“Elon and Vivek talked about having a naughty list and a nice list for members of Congress and senators and how we vote,” reported Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who offered a beaming smile that suggested she knew which list she’d be making. “And how we’re spending American people’s money. I think that would be fantastic.”

One wonders what Ted Kennedy or Henry Clay or Lyndon Johnson, during their Senate years, would have made of two billionaires with zero political experience or authority, breezing into the Capitol and explaining to them they had a chance to make the nice list.

Speaker Johnson promised that Thursday’s meetings will be the first of many visits by Musk and Ramaswamy. “We believe it’s a historic moment for the country and these two gentlemen are going to help us navigate through this exciting day. Elon and Vivek don’t need much of an introduction here in Congress for certain and I think most of the public know what they are capable of and have achieved.

“They are innovators and forward thinkers and that’s what we need right now. We are laying the new ground rules for the new Congress in the new year, and we are going to see a lot of change here in Washington of the way things are run. That is what this whole Doge effort is about.”

Should they cut Social Security? Medicare? Veterans’ Healthcare? Grants for higher education? Title 1? Headstart?

Everything is on their chopping block.

How many civil servants will they seek to terminate?

Musk cut 80% of the staff at Twitter. Will he aim to lay off a huge percentage of the people who keep government running?

Musk tweeted a few days ago that government “should be rule by democracy, not rule by bureaucracy.”

How is it democratic to allow two unelected oligarchs to decide which programs should be eliminated? Why do Elon and Vivek–who will never need Medicare or Social Security–get to decide whether the rest of us can keep the programs that we rely on? If they get their way, there will be more people dying of health conditions that could been treated, more seniors eating cat food for dinner.

The politicians eagerly await their marching orders.

Sickening.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Musk, Elon, Politics, Trump

Arkansas: Yes! You Can Use Your Voucher to Pay for Horseback Riding Lessons!

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2024 //
9

At the behest of Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the legislature enacted a voucher program. As in every other state with vouchers, most are used by students already enrolled in private or religious schools. The voucher is a subsidy for families who could already pay but are happy to take the extra money.

The Arkansas Times revealed that vouchers could be spent on horseback riding lessons. Taxpayers are paying for those lessons.

The story says:

The Arkansas LEARNS Act, signed into law in 2023 by Gov. Sarah Sanders, created a voucher program that sends public money to private school families to use for tuition, fees and other expenses. This school year, the program is open to many homeschoolers as well. Homeschool families don’t have tuition bills to pay, but they’re able to use voucher funds for a variety of other education-related expenses, such as books and supplies, curricula, computers and other technology, and private tutoring.

Extracurricular activities are fair game as well. A list of 569 “education service providers” approved for participation in the LEARNS voucher program as of Nov. 18includes climbing gyms, dance studios, jiu-jitsu instructors — and at least seven equestrian-related vendors, according to a cursory review by the Arkansas Times….

Some of those vendors appear to focus in whole or in part on “equine-assisted therapy” services for people with disabilities or trauma. Others appear to simply offer kids the opportunity to ride, interact with and care for horses. But all of them have been given the go-ahead by the Arkansas Department of Education to receive taxpayer dollars at a time when the state has cut inflation-adjusted spending in other areas.

Relatively speaking, equestrian centers are unlikely to eat up too much of the overall voucher pie. Each LEARNS voucher costs the public about $6,856 in the current 2024-25 school year, and there are about 14,000 students in the program this year, most of whom attend private schools. (About 3,000 are homeschooled.) The majority of the roughly $96 million that Arkansas spends on vouchers is flowing to private schools, such as Little Rock Christian Academy or Shiloh Christian School in Springdale.

The idea of publicly subsidizing horseback riding seems to be striking a nerve in a way that paying private school tuition does not. But one could argue there’s not a lot of difference between the two. 

There are no income-eligibility requirements for either homeschool or private school households to receive a voucher. Well-off homeschool families who already paid out of pocket for riding lessons before Arkansas LEARNS can now get them comped by the state. In the same vein, families who paid private school tuition before LEARNS are now getting a taxpayer-funded boost to their bank accounts, freeing them to spend that money on whatever else they please (including horseback riding, if they wish).

Categories Arkansas, Curriculum, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Vouchers

Will Congress and the Supreme Court Allow Trump to Seize Control of “the Power of the Purse”?

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2024 //
23

A blogger called “That’s Another Fine Mess” wrote about an important question: who controls the Power of the Purse? The Constitution says that power belongs to the House of Representatives. But Trump likes to break norms and ignore the Constitution. Will he seize the power of the purse to kill programs, agencies, and Departments that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy consider unnecessary? Will the Supreme Court enable a power grab?

Think about it. Will this Supreme Court allow Trump to override the Constitution?

The blogger “That’s Another Fine Mess” writes:

Since the English Barons met with King John at Runnymede in 1215 and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, the Power of the Purse, and who shall wield it, has been a central point of political contention in the development of democratic constitutional republics.


In the United States, the Power of the Purse resides in the House of Representatives, that part of the national government closest to the citizen voters.


The last president to challenge the power of the House of Representatives to set financial goals and provide for the proper financing of the agencies of governmnt to achieve those goals was Richard Nixon, 50 years ago.


Donald Trump is preparing to enter his second term as president and has vowed to cut a vast array of government services and announced a radical plan to do so.


Rather than rely on his party’s control of both houses of congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers have stated their intent to test an obscure legal theory that holds presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike. This was also the heart of Nixon’s chosen battleground in the early 1970s, when Congress began defunding the operation of the war in Vietnam.


In a 2023 campaign video, Trump said: “We can simply choke off the money. For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.” As with most everything Trump says about politics and government, this is another lie.


The plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash with the Article II p[ower over the limits of the president’s Article I control over the budget.


The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget. The role of the Article I executive branch is to dole out the money effectively, in accordance with the budget created and approved by Congress. That power was affirmed in by passage of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, whch wrote into law that the president did not possess such authority.


Trump and his advisers assert that a president can unilaterally ignore the Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.


This assault on the congessional power of the purse is part of his larger plan to consolidate as much power in the executive branch as possible. Earlier this month, he attempted to pressure the Senate to voluntarily go into recess for longer than ten days, so he could appoint his cabinet through recess appointments, avoiding the Senate’s role in advise and consent to such appointments. So far, he was forced to back down on this demand when it became clear that at least five Republican Senators would vote against Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General.


Trump’s claim to possess impoundment power stands against that law. If Trump were to assert and maintain a power to kill congressionally approved programs, it would tee up a fight in the federal courts and – accoprding to experts – fundamentally alter Congress’ bedrock power of he purse were he to prevail at the Supreme Court. Given the present court’s demonstrated willingness to ignore precedent, it is not clear how they would rule, despite the several Supreme Court rulings against Nixon’s attempted usurpation 50 years ago.


The possible fight was teed up in an op-ed published Wednesday by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who Trump has placved in control of the new nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency – who do not possess between the two of them knowledge of the actual operation of government under the Constitution that would fill a thimble – in which they said they planned to slash federal spending and fire civil servants. Since DOGE is about as real as the Doge Coins our Unreconstructed Afrikaner Space Nazi plays with, the fact is that what these two fuckwits have the power to do is to make suggestions and recommendations to Congress, which has the power to kill a program or agency and reset the terms of employment for the federal employees involved.


Musk and Ramaswamy wrote, “We believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question.” They could be right.
Their efforts could offer Trump his first Supreme Court test of the post-Watergate Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which requires the president to spend the money Congress approves. The law allows exceptions, such as when the executive branch can achieve Congress’ goals by spending less, but not as a means for the president to kill programs he opposes.


Trump and his fellow conspirators have been telegraphing his plan for a hostile takeover of the budgeting process for months. He has decried the 1974 law as “not a very good act” in his campaign video and said, “Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the Deep State.”


The once-obscure impoundment debate has come back into vogue in MAGA circles thanks to Russell Vought, Trump’s former and future budget director, and Mark Paoletta, who served under Vought during Trump 1.0 as the OMB general counsel, who have worked to popularize the idea after it was brought up by the Vought-founded Center for Renewing America.


In private remarks to a gathering of MAGA luminaries uncovered by ProPublica, Vought boasted he was assembling a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel so that Trump is armed on day one with the legal rationalizations to realize his agenda, saying, “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral.”


The prospect of Trump seizing vast control over federal spending is not merely about reducing the size of the federal government, a long-standing conservative goal. It is also fueling new fears about his promises of vengeance.

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Categories Budget Cuts, Extremism, Funding, Trump

Peter Greene: Evangelicals Are Knocking Down the Wall of Separation in Ohio, New Jersey, and Beyond

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2024 //
6

Evangelicals want to destroy the wall of separation between church and state and use public schools and public funds to indoctrinate others. we have seen this in many states, such as Texas, where Governor Abbott is using billionaire money to enable the state to pay for indoctrination of more students in religious schools.

One unusually active religious group is called Lifewise Academy. A friend in New Jersey wrote to tell me that parents are pushing back.

She wrote:

“LifeWise Academy has ambitious plans which take advantage of Zorach v. Clauson to pull kids out of public school classes, bringing them off campus for “bible studies.” In Ocean City, NJ, near where I live, an Evangelical Church is fighting to have the school board accept it. This map shows the scope of LifeWise’s current efforts

There is a grassroots movement to push back against these changes. https://parentsagainstlifewise.online/

Here is a recording of an informative zoom they conducted with NJ activists https://vimeo.com/1033697670/83f2dd97ea

Peter Greene writes here about the financial success of Lifewise Academy in Ohio.

He writes:

Christianists continue doing their best to force public education to bend to their brand of faith. In Ohio, legislators are now trying to create a whole new church-issued Get Out Of School Free card.

It has long been an option for schools to release students from school for part of the day to receive religious instruction, and districts have chosen to exercise that option or not as they see fit. The bill proposed on Ohio makes one simple change–instead of “may,” the law would read “shall.”

In other words, if parents demand their child be released for religious instruction, the schools must comply.

A key focus has been LifeWise Academy, an organization that has been capitalizing on the original Supreme Court ruling by delivering Bible study during the school day. Their focus is called The Gospel Project, and it is aimed at encouraging “true transformation that comes only from the gospel, not from behavior modification.” Every session is “doctrinally sound and thorough,” though whose doctrine, exactly, it follows is not made clear.

LifeWise is the brainchild of Joel Penton, who was a defensive tackle for the Ohio State football team. He graduated in 2007 (BA in Communications and Media Studies), then after what appears to be a two year gap, Penton got into the Christian Speakers Biz, starting Relevant Speakers Network, Stand for Truth Outreach, and LifeWise Academy, all based in Hilliard, Ohio.

Stand for Truth was an earlier version of the release time Bible study model as well as school assemblies, with a filed purpose of assisting “youth, youth organizations, schools and churches by providing seminars, educational materials, inspirational and motivational materials, books and other programs to help youth reach their full potential.”

The LifeWise 990 shows that it is, for legal purposes, a Stand for Truth under a new name, with the purpose unchanged. At SfT, Penton was drawing an $87K salary to handle a million-and-a-half dollar budget. The 2022 990 for LifeWise shows Penton with $41K in salary and $69K in other compensation, while LifeWise is handling $13 mill on revenue (more than double 2022) from “contributions, gifts, grants” and paying almost $6 mill in employee benefits and compensation to… I don’t know. The only other paid officials listed are Steve Clifton (COO) with $108K salary and $57K other, and treasurer David Kirkey with $31K salary. Almost $5 mill is listed as other salaries and wages, including program service expenses. They list no lobbying expense, but some mid-six figure numbers for advertising, office expenses, and travel. In all they took in almost $14 mill and spent about $9.5 mill.

Board members include Rev. Stephen Hubbard, pastor at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Logan, Ohio; Brad Hulls, a real estate agent “and remodeling specialist” from Columbus. Figuring in the group’s history is Tim Stoller, a founding board member for Cross Over The Hill, an organization with a similar message. It was Stoller who approached Penton, leading to a combining of Stand for Truth and Cross Over The Hill to form LifeWise Academy.

LifeWise has expanded to multiple states, and it’s their work that the new Ohio bill is primarily aimed at, by requiring every school in Ohio to offer a LifeWise option (or something like it).

LifeWise has not experienced large growth by playing softball. One school board member recounted a story of being approached by LifeWise, first pleasantly, and then with veiled threats about re-election. “As a church, we can’t endorse political candidates, but we can educate people.” And last summer LifeWise got in a big fight with an Indiana father who volunteered for the group so that he could gain access to their materials, which he then posted on his website. LifeWise took him to court.The parent made a point that ought to be familiar to the culture panic crowd–that parents ought to be able to review the materials that were being used with students. LifeWise has also gone after a manwho created a map showing the locations of LifeWise schools.

The Akron Beacon Journal is among those opposing the proposed law, calling it “a dangerous crack forming in the wall that separates church and state.

The article continues. To finish reading, please open the link.

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Categories Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state
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