Last Friday, Mary and I took our oldest grandson, who is now 32, to The Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan. The Morgan is a small but breath-taking collection of books and manuscripts that belonged to the personal collection of J.P. Morgan. The building is breathtaking, as are the books, which include an original Gutenberg Bible.
We began by seeing an exhibition of illustrated Bibles and other religious books that were over 1,000 years old. I kept thinking of the Hebrew scribes and Christian monks who spent years writing and illustrating these gorgeous volumes. Every letter, every line was perfect. How did they do it?
Then we visited the main library, a magnificent room with three layers of leather-bound books.
Mr. J.P. Morgan’s LibraryAnother view of this magnificent room
The room included a jewel-encrusted Bible, made in France and Austria in the 9th century
Mr. Morgan’s jewel-encrusted Bible
All of this splendor reminded me of the poverty in the streets outside his library and home, but I doubt that he thought much about the people outside.
In an exhibition case, there were several unusual printed documents. One was about a woman named Mary Toth or Toths, an English woman who pulled off an elaborate hoax in 1726, when she was 23 years old. She told doctors that she had given birth to bunnies. The illustration showed her, a few doctors, and many bunnies. The story spread rapidly, and many people believed that she had in fact given birth to bunnies. She was eventually discredited, briefly jailed, and eventually the charges against her were dismissed.
I said to my grandson, if that happened today, it would spread like wildfire on the internet and many people would swear it was true. My grandson said, “Some people will believe anything because they are ignorant.”
The stranger standing next to us interjected, “Some things never change.”
On the same day that we visited The Morgan Library, our frequent commenter Bob Shepherd left the following observation about why people are so gullible:
Three of the most powerful and important experiments ever performed were Stanley Milgram’s electric shock experiment, Solomon Asche’s line length determination experiment, and Philip Zimbardo’s prison experiment. I won’t go into the details of these here. You can look them up in a quick Google search if you are fuzzy on their details. What these experiments, which have been repeatedly replicated, show conclusively is that about two thirds of people are so driven by desire to be accepted by the group that they will conform to and actively participate in the most egregious behavior toward others in order to be themselves accepted by a perceived “authority.” Next time you are in a public place–at a game, in a restaurant, in a club–look around you. Two thirds of the people you see are potential collaborators–people capable of extreme evil, which, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is TYPICALLY characterized by mediocrity.
Years ago, when I was a baby editor, I went to work for McDougal, Littell. Ms. Littell–the co-founder’s wife–was the editor of their literature program at the time, and she had chosen for the 12th-grade book an essay by the English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper about what an “evil genius” Hitler was. Well, I risked my job by objecting to this piece because Hitler was not a genius. He was a common thug and a psychopath, and people are sheep, easily led, easily bullied into submission and acquiescence. Or consider John Gotti–the psychopathic criminal Mafia thug. The press created an image of the brilliant “Dapper Don,” who could constantly evade punishment. But after he was finally imprisoned, tapes of wire taps on Gotti were released, and these showed that he was the lowest sort of ignorant thug, incapable of clear reasoning or speech, driven by the basest motivations, and unable to say anything without accompanying it with a string of curses that stood in for the words lacking in his fourth-grade vocabulary.
People want to belong. They want to get along. They want Daddy to tell everyone what to do. And they will idolize absolute monsters if they get that from them.
Bob is a polymath—an author, editor, guitarist, teacher, and humorist–who seems to have read deeply in every field.
Oh, we stopped in the gift shop, and I bought a couple of delightful books. One was titled Rejected Books: The Most Unpublishable Books of All Time.
Some of those unpublishable books:
Famous People in Owl MasksUnalphabetized DictionaryTerrible Drawings of Horses
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont shared his year-end thoughts along with his hopes for the future. As the first year of Trump’s second term winds down, it’s hard to believe that the dreams he describes can come true. Every day brings a new blow to the environment, to our health care, to our schools, to our children, to the rule of law, to our allies, to our national sense of purpose.
Yet we will persist. We have no other choice.
Sisters and Brothers –
As we come to the end of a very difficult year, I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday season, a wonderful new year and thank you all for the support you have given our progressive movement.
Let me take this opportunity to share some end-of-the-year thoughts with you.
As I reflect on the moment in which we’re living, what is most disturbing to me is not just that a handful of multi-billionaires control our economic life, our political life, and our media. That’s bad, and extremely dangerous. But, what is even worse is the degree to which these Oligarchs, through their wealth and power, have created an environment that limits our imaginations and our expectations as to what we deserve as human beings.
It really is quite amazing.
We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and, yet, we are asked to accept as “normal” the reality that tens of millions of Americans struggle every day to afford the basic necessities of life – food, housing, health care or education.
We live in a “democracy,” but we are told that it is legal and proper for one man, the wealthiest person on earth, to spend $270 million in campaign contributions to help elect a president who then provides huge tax breaks and other benefits to the very rich.
We live in a nation whose Declaration of Independence in 1776 boldly proclaimed “that all men are created equal” while, today, the gap between the rich and poor is wider than ever and the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 93%.
We live under a criminal justice system which punishes people for being poor, but rewards fossil fuel tycoons whose carbon emissions are wreaking havoc on the lives of billions of people and posing an existential threat to the planet.
As we enter the new year, our job is clear. We don’t have to accept the Oligarchs’ determination as to what is possible and what is not. We must think big, not small. We must reject status quo politics and economics. We must imagine, and fight for, a world very different than the one in which we now live. We must demand and create a world of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.
Yes. We no longer have to be the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care for all as a human right. The function of healthcare must not be to make the insurance companies and drug companies even richer. We CAN create a high quality cost-effective health care system that focuses on disease prevention, extends our life expectancy and is publicly funded. This is not a radical idea.
Yes. In a highly competitive global economy we CAN have the best public educational system in the world from child care to graduate school. As a nation, we must respect the importance of education and adequately compensate educators for the important work they do. We must strengthen and improve our primary and secondary educational systems and make child care and public colleges and universities tuition free. This is not a radical idea.
Yes. We CAN end the housing crisis and the reality that 800,000 Americans are homeless and millions spend half of their incomes to put a roof over their heads. We must build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing and, in the process, create many good paying union construction jobs. This is not a radical idea.
YES. With effective regulation we CAN utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics to improve the lives of all, not just the billionaires who own that technology. As worker- productivity increases we can raise wages, improve working conditions and reduce the work week. Making sure that AI and robotics benefit all of society and not the wealthy few is not a radical idea.
YES. We CAN address the outrageous level of income and wealth inequality that we are now experiencing. While we can respect talented businesspeople and entrepreneurial skills, we do not have to accept the outrageous level of greed and vulgarity that the billionaire class too often exhibits. It is beyond absurd that we have a tax system in which the richest people in this country often pay an effective tax rate that is lower than truck drivers or nurses. Demanding that the 1% and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes is not a radical idea.
At a time when we live in a dangerous and unprecedented moment in American history, and part of a rapidly changing world, it is absolutely imperative that we boldly respond to the crises that we face. This is not the time for timidity. Our agenda must be fearless and straightforward. Nothing less than the preservation of democracy, the well-being of the planet and the future of humanity is a stake.
As we enter the new year, let us go forward together.
In Solidarity.
Bernie
IN THAT SPIRIT, dear friends, Happy New Year!
Don’t stop believing in the power of conscience and collective action.
This is a gift article that appeared in Bloomberg News. It describes the dramatic changes that Trump has made by executive order to redirect the flow of money.
It’s unlikely that Trump wrote these orders or even understood their implications. He is surrounded by people who know precisely what they are doing: windfalls for the rich.
Kristen Buras lives in New Orleans and has written several notable books about the charter school takeover of the city’s schools. After two decades at Emory University and Georgia State University, she currently works in New Orleans as a scholar-activist. She is cofounder and director of the New Orleans-based Urban South Grassroots Research Collective, a coalition with Black educational and cultural groups that melds community-based research and organizing for racial justice. Buras has written multiple books on urban educational policy, including Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance and What We Stand to Lose: Black Teachers, the Culture They Created, and the Closure of a New Orleans High School.
Her latest report appears here:
The Stories Behind the Statistics: Why a Report on ‘Large Achievement Gains’ in Charter Schools Harms New Orleans’ Black Students
Buras’ latest report exposes how “Large Achievement Gains” in New Orleans’ charter schools mask persistent inequities
The National Center for Charter School Accountability (CCSA), a project of NPE, has released a new independent report, The Stories Behind the Statistics: Why a Report on ‘Large Achievement Gains’ in Charter Schools Harms New Orleans’ Black Students, authored by noted scholar Dr. Kristen Buras. The report delivers a penetrating critique of the widely circulated “success narrative” surrounding the charter-school takeover of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. It challenges the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans (ERA)’s claims of significant achievement gains. It reveals how shifting metrics, questionable data, and students’ lived experiences paint a far more complex—and troubling—picture.
The Stories Behind Statistics raises substantial concerns about the foundations of ERA’s conclusions. First, it details how Louisiana officials repeatedly modified the school performance metrics in ways that boosted the apparent success of charter schools, creating an illusion of dramatic improvement. Second, it questions the reliability of the data ERA relied upon, noting allegations, lawsuits, and documented violations—including grade-fixing, financial mismanagement, and other irregularities—that have occurred across the New Orleans charter sector. Third, the report underscores the longstanding lack of meaningful oversight and accountability for charter schools, which further undermines confidence in the performance data.
Finally, the report scrutinizes ERA’s surveys on teaching quality and school climate, demonstrating that the experiences of Black students—when examined at the school level—are far more negative than ERA’s brief suggests. To bring these realities into focus, Dr. Buras incorporates original qualitative research, including firsthand testimony from students and parents describing their experiences in New Orleans charter schools.
The Stories Behind the Statistics urges policymakers, researchers, and the public to look beyond celebratory headlines and examine the deeper structural issues that continue to shape the city’s all-charter experiment—issues that profoundly affect the educational experiences of Black youth and their families.
According to Network for Public Education President Diane Ravitch, “As cities and states across the nation look to New Orleans as a model of charter-school reform, this report cautions how important it is to dig deeper than surface metrics. Without transparency, accountability, and attention to student experience, reforms that appear successful on paper may in fact perpetuate inequities and undermine educational justice for students.”
If there was ever a symbol of decadence, greed, and heartlessness in 2025, it must be the “Great Gatsby” party that Trump provided for his uber-rich friends at Mar-a-Lago in the midst of the government shutdown.
At the same time, 42 million Americans were wondering if their food stamps (SNAP) would be available for the month. The Trump Department of Justice was in court arguing that the administration had no obligation to fully fund SNAP, and the decision was not in the hands of the courts anyway. So, no, as far as Trump was concerned, let the losers go hungry.
The party was indeed decadent, as the food and drink were abundant. Caviar, champagne, truffles, stone claw crabs. No expensive delicacy left behind.
Even more decadent–considering that this is the home of the President–were the skimpily clad showgirls who waved boa feathers to show off their bodies.
If the goal was to display the vast disparity in wealth and income that plagues our society, Trump succeeded.
I’ve gathered a few videos and commentaries. See what you missed.
This is Jon Stewart with commentary on the party and video of the festivities. I especially liked the barely clad young woman in a giant champagne glass. His Mar-a-Lago spiel starts at 5:00.
Andy Spears is a veteran education journalist with a Ph.D. in education policy and a specialization in school finance. He lives in Nashville, but covers the national scene.
Spears writes:
In this post, he reports on an ominous development in Tennessee. A new organization in Tennessee has declared its intention to lure nearly 500,000 students out of public schools and into charter schools and voucher schools. The collapse in funding for public schools is likely to end public schools altogether.
Spears writes:
While state leaders consider expanding the state’s private school coupon program, a new nonprofit takes a bolder approach. A group calling itself Tennessee Leads registered with the Secretary of State as a 501(c)(4) issue advocacy organization with the goal of effectively ending public education in Tennessee by 2031.
The group was registered on October 14th and lists a business address of 95 White Bridge Road in Nashville. This is a nondescript business building in West Nashville.
The Registered Agent for Tennessee Leads is listed as “Tennessee Leads.” The group’s website says an IRS nonprofit application is pending. In short, it is not yet clear who is backing this movement.
However, the group is not shy about its goals.
We support legislation to significantly increase the availability of Education Freedom scholarships, aiming to provide 200,000 scholarships annually by 2031. This initiative is designed to empower parents with more choices for their children’s education.
And:
Our efforts include advocating for the expansion of public charter schools, with a goal to increase student enrollment from 45,000 to 250,000. This initiative seeks to offer diverse educational opportunities and foster innovation in teaching.
If achieved, these two goals combined would take nearly half of all K-12 students in the state out of traditional public schools.
The group doesn’t really say the current model isn’t working – they just say they like “choice.” The state’s current private school coupon scheme (ESA vouchers) has 20,000 students.
Moving that to 200,000 would cost at least $1.5 billion per year and take significant funds from local public schools.
Other states that rapidly expanded school vouchers saw huge budget hits to both state and local government.
[See his post on Indiana vouchers, where the costs rose neatly tenfold in less than a decade. The Indiana voucher is also a coupon for the rich to cash in at private schools. He predicts that Tennessee will be shelling out $1.4 billion a year for well-off kids to attend private schools by 2035.]
He writes that vouchers are a mess in Florida, because thousands of students are “double-dipping,” collecting voucher money while attending public schools.
Florida relies on two official student counts each year — one in October and another in February — to allocate funding to school districts through the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). But after the October 2024 Count, major red flags appeared. Nearly 30,000 students (at an estimated cost of almost $250 million) were identified as both receiving a voucher and attending a public school. In some districts, almost all (more than all in one district) of their state funding had been absorbed by voucher payouts.
So, the Tennessee Leads plan would lead to a rapid decrease in state funds available for public schools – or, a significant increase in local property taxes – possibly, both.
It’s also not clear how Tennessee Leads plans to build charter school capacity to house an additional 200,000 students. Unless the plan is to just hand existing public schools over to charter operators – you know, like the failed Achievement School District model.
Oh, and there’s something else.
Tennessee Leads wants all schools to use Direct Instruction at all times for all students.
We advocate for the implementation of Direct Instruction methodologies across all public schools, ensuring that teaching practices are grounded in research and proven to be effective in enhancing student achievement.
Except studies on Direct Instruction suggest the opposite – that it does not improve student learning – in fact, it may be harmful to student academic and social growth. Here’s more from a dissertation submitted by an ETSU student:
No statistically significant results (p = .05) were found between the year before implementation and the year after implementation with the exception of one grade level. Furthermore, no significant differences were found at any grade level between students participating in Corrective Reading and students not participating in Corrective Reading on the 2003-2004 TCAP Terra Nova test.
To be clear, Direct Instruction is highly-scripted learning – down to the pacing, word choice, and more – the “sage on the stage” delivers rote learning models and students are told exactly how to “do” certain things – the “one best way” approach with little room for student discovery.
More on this:
A remarkable body of research over many years has demonstrated that the sort of teaching in which students are provided with answers or shown the correct way to do something — where they’re basically seen as empty receptacles to be filled with facts or skills — tends to be much less effective than some variant of student-centered learning that involves inquiry or discovery, in which students play an active role in constructing meaning for themselves and with one another.
That is: Scripted learning/Direct Instruction is not evidence-based if the evidence you’re looking for is what actually improves student learning.
It holds true not only in STEM subjects, which account for a disproportionate share of the relevant research, but also in reading instruction, where, as one group of investigators reported, “The more a teacher was coded as telling children information, the less [they] grew in reading achievement.”
It holds true when judged by how long students retain knowledge,7 and the effect is even clearer with more ambitious and important educational goals. The more emphasis one places on long-term outcomes, on deep understanding, on the ability to transfer ideas to new situations, or on fostering and maintaining students’ interest in learning, the more direct instruction (DI) comes up short.8
One wonders who, exactly, wants to advance an extreme privatization agenda while also mandating that those students remaining in traditional public schools are subjected to a learning model proven not only not to work, but also shown as likely harmful in many cases. Eventually, an IRS determination letter will be issued, or the Registered Agent will be updated on the Secretary of State’s site. Or, perhaps, the “about us” section will offer some insight into the actors who would end public schools in our state.
On the day after this post appeared, Spears learned that a well-known political consulting firm was behind the proposal for Tennessee Leads. The firm had previously worked for the Tennessee Republican Party and for Governor Bill Lee. He wrote a new post.
It’s not at all clear why Governor Lee and his fellow Republicans are so enamored of charters and vouchers. Tennessee was the first state to win Race to the Top funding from the Obama administration. It collected a grand prize of $500 million. With that big infusion of new funding for “reform,” the public schools should be reformed by now. But obviously they are not.
Worse, Tennessee put $100 million into a bold experiment that was supposed to demonstrate the success of charter schools. The state created the Educational Achievement Authority, hired a star of the charter movement to run it, and gathered the state’s lowest-performing public school into a non-contiguous all-charter district. The EAA promised that these low-scoring schools would join the state’s top schools within five years. Five years passed, and the targeted schools remained at the bottom of the state’s rankings.
In time, the legislature gave up and closed the EAA.
Similarly, the evidence is in in vouchers. In every state that had offered them to all students, the vast majority are scooped up by affluent families whose kids never attended public schools. When public school students took vouchers, they fell far behind their public school peers.
Are Republican leaders immune to reading evidence?
Shareholders of Tesla just endorsed a contract with Elon Musk worth $1 trillion!
The dramatic inequality of wealth and income in the U.S. upsets many people, even middle-class people. The pain is spreading. In the past few months, many thousands of workers and corporate executives were laid off. What does the future hold for them?
The party in charge of the federal government has closed down the government rather than continue health insurance benefits for millions of their fellow citizens. The Republicans have gone to court and fought to cut off SNAP–food stamps–to feed the poorest Americans.
Yesterday, a federal Judge ordered the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP. The Trump administration is going to a higher court in hopes of reversing the order. Let the hungry eat cake!
All the while, Speaker Mike Johnson sent House members home to avoid negotiating any changes in a cruel budget. When asked, he lies and says that Republicans are fighting to save the very programs they are killing. Lying seems to come naturally to him.
Here is the Trump ideal: Stockholders of Tesla just voted to award $1 trillion to Elon Musk if the company continues to prosper.
Tesla shareholders on Thursday approved a plan that could make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, two days after New Yorkers elected a tax-the-rich candidate as their next mayor.
These discrete moments offered strikingly different lessons about America and who deserves how much of its wealth.
At Tesla, based in the Austin, Texas, area, shareholders have largely bought into a winner-takes-all version of capitalism, agreeing by a wide margin to give Mr. Musk shares worth almost a trillion dollars if the company under his management achieves ambitious financial and operational goals over the next decade.
But halfway across the country, in the home to Wall Street, Zohran Mamdani’s victory served as a reminder of the frustrations many Americans have with an economic system that has left them struggling to afford basics like food, housing and child care.
I decided after Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary that I would vote for him. I was concerned about his lack of managerial experience, but impressed by his energy, his enthusiasm, his ever-present smile, and his willingness to try bold policies on behalf of working-class and low-income New Yorkers. I was repulsed by the billionaire-funded hate campaign against him as a Muslim.
But at some point before the general election, I wavered. I read article after article about his hard-and-fast views on Israel, the BDS movement, and other third-rail topics. I am not a Zionist but I believe that Israel should not have to justify its right to exist. And I condemn the rightwing cabal in Israel that has supported the genocidal war in Gaza, as well as settler terrorism against Palestinians who live on the West Bank.
I decided not to vote, which I have never done. Voting is a precious right, which I have always exercised.
Then I read this article in the New York Times, in which David Leonhardt interviewed Senator Bernie Sanders, and it resolved all my doubt and hesitation. After reading this, I went to my polling place and very happily voted for Zohran Mamdani.
Of course, I was thrilled to see a Democratic sweep in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (where the state GOP proposed to remove three Democratic judges from the state’s Supreme Court), and California, where Prop. 50 passed easily, allowing a redistricting intended to produce an additional 5 Democratic seats in Congress. Prop 50 was a response to the Texas GOP’s redistricting that will eliminate 5 Democratic seats. Joke of the day: California Republicans are suing to block the Prop 50 gerrymandering because it favors one race over another. I didn’t hear similar concerns about gerrymanders by Republicans in Texas, Missouri, and other states that are creating new Republican seats, eliminating Black representation.
The article linked above is a gift article, so you can read it in full without a subscription.
Here is a sample:
David Leonhardt: Senator Bernie Sanders started talking about income inequality nearly 40 years ago.
Archived clip of Bernie Sanders in 1988:In our nation today, we have extreme disparity between the rich and the poor, that elections are bought and sold by people who have huge sums of money.
He railed against oligarchs before Elon Musk made his first million.
Archived clip of Sanders in 1991: To a very great extent, the United States of America today is increasingly becoming an oligarchy.
Sanders started out as a political oddity. But his focus on inequality has made him one of the most influential politicians in America. I wanted to know where he thinks we’re headed next. So I asked him to join me for “America’s Next Story,” a Times Opinion series about the ideas that once held our country together, and those that might do so again.
Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you for being here.
Bernie Sanders: My pleasure….
Leonhardt: OK, let’s get into it. I want to go back to the pre-Trump era and think about the fact that a lot of Democrats during that time — I’m thinking about the Clintons and Obama — felt more positively toward the market economy than you did.
They were positive toward trade. They didn’t worry that much about corporate power. They didn’t pay that much attention to labor unions. And if I’m being totally honest, a lot of people outside of the Democratic Party, like New York Times columnists, had many of those same attitudes.
Sanders: Yes, I recall that. Vaguely, yes. Some of them actually weren’t supportive of my candidacy for president.
Leonhardt: That is fair. I assume you would agree that the consensus has shifted in your direction over the last decade or so?
Sanders: I think that’s fair to say.
Leonhardt: And I’m curious: Why do you think those other Democrats and progressives missed what you saw?
Sanders: In the 1970s — the early ’70s — some of the leaders in the Democratic Party had this brilliant idea. They said: Hey, Republicans are getting all of this money from the wealthy and the corporations. Why don’t we hitch a ride, as well? And they started doing that. Throughout the history of this country — certainly the modern history of this country, from F.D.R. to Truman to Kennedy, even — the Democratic Party was the party of the working class. Period. That’s all your working class. Most people were Democrats.
But from the ’70s on, for a variety of reasons — like the attraction of big money — the party began to pay more attention to the needs of the corporate world and the wealthy rather than working-class people. And I think, in my view, that has been a total disaster, not only politically, but for our country as a whole.
Leonhardt: I agree, certainly, that corporate money played a role within the party. But I also think a lot of people genuinely believed things like trade would help workers. When I think about —
Sanders: Hmm, no.
Leonhardt: You think it’s all about money?
Sanders: No. What I think is, if you talked to working-class people during that period, as I did, if you talked to the union movement during that period, as I did, you said: Guys, do you think it’s a great idea that we have a free-trade agreement with China? No worker in America thought that was a good idea. The corporate world thought it was a good idea. The Washington Post thought it was a great idea. I don’t know what The New York Times thought.
But every one of us who talked to unions, who talked to workers, understood that the result of that would be the collapse of manufacturing in America and the loss of millions of good-paying jobs. Because corporations understood: If I could pay people 30 cents an hour in China, why the hell am I going to pay a worker in America a living wage? We understood that.
Leonhardt: I think that’s fair. I guess I’m interested in why you think that members of the Democratic Party — not workers, but members — and other progressives ignored workers back then but have come more closely to listen to workers. I mean, if you look at the Biden administration’s policy, if you look at the way Senator Schumer talks about his own views shifting, I do think there’s been this meaningful shift in the Democratic Party toward your views. Not all the way.
Sanders: Well, what we will have to see is to what degree people are just seeing where the wind is blowing as to whether or not they mean it.
In my view, working-class Americans did not vote for Donald Trump because they wanted to see the top 1 percent get a trillion dollars in tax breaks. They did not want to see 15 million people, including many of them, being thrown off the health care they had or their health care premiums double, etc. They voted for Trump because he said: I am going to do something. The system is broken. I’m going to do something.
What did the Democrats say? Well, in 13 years, if you’re making $40,000, $48,000, we may be able to help your kid get to college. But if you’re making a penny more, we can’t quite do that. The system is OK — we’re going to nibble around the edges. Trump smashed the system. Of course, everything he’s doing is disastrous. Democrats? Eh, system is OK — let’s nibble around the edges.
Democrats lost the election. All right? They abdicated. They came up with no alternative. Because you know what? They, even today, don’t acknowledge the economic crises facing the working class of this country. Now you tell me, how many Democrats are going around saying: You know what? We have a health care system that is broken, completely. We are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people I’ve introduced Medicare for All. You know how many Democrats in the Senate I have on board?
Leonhardt: How many?
Sanders: Fifteen — out of a caucus of 47.
Leonhardt: And you think Medicare for All is both good policy and good politics?
Sanders: Of course, it’s good policy! Health care is a human right! I feel very strongly about that. And I think the function of our health care system should not make the drug companies and the insurance companies phenomenally rich. We guarantee health care to all people — that’s what most Americans think. Where’s the leader?
I think that at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality, you know what the American people think? Maybe we really levy some heavy duty taxes on the billionaire class. I believe that. I think most Americans, including a number of Republicans, believe that. Hmm, not quite so sure where the Democrats are. I believe that you don’t keep funding a war criminal like Netanyahu to starve the children of Gaza. That’s what I believe. It’s what most Americans believe. An overwhelming majority in the Democratic world believes it. Hmm, Democratic leadership, maybe not quite so much.
The point is that, right now, 60 percent of our people have been paycheck to paycheck. I don’t know that the Democratic leadership understands that there are good, decent people out there working as hard as they can, having a hard time paying their rent. Because the cost of housing is off the charts, health care is off the charts, child care is off the charts. The campaign finance system is completely broken. When Musk can spend $270 million to elect Trump, you’ve got a broken system. Our job is to create an economy and a political system that works for working people, not just billionaires.
PLEASE OPEN THE LINK AND READ THE REST OF THIS AMAZING INTERVIEW.
Garry Rayno, veteran journalist, explains how New Hampshire’s politicians of both parties have failed to approve equitable taxes to educate the state’s children. The libertarians, who play a large role in the state legislature, would prefer to have no taxes at all. The Koch machine has funded candidates who oppose fair state funding. This does not bode well for the future of the state.
The courts have spoken many times over the last three decades about the state’s public education system and its funding.
In the ensuring 30 years since the Claremont I and Claremont II decisions were released by the state Supreme Court, little has changed in a meaningful way.
The Claremont I decision simply said the state has a constitutional obligation to provide every child in New Hampshire with an adequate (or worthwhile) education and to fund it.
Claremont II was a tax decision that says the current funding system is unconstitutional because it relies on a tax that is not assessed on every property owner in the same way with the same rate. Under the New Hampshire Constitution state taxes have to be proportional and reasonable.
The Legislature has yet to address either of the two basic decisions — there have been others — in the most fundamental way.
In New Hampshire, property owners in a school district’s community or communities primarily pay for public education.
Property taxes of one kind or another pay about 70 percent of the cost of education, other state funding accounts for a little over 22 percent and federal money about 8.5 percent
The local property taxes pay for about 61 percent and the statewide education property tax for about 8 percent.
That does not all add up to 100 percent because there is other money raised through tuition, food and other local contributions and insurance settlements, etc..
The national average for state contributions to public education is about 47 percent or more than double what the state pays even with the statewide property tax.
What makes the state system unconstitutional and inequitable for both students and taxpayers is the over reliance on property taxes to pay for the bulk of the cost.
Local property taxes have varying rates across the state ranging from a little over $5 per $1,000 of valuation in New Castle and Moultonborough, to nearly $35 per $1,000 in Colebrook and Orford.
The statewide property tax is supposed to have the same rate for everyone in the state, but doesn’t because property wealthy communities retain the excess money they raise to pay for their students’ adequate education, and unincorporated places have negative local education property rates to offset what they would pay in statewide education property taxes.
That ought to be enough to acknowledge the system is broken, but it isn’t for lawmakers who frankly lack the political will to fix the system so that it is more equitable — I didn’t say fair — for both students and taxpayers.
Students whose parents are fortunate enough to live in a property wealthy community receive a more robust education than do those students whose parents live in a property poor community.
Likewise the parents and other property owners in the property wealthy communities pay far less in property taxes than those in property poor communities do to educate their children.
Judging from the bills filed for the upcoming session, most of the offered solutions tinker around the current system’s edges.
One interesting bill from Rep. Walter Spilsbury, R-Charlestown, proposes raising the statewide education property tax rate to $5 per $1,000 of equalized evaluation, producing more than $1 billion for public education to provide about $10,000 per student.
Currently the tax assessed for the 2025 tax year is $1.12 per $1,000 and the current per pupil state aid is $4,266.
His plan would have exemptions and offsets that essentially would mean the bulk of the collection would be on second homes and non-residential properties.
His plan would be very helpful to property poor communities that should see a significant reduction in their property taxes, but residents in property wealthy communities would see a hefty increase in their property taxes.
But like several other plans that use the statewide property tax as the base solution, it is still a property tax, which is the most regressive tax in the state’s quiver of levies.
Property taxes are not tied to a person’s income or resources, which can go up or down, while it does not. In fact, the trend is for property taxes to increase as the state downshifts more and more of its financial responsibilities to local government, which lawmakers do every time they have trouble balancing their budget, like they do now.
One shortfall of the state’s current tax system is it no longer has any mechanism to tax an individual’s wealth growth since it repealed the interest and dividends tax last year.
The tax was largely paid by individuals with investment income at the top 10 percent..
The state business profits taxes 7.5 percent of companies’ profits with multinational conglomerates paying the largest share.
The largest source of funds from the business enterprise tax comes from its assessment on all compensation paid or accrued, and also from the amount of interest paid and on its dividends.
But like property taxes, the BET has to be paid whether a company makes money or not.
Wealth generated by individuals is not taxed in New Hampshire, but it is for businesses and that is what makes New Hampshire an outlier to most other states and why billionaires and millionaires — or the oligarchs — want to use New Hampshire as an example for the rest of the country.
That is why the Koch Foundation and other similar organizations have poured millions into state elections over the last decade to place libertarian leaning Republicans in the State House in sufficient numbers to run the place.
The slogans are no new taxes at any cost which means much of the cost of public education has been shifted more and more to local property taxpayers.
At the same time, these oligarch-backed libertarians put a more than $100 million obligation on funds reserved for public education in the Education Trust Fund through the Education Freedom Account program.
That is money that could otherwise be used for public education.
Coming into the next session, the Republican leadership does not want to do what needs to be done if the state’s public education system is to be made more equitable for both students and taxpayers.
State lawmakers need to find another source of money to bring the state’s obligation to local children and property owners in line with what other states pay and provide.
That is what the New Hampshire legislature does not want to do and has not wanted to do — both parties — since the first two Claremont decisions were released three decades ago.
It is not as though New Hampshire cannot afford to live up to its constitutional obligation to its children and its property owners, it is one of the richest per-capita states in the country, it does not have the political will to live up to that obligation.
Until enough lawmakers are elected with a backbone, nothing will change. The state’s medium age will continue increasing, fewer and fewer children will call New Hampshire home, and more and more young adults will leave for greater opportunities elsewhere.
Under that scenario, New Hampshire is not a sustainable state going forward.
Michelle H. Davis writes a blog called “Lone Star Left,” where she chronicles the usually corrupt politics of Texas. In this post, she eviscerates Governor Abbott, who loves to brag about the economic success of his state. She calls him out for ignoring the people who are nott part of the state’s prosperity.
She writes:
Today, our feckless leader gave a State-of-the-State Address at the Baylor Club in Waco. Now, if you didn’t know, the Baylor Club is a prestigious private social club nestled within McLane Stadium, offering floor-to-ceiling panoramic views of the stadium, downtown Waco, and the Brazos River.
While many Texans are choosing between groceries and insulin, Abbott delivers big promises from an elite club perched over McLane Stadium. That should tell you all you need to know.
It was about an hour long, so I watched it for you. Below, I’ve broken down everything he said and what he conveniently left out.
He began the speech by bragging about having dinner with Governor Glenn Youngkin and then told him that Texas’ budget for building roads was $146 billion. He claimed Youngkin dropped his spoon, saying it was bigger than Virginia’s entire budget. He went on to say that Texas had the “largest road building fund in America.”
It’s only partly true. According to TXDOT’s 10-year plan, we have allocated about $101.6 billion for projects and $45 billion for maintenance. But this road-building bonanza feels stupid without high-speed trains. Seriously, what are we doing?
Trains would alleviate traffic, carbon emissions, congestion, and get us from Dallas to Houston in just 90 minutes. It’s faster and greener than driving, but we’re investing all our money in roads?
Modern marvel, or not, no one likes this shit:
But Republicans do it all for the fossil fuel industry.
And that’s the optics, right there. While Abbott spoke from his panoramic perch, over half of Waco’s Black children struggle to make ends meet. This is the story of what Texas has become under Republican control.
It wouldn’t be a boastful Abbott speech if he didn’t brag about Texas’ economy.
They wine and dine behind glass walls and chandeliers, as Abbott brags to the wealthy. The Baylor Club is a fortress of privilege where the powerful toast each other on gold plates, high above the city streets.
Down below, children go to bed hungry, their bellies gnawing at them while Abbott gloats about GDP. Senior citizens, the same ones who built this state with their hands and backs, are being taxed out of their homes, cast onto the streets, the newest members of the unsheltered community.
How could you hear that and not burn with anger?…
Then, Abbott told the biggest, most monstrous lie of them all.
I had to clip this 30-second video for you to see it. Otherwise, you might not believe a whopper this big.
Abbott claimed that since the 2021 storm (Uri), they have bolstered the Texas electric grid, and it has remained perfect. He went on to say that since 2021, no Texan has lost power due to a deficiency in the grid.
This is flat-out false. This is such a fucking stupid lie, do I even need to fact-check it?
Ask the 2.3 million CenterPoint customers in Houston who lost power for over a week after Hurricane Beryl in July 2024. Or the nearly 1 million Texans left in the dark by the Houston derecho just two months earlier in May 2024. Families sweltered in the heat, elderly neighbors died waiting for oxygen refills, and Abbott wants to call that a “perfect” grid?
What he’s really doing is splitting hairs. ERCOT didn’t order rolling blackouts in those disasters. The distribution system collapsed. In other words, the wires and poles failed instead of the generators. But tell that to the family sitting in the dark with spoiled food and no air conditioning. To everyday Texans, it doesn’t matter whether it’s ERCOT or CenterPoint. The lights are off, the fridge is warm, and the Governor is lying.
This isn’t a story of resilience. It’s a story of deregulation, neglect, and profit over people.
Abbott claimed the Legislature made a “generational investment” in water.
Voters will decide in November whether or not we make that investment, which will not be nearly enough money to cover the extent of Texas’ water problems, but it’s a start.
Abbott claimed that they prioritized small businesses with the new “DOGE law.” A spin if there ever was one. It’s a new bureaucratic agency added to the Governor’s office, which will look for “ways to make regulations more effective, streamline the regulatory process, reduce department costs, and increase public access to regulatory information.”
If you followed along with Lone Star Left during the weeks where we watched the Texas budget hearings, you may remember that every Texas agency is running on outdated computer systems (if they aren’t still using paper), they are all understaffed, they are in buildings that are falling apart, and most government employees aren’t even making a livable wage.
Republicans have already run every inch of this state into the ground, and the idea that they are going to use a new government agency to run it into the ground even further is ludicrous.
Running our state agencies in such an inefficient, broken-down way doesn’t save money. It raises costs. Outdated systems, paper records, and skeleton crews result in Texans waiting longer for services, errors piling up, and agencies paying more in overtime and contract work to keep the lights on.
Republicans are really bad at governing.
The human toll is brutal. Employment turnover in some state agencies runs as high as 50%. Think about that, half the workforce gone, year after year. When you’re constantly training new people instead of keeping experienced staff, services collapse. And nowhere is this clearer than in our Health and Human Services agencies.
These are the people who process Medicaid applications, SNAP benefits, and health services for children and seniors. Understaffed offices and burned-out employees mean months-long backlogs. Families in crisis are told to wait for food assistance. Elderly Texans often lack home health care due to a shortage of caseworkers. Disabled children get lost in the system while Abbott’s donors laugh from the Baylor Club balcony.
This is intentional sabotage. Republicans have hollowed out the very agencies that keep Texans alive. Then they use the dysfunction as an excuse to privatize more, deregulate more, and funnel more contracts to their cronies. The suffering of everyday Texans is the plan.
Governor Abbott said the Texas Legislature fully funded public schools.
But when your audience is a bunch of wealthy CEOs who paid $2,000 a plate to get in to hear you speak, lies like that don’t matter. Surely all of those CEOs are sending their kids to private school, on the taxpayer’s dime, with the shiny new vouchers Mr. Let-Them-Eat-Cake got for all his wealthy donors.
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to vote this motherfucker out.
Every year he lies a little bigger, every year he sells us out a little deeper, and every year the gap between those sipping cocktails at the Baylor Club and those wondering how to feed their kids grows wider.
The truth is, the wealth inequality in Texas right now is more drastic than the wealth inequality in France shortly before their revolution. You know what happened then.
And I’ll leave you with this, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”
So let’s be ready. Let’s be angry. And let’s be organized. Because November 2026 is coming, and it’s time to flip this state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 