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Los Angeles Editorial: “Our Dishonest President,” Part 1

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2017 //
29

The Los Angeles Times is publishing a series of editorials about Donald Trump. This is the first. It was published yesterday.


It was no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a “catastrophe.”

Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. Like millions of other Americans, we clung to a slim hope that the new president would turn out to be all noise and bluster, or that the people around him in the White House would act as a check on his worst instincts, or that he would be sobered and transformed by the awesome responsibilities of office.

Instead, seventy-some days in — and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed — it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced.

In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.

His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government’s regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.

It is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation.

These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country’s moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.

What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but Trump’s cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.

In the days ahead, The Times editorial board will look more closely at the new president, with a special attention to three troubling traits:

1. Trump’s shocking lack of respect for those fundamental rules and institutions on which our government is based. Since Jan. 20, he has repeatedly disparaged and challenged those entities that have threatened his agenda, stoking public distrust of essential institutions in a way that undermines faith in American democracy. He has questioned the qualifications of judges and the integrity of their decisions, rather than acknowledging that even the president must submit to the rule of law. He has clashed with his own intelligence agencies, demeaned government workers and questioned the credibility of the electoral system and the Federal Reserve. He has lashed out at journalists, declaring them “enemies of the people,” rather than defending the importance of a critical, independent free press. His contempt for the rule of law and the norms of government are palpable.

2. His utter lack of regard for truth. Whether it is the easily disprovable boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd or his unsubstantiated assertion that Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, the new president regularly muddies the waters of fact and fiction. It’s difficult to know whether he actually can’t distinguish the real from the unreal — or whether he intentionally conflates the two to befuddle voters, deflect criticism and undermine the very idea of objective truth. Whatever the explanation, he is encouraging Americans to reject facts, to disrespect science, documents, nonpartisanship and the mainstream media — and instead to simply take positions on the basis of ideology and preconceived notions. This is a recipe for a divided country in which differences grow deeper and rational compromise becomes impossible.

3. His scary willingness to repeat alt-right conspiracy theories, racist memes and crackpot, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Again, it is not clear whether he believes them or merely uses them. But to cling to disproven “alternative” facts; to retweet racists; to make unverifiable or false statements about rigged elections and fraudulent voters; to buy into discredited conspiracy theories first floated on fringe websites and in supermarket tabloids — these are all of a piece with the Barack Obama birther claptrap that Trump was peddling years ago and which brought him to political prominence. It is deeply alarming that a president would lend the credibility of his office to ideas that have been rightly rejected by politicians from both major political parties.

Where will this end? Will Trump moderate his crazier campaign positions as time passes? Or will he provoke confrontation with Iran, North Korea or China, or disobey a judge’s order or order a soldier to violate the Constitution? Or, alternately, will the system itself — the Constitution, the courts, the permanent bureaucracy, the Congress, the Democrats, the marchers in the streets — protect us from him as he alienates more and more allies at home and abroad, steps on his own message and creates chaos at the expense of his ability to accomplish his goals? Already, Trump’s job approval rating has been hovering in the mid-30s, according to Gallup, a shockingly low level of support for a new president. And that was before his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, offered to cooperate last week with congressional investigators looking into the connection between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

Those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard.

On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this page that it was not yet time to declare a state of “wholesale panic” or to call for blanket “non-cooperation” with the Trump administration. Despite plenty of dispiriting signals, that is still our view. The role of the rational opposition is to stand up for the rule of law, the electoral process, the peaceful transfer of power and the role of institutions; we should not underestimate the resiliency of a system in which laws are greater than individuals and voters are as powerful as presidents. This nation survived Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon. It survived slavery. It survived devastating wars. Most likely, it will survive again.

But if it is to do so, those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard. Protesters must raise their banners. Voters must turn out for elections. Members of Congress — including and especially Republicans — must find the political courage to stand up to Trump. Courts must safeguard the Constitution. State legislators must pass laws to protect their citizens and their policies from federal meddling. All of us who are in the business of holding leaders accountable must redouble our efforts to defend the truth from his cynical assaults.

The United States is not a perfect country, and it has a great distance to go before it fully achieves its goals of liberty and equality. But preserving what works and defending the rules and values on which democracy depends are a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play in this drama.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Equity, Freedom, Freedom of the Press, Ignorance, Injustice, Lies, Trump

Fred Smith: The Pathetic Lies of the New York State Education Department, in Service of the Testing Regime

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2017 //
13

Fred Smith is a testing expert who worked for the New York City Board of Education for many years. In retirement, he volunteers for parent groups fighting to stop excessive and pointless standardized testing. The testing starts tomorrow across the state, and the State Education Department is pulling out all the stops to hinder, deter, and block the opt-out movement.

The New York State Education Department (SED) has been campaigning to dissuade more parents from abandoning the annual testing program.

Last year the parents and guardians of 220,000 children opted out of the English Language Arts (ELA) and math exams. They are given to 1.2 million children annually in grades 3 through 8. Their administration becomes the center of attention for six school days. They are due to begin on Tuesday.

The effort to keep parents onboard this year depends on repeating the same misleading information the state provided in 2016. It must be challenged. There are also important test-related matters SED fails to advise parents about.

Seeking to turn back the opt-out movement, misinformation about testing has been reduced to a few scripted points to help SED and education administrators convey the idea that the testing program has improved: The number of questions on the exams has been reduced; more teachers have been involved in developing them; and the tests are untimed.

On the surface these seem attractive. But, fewer items make less reliable tests. The teachers who were involved reviewed but didn’t write the questions, which were developed by test publisher Pearson. And the removal of time limits means the tests are no longer being conducted under standard conditions, thereby nullifying attempts to measure growth.

Effectively, the results of the 2017 exams cannot be used to make meaningful comparisons over time. This should end their already shaky use to assess student progress, or be factored into value-added formulas to judge teacher effectiveness, or enter into the evaluation of school performance. Ipso facto, the inability to make year-to-year comparisons of achievement is a sufficient reason for opting out.

Another selling point the state makes is that, while the tests will continue to be given, no teachers or principals will be affected by the results. This may lull people concerned about the misuse of the tests into accepting their administration because negative consequences have diminished.

My experience tells me something different. Whenever there is an investment in testing, a use for the scores will be found to justify the cost and to shield decision makers, who lean on the results, from taking direct responsibility for their actions.

There is a darker side to the propaganda. In announcing the improvements, an SED spokesperson said, “It’s up to parents to decide if their children should take the tests and we want them to have all the facts so they can make an informed decision.”

Then why does State Education Commissioner Elia withhold information on a parent’s right to opt out of the exams? And why has the state continued since 2012 to keep parents in the dark about the field testing of questions that allow publishers to develop future exams for free by trying out test questions on children?

Both omissions are most notable in a one-page document posted on SED’s Engageny , titled The 2017 Grades 3-8 New York State Assessments: What Parents Need to Know. Evidently, they must know the tests are untimed, shortened, reflective of teacher involvement and the fact that some districts will give them on computers. The ultimate goal is a transition to universal computer-based testing. No reason they should know about opting out or about the field tests.

This is pure arrogance. Presenting information in a need-to-know manner implies that parents are like soldiers told only those things that are essential to the discharge of their duties—in this case, an obligation to take the tests. This is how we “enage” parents?!

Here are some more facts about 2017’s field testing that parents don’t need to know:

There are two approaches publishers follow to develop questions and determine which should be kept for subsequent exams. The preferred way is to embed try-out material (reading passages and associated questions) in the test booklets that students are striving to complete. In theory, students can’t tell which questions are experimental and do not count in scoring their tests from the operational ones that count. Thus, they should be motivated to do well on the trial items.

This year, 22% of the ELA multiple-choice items that appear in Test Book 1 (March 28) are being field tested. In grade 3, 25% of the items are being tried out. That is, one reading passage and six out of the 24 items are developmental. They don’t count, but they require time and energy to complete and their inclusion on the tests can have an impact on the results.

In math, embedded items will make up 14% of the tests, interspersed among the operational items. They are contained in Test Books 1 and 2 (May 2 and 3). Statewide, 1.2 million children have been volunteered to participate. Parents haven’t been asked for their consent.

The less preferred way to try out items, known as stand-alone field testing, has also been taken by SED, because embedding has not yielded enough items to build new tests. So, separate field tests are used to generate sufficient material for the next round.

Here too, parents are not told about these tests. The state has targeted 3,073 schools for ELA or math stand-alone field testing on one grade level any day between May 22 and June 9. 973 of them are being tapped to participate in the computer-based testing part of this experiment.

What makes stand-alone field testing weak is that students are not motivated to do well on tests that are given late in the year consisting entirely of questions they know don’t count. Therefore, the information obtained about how the try-out items functioned is tenuous when publishers must choose which ones will become operational.

Stand-alone field testing has been discredited and criticized as contributing to poorly constructed Common Core exams. There are no negative consequences for rejecting this shoddy approach.

Clearly, not leveling with parents shows contempt. It is part of SED’s conspiracy of silence designed to keep mass testing in place. Parents and their children, the lifeblood of the public schools, should strongly consider opting out of the 2017 exams.

Categories Lies, Opt Out, Parents, Propaganda, Standardized Testing, Students

Jeff Bryant: The Big Lie Behind Trump’s Budget Proposals for Education

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2017 //
13

Jeff Bryant spells out the Big Lie embedded in Trump’s budget proposal for education. He plans to cut programs that directly aid poor kids while bolstering charters and vouchers, pretending they are equivalent. They are not. Yet much of the mainstream media has fallen for the Trump-DeVos bait-and-switch.

“Public school supporters are angry at President Trump’s budget proposal, which plans to cut funding to the Department of Education by 13 percent – taking that department’s outlay down to the level it was ten years ago. But the target for their anger should not be just the extent of the cuts but also how the cuts are being pitched to the public.

“Trump’s education budget cuts are aimed principally at federal programs that serve poor kids, especially their access to afterschool programs and high-quality teachers.

“At the same time, Trump’s spending blueprint calls for pouring $1.4 billion into school choice policies including a $168 million increase for charter schools, $250 million for a new school choice program focused on private schools, and a $1 billion increase for parents to send their kids to private schools at taxpayer expense.

“The way the Trump administration is spinning this combination of funding cuts and increases – and the way nearly every news outlet is reporting them – is that there is some sort of strategically important balance between funding programs for poor kids versus “school choice” schemes, as if the two are equivalents and just different means to the same ends. Nothing could be further from the truth….

“The message being spun out of Trump’s education budget is that it takes money away from those awful “adult interests” – like, you know, teachers to actually teach the students and buildings so students have somewhere to go after school to play sports, get tutored, or engage in music and art projects – in order to steer money to “the kids” who will get a meager sum of money to search for learning opportunities in an education system that is increasingly bereft of teachers and buildings.

“Even competent education reporters are falling for this spin, writing that education policy is experiencing a “sea change in focus from fixing the failing schools to helping the students in the failing schools.”

“However, there’s evidence that federally funded efforts like afterschool programs and class size reduction tend to lead to better academic results for low-income children, while the case for using school choice programs to address the education needs of poor kids is pretty weak.

“The Weak Case For Choice

“School voucher programs, like the ones Trump and DeVos seem intent on funding, are particularly ineffective ways to address the education problems of poor kids. Indeed, these programs seem to not serve the interests of poor kids at all.

“Studies of voucher programs In Wisconsin, Indiana, Arizona, and Nevada have found that most of the money from the programs goes to parents wealthy enough to already have their children enrolled in private schools.

“Voucher programs rarely provide enough money to enable poor minority children to get access to the best private schools. And a new comprehensive study of vouchers finds evidence that vouchers don’t significantly improve student achievement. What they do pose is greater likelihood that students who are the most costly and difficult to educate – low-income kids and children with special needs – will be turned away or pushed out by private schools that are not obligated to serve all students.

“Charter schools, another program the Trump budget wants to ramp up funding for, also don’t have a great track record for improving the education attainment of low-income students.

“Perhaps the best case made for using charter schools to target the needs of low-income students comes from a study on the impact of charters in urban school systems conducted by research outfit CREDO in 2015. The study indeed found evidence of some positive impact of charters in these communities. But as my colleague at The Progressive Julian Vasquez Heilig points out, the measures of improvement, in standard deviations, are .008 for Latino students and .05 for African American students in charter schools.

“These numbers are larger than zero,” Heilig writes on his personal blog, “but you need a magnifying glass to see them. Contrast that outcome with policies such as pre-K and class size reduction which are far more unequivocal measures of success than charter schools. They have 400 percent to 1000 percent more statistical impact than charters.”

“Indeed, choice programs in all their forms, at least in how they are being promoted by the Trump administration and its supporters, seem more interested in diverting money away from public schools than they are intent on delivering some sort of education relief to the struggles of poor families.”

School choice will actually harm children by diverting money from public schools that now enroll 90% of America’s students to provide choices for a few children. Most of those choices will be for schools with uncertified teachers and a Bible-based curriculum.

This may satisfy billionaire Betsy DeVos but it won’t be good for children.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Lies, Poverty, School Choice, Vouchers

Charles Blow: The Birth of the Biggest Lie

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2017 //
12

Charles Blow wrote an important article Day about the Trump campaign’s breath-taking lies.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/23/opinion/birth-of-the-biggest-lie.html

“A few things are clear after the congressional testimony of James Comey, the F.B.I. director, this week:

“First, Donald Trump owes Barack Obama and the American people an apology for his vituperative lie that Obama committed a felony by wiretapping Trump Tower. It was specious, libelous and reckless, regardless of the weak revelations of “incidental collection” that the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and Trump transition team member Devin Nunes outrageously made public, briefing the president without first briefing his fellow committee members. Nunes’s announcement was a bombshell with no bomb, just enough mud in the water to obscure the blood in the water for those too willfully blind to discern the difference.

“Second, Donald Trump will never apologize. Trump’s strategy for dealing with being caught in a lie is often to tell a bigger lie. He seems constitutionally incapable of registering what others would: shame, embarrassment, contrition. Something is broken in the man — definitely morally and possibly psychologically.

“Third, and to me this is the biggest, Comey confirmed that the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russians who tampered with our election is not “fake news” manufactured by Democrats stewing over a bitter loss but a legitimate investigation that has been underway for months and has no end in sight.

“Individuals who were associated with the president of the United States’ winning campaign are under criminal investigation. That is an extraordinary sentence and one that no American can allow to be swallowed up by other news or dismissed by ideologues.

“Depending on the outcome of this investigation, we could be facing a constitutional crisis. Oddly, it is likely that the reason Trump is even in the Oval Office is Comey’s original, extraordinarily inappropriate and unprecedented action. The Trump machinery then used that action to scare Americans about Clinton, in one of the most astonishing acts of deflection and hypocrisy in American history.”

Categories Lies, Trump

FBI Investigating Russian Cyber Attacks Coordinated to Support Trump Campaign

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2017 //
14

McClatchy News reports that the FBI is investigating the timing of Russian cyber attacks timed to support Trump campaign when it was on the defensive.

“Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories — some fictional — that favored Donald Trump’s presidential bid, two people familiar with the inquiry say.

“Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.

“The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said. Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the bot attacks are part of an FBI-led investigation into a multifaceted Russian operation to influence last year’s elections.

“Investigators examining the bot attacks are exploring whether the far-right news operations took any actions to assist Russia’s operatives. Their participation, however, wasn’t necessary for the bots to amplify their news through Twitter and Facebook.

“The investigation of the bot-engineered traffic, which appears to be in its early stages, is being driven by the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, whose inquiries rarely result in criminal charges and whose main task has been to reconstruct the nature of the Kremlin’s cyber attack and determine ways to prevent another.

“An FBI spokesman declined to comment on the inquiry into the use of bots.

“Russia-generated bots are one piece of a cyber puzzle that counterintelligence agents have sought to solve for nearly a year to determine the extent of the Moscow government’s electronic broadside.

“This may be one of the most highly impactful information operations in the history of intelligence,” said one former U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“Bureau director James Comey confirmed Monday at a House Intelligence Committee hearing what long has been reported: that the FBI is investigating possible links between individuals in the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian campaign to influence the election and whether there was any coordination between the two.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article139695453.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Hoax, Lies, Trump

Jennifer Rubin, the Conservative Columnist for the Washington Post Says: Comey Humiliated Trump

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2017 //
12

Jennifer Rubin was hired by the Washington Post to represent a conservative viewpoint in its editorial column.

However, she is appalled by Trump’s tweets and lies.

She describes here how Comey humiliated Trump at the House hearing yesterday.

He can’t lie his way out of the mess he has created, she says, nor create a big enough distraction to change the subject.

Categories Lies, Trump

What to Ask About Russian Hacking in the Hearings Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2017 //
12

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives intelligence committee will hold hearings to investigate allegations of links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Members will also ask questions about Trump’s claim that Obama ordered the wire tapping of Trump Tower during the presidential campaign and that this alleged surveillance was carried out by the British spy service.

It should be an interesting day unless everyone takes the Fifth Amendment or asks to go into executive session.

Louise Mensch, a former member of the British parliament and now a New York-based journalist, suggested that specific individuals should be asked to testify, and she explains who and why in this article, which appeared yesterday in the New York Times:

It should be relatively easy to get at the truth of whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia over the hacking. I have some relevant experience. When I was a member of Parliament in Britain, I took part in a select committee investigating allegations of phone hacking by the News Corporation. Today, as a New York-based journalist (who, in fact, now works at News Corp.), I have followed the Russian hacking story closely. In November, I broke the story that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court had issued a warrant that enabled the F.B.I. to examine communications between “U.S. persons” in the Trump campaign relating to Russia-linked banks.

So, I have some ideas for how the House committee members should proceed. If I were Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the committee, I would demand to see the following witnesses: Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Richard Burt, Erik Prince, Dan Scavino, Brad Parscale, Roger Stone, Corey Lewandowski, Boris Epshteyn, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Flynn, Michael Flynn Jr., Felix Sater, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Michael Cohen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, Stephen Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Michael Anton, Julia Hahn and Stephen Miller, along with executives from Cambridge Analytica, Alfa Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Spectrum Health.

There are many more who need to be called, but these would be a first step. As to lines of questioning, here are some suggestions.

To the White House director of social media, Dan Scavino: “You tweeted an anti-Semitic meme about Hillary Clinton from Donald Trump’s account during the election. That meme appeared to have come from an automated account on a Russian-controlled network of malware-infected computers, or botnet. What knowledge did you have of the existence of a network of fake Twitter profiles that supported your campaign and were partisans of Russia?”

To the Trump campaign adviser and businessman Carter Page: “You have said that the Trump campaign approved your July visit to give a speech in Moscow. Provide the committee with a full list of everyone you spoke to during that trip and describe precisely what was discussed. Were sanctions ever a topic?

“When you met the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, what was the conversation?

“When you returned to Moscow after the election, you presented slides comparing Rex Tillerson and Hillary Clinton as secretaries of state before Mr. Tillerson was announced as Mr. Trump’s choice. Who told you Mr. Tillerson would be the pick?

“Stephen Miller, then a campaign spokesman, stated that Jeff Sessions was putting together the foreign policy team. How were you recruited to that team? What contact did you have with its head, Mr. Sessions?

“Did you at any time discuss leaking, hacking, WikiLeaks, the release of emails phished from the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, or any other information not publicly available on Mrs. Clinton, or any person related to her campaign, with any Russian national, in the United States or elsewhere?

“Describe any and all financial discussions you had with any person during the campaign about the sale of a 19.5 percent stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.”

To the former Alabama senator, now attorney general, Mr. Sessions: “Describe any communications, not merely meetings, you had with Russian citizens during the campaign. Did you ever discuss a shift in policy on Ukraine to be exchanged for the lifting of sanctions?

“Describe in full the content of your conversations with Mr. Kislyak. Were you aware that the Russian ambassador was also alleged to be a recruiter of spies?

“Did you select Mr. Page as a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign? If not, who did? Why did you consider him suitable to serve on your team?

“To your knowledge, did you break the law during the campaign? If so, how? To your knowledge, did anyone else related to the Trump campaign break the law during the campaign?

“Did you have any knowledge during the campaign of serving F.B.I. agents and police officers whom Rudy Giuliani, Erik Prince and Mr. Flynn claimed were leaking information to them? Did you advise anybody involved that this was against the law? If not, why not?

“Did you know Mr. Flynn was lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his calls to Russia? Did you know Mr. Flynn misled Vice President Pence on the matter of his son’s security clearance?

“Do you have any knowledge, direct or indirect, whether Mr. Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, or any member of his family, traveled out of the country to meet with Russians during the campaign? Do you have knowledge of whether Mr. Cohen, or any Trump associate, directly or through shell companies, made payments either to hackers or to internet companies that ran a botnet of fake accounts and websites on behalf of Russia?”

On Nov. 7, I reported that sources had told me of the existence of a FISA warrant targeting two Russia-linked banks. That warrant gave permission for the communications of American citizens that were incidentally collected as part of that investigation to be examined. (I did not report the existence of a wiretap, nor do I have any knowledge of such.)

This is an issue of the utmost consequence. If Mr. Trump’s tweet alleging that Trump Tower was wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama was untrue, Mr. Trump is guilty of a slur. If, however, the president tweeted real news, he revealed the existence of intercepts that cover members of his team in a continuing investigation. That would be obstruction of justice, potentially an impeachable offense.

The framing of the committee’s questions matters immensely. Legally, witnesses cannot confirm or deny even the existence of a current national security investigation. The very mention of a “FISA warrant” would allow Mr. Sessions to avoid the substance by excusing himself from commenting. Committee members must therefore word their questions without reference to any case. I would simply ask Mr. Sessions this:

“Was the president’s tweet about a wiretap at Trump Tower, to your knowledge, illegal? If so, to whom have you reported this offense?

“To your knowledge, did any person illegally inform the president that there was a wiretap at Trump Tower?”

The president’s unwillingness to answer questions about contacts between his campaign team and Russian officials, and the pattern of contradictory and misleading statements on those contacts, are toxic. Never in American history has a president been suspected of collaborating with a hostile foreign power to win an election. The founders provided three equal branches of government to protect the republic. The American people now depend on the House committee to do its job and uncover the truth.

Categories Democracy, Lies, Trump

Gail Collins at Her Best on Trump’s Madness

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2017 //
38

Gail Collins used to be editorial page editor of the New York Times. Now she writes a column. What I never knew about her is that she has a wonderful sense of humor. Today she has a hilariouscolumn about the madness of King Donald (she didn’t call it that, but that’s what it is).

Whatever Donald Trump has, it’s spreading.

We’ve got a president who makes things up, and won’t retract when he’s cornered. This week press secretary Sean Spicer followed the leader. He picked up Trump’s wiretap story and added a new exciting detail: Not only had Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, he might have used British intelligence spies to do the dirty work.

The British, of course, went nuts, and national security adviser H. R. McMaster tried to smooth things over. McMaster is new to the job, having succeeded Mike Flynn, who had to resign for lying about his phone conversations. Flynn was not even around long enough for us to find out that he was also a lobbyist for Turkish interests and took $68,000 from various Russian connections.

This is how insane the Trump administration is: On his first day, the new secretary of the interior rode to work on a horse named Tonto, and nobody really even noticed.

The part of the gang that isn’t involved in active fiction-writing is still saying things that are … peculiar. When budget director Mick Mulvaney rolled out the new Trump budget plan, the nation discovered he’s Sean Spicer with a calculator.

Mulvaney’s most memorable comment was an apparent dis of Meals on Wheels. (“We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good.”) He also explained that tons of federal employees had to lose their jobs because “you can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it.”

Aid to public broadcasting had to go because Mulvaney couldn’t bear to tell “the coal mining family in West Virginia” that their taxes were going to the people who gave us “Sesame Street.”

Meanwhile, Tom Price, the health and human services secretary, was making the rounds attempting to explain the Republican health care bill. Including the part that lifts a $500,000 cap on health insurance company tax deductions for executive pay. (“That doesn’t sound like America to me.”)

Try to imagine, people, that you are the coal mining family in West Virginia. Which would you find more bothersome? Taxes going to help pay for West Virginia Public Broadcasting, or tax breaks for insurance companies that pay their C.E.O.s eight-figure salaries?

But budget and health care considerations faded in the glare of Donald Trump still insisting that Barack Obama had him wiretapped. The man is never going to admit he’s wrong about anything, is he?

All this began with twittering. You’d think at least he’d give that up, but no. “I think that maybe I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter, because I get such a fake press, such a dishonest press,” Trump told Tucker Carlson in a Fox interview. He then launched into an attack on NBC’s ingratitude. (“I made a fortune for NBC with ‘The Apprentice.’ I had a top show where they were doing horribly, and I had one of the most successful reality shows of all time.”)

Have we had a day of the Trump presidency without a mention of “The Apprentice”?

“I made — and I was on for 14 seasons. And you see what happened when I’m not on. You saw what happened to the show. It was a disaster,” said the head of the most powerful nation in the world, who appears to think about Arnold Schwarzenegger more than he thinks about North Korea.

Pity his poor press secretary. This week, clearly at the president’s urging, Spicer read aloud an endless series of news stories that would have supported Trump’s claim to be a wiretap victim except for the part in which none of them did. Then he quoted a Fox commentator posing the theory about British spies.

The ensuing uproar pretty much ate up a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who Trump seemed to relate to only as a potential fellow victim of Obama bugs. (“At least we have something in common perhaps.”) At first, when Merkel suggested they shake hands, Trump stared blankly ahead. But he did express a little sense of connection when the discussion turned to Germany’s programs for apprenticeships. (“That’s a name I like.”)

At a press conference, the president refused to even acknowledge that it was a bad idea for Spicer to bring up that British spy theory. “We said nothing,” he insisted, passing the buck. “You shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”

Meanwhile, over in Congress, powerful Republicans were beginning to move toward flat-out admissions that their chief executive was … untruthing.

“We see no evidence of that,” said Speaker Paul Ryan, when asked about the wiretap story. Living with President Trump has made Ryan so pathetic you almost have to feel sorry for him, although not quite.

Imagine what would have happened if, at some point over the last two weeks, the president had just casually conceded that he had been misinformed about the wiretap thing. His health care plan wouldn’t look any better. His budget wouldn’t have been more defensible. But we’d feel slightly less terrified that the nation’s security is in the hands of a nut job.

Categories Accountability, Lies, Trump

How Fringe Media Has Become Mainstream, Thanks to Trump

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2017 //
18

This is an alarming 3-minute video about the extremist fringes that are polluting the media with lies and conspiracy theories. It is part of a series produced by The Atlantic. There have always been fringe talk show hosts and publications. The problem is that the president of the United States cites “facts” taken from these media. He thinks he won the popular vote because he learned that from the alt-right media. He probably thinks that the Sandy Hook massacre was an elaborate hoax. The elevation of crackpots and crackpot theories as equivalent to the mainstream media explains why we are bombarded with fake news. It explains why everyone must learn to read and think critically and to be able to distinguish fact from fallacy. It is not easy, but that is why education must be divorced from partisan politics.

Categories Fake News, Lies

When Trump Tweeted “Wire Tapping,” He Didnt Mean Wire Tapping

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2017 //
22

Press Secretary Sean Picer explained that when Trump accused President Obama of wire tapping the phones in Trump Tower, he didn’t mean that the President was wire tapping the phones in Trump Tower.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/13/politics/sean-spicer-donald-trump-wiretapping/index.html

We have to learn that when Trump tweets something, it should not be taken literally. Or figuratively. Or metaphorically. Or in any other way. It is Trump-speak.

Categories Lies, Trump
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