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WikiLeaks vs. Watergate

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2016 //
88

I read/heard two interesting reflections on the election this morning.

First, I heard someone (name unknown, surely a Democratic spokesperson) ask the question on the radio: Why is breaking into the email of John Podesta different from the Watergate burglary where Republican operatives broke into the Democratic National Committee offices to steal its documents and plans?

Then I read this article in the Washington Post written by a professor of international relations who read the transcripts of Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs and found them unremarkable.

Since the future of our nation is at risk, I can’t stop thinking about what is at stake if a sociopathic billionaire wins the Presidency, and what is at stake as he crisscrosses the country telling his followers that our electoral system is “rigged.” He offers a choice: Elect me and I will jail my opponent, or if I lose, the entire electoral system is a sham.

This is an attack on America. I heard Douglas Brinkley, the historian of the presidency, say this morning that Trump has turned against democracy itself. He is now in a rule-or-ruin frame of mind.

But I return to the original point about Watergate. When a group of conspirators broke into DNC offices, they were trying to help President Nixon get re-elected. When their identities were revealed, as well as their ties to the Nixon re-election campaign (CREEP–Committee to Reelect the President), the media went into overdrive and public opinion joined in outrage. How dare they break into the files of the opposition party?

What is the difference between the Watergate burglars and Wikileaks today?

Categories Politics

New York: Brendan Cunningham for State Assembly in Suffolk County!

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2016 //
0

Brendon Cunningham is the Democratic candidate for State Assembly in District 9, Suffolk County. He is running against an incumbent who is not a friend of public schools or teachers.

Brendon graduated college in 2015. He is currently Deputy Director of Communications for the Town of Babylon. He is a graduate of the Babylon public schools. Both of his parents are public school teachers.

He promises to make education his top priority if elected.

He has the youth, energy, optimism, and knowledge that is needed in Albany.

If you live in his district, I urge you to work for him and vote for him.

P.S. I have it on good authority that his father is a BAT. Another reason to elect Brendan!

Categories New York, Politics

Nicholas Kristof: Is There a Double Standard in American Politics?

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2016 //
43

Nicholas Kristof asks if any female candidate would survive if she had the same history as Donald Trump.

He poses a series of hypotheticals:

“Imagine if it were Hillary Clinton who had had five children by three husbands, who had said it was fine to refer to her daughter as a “piece of ass,” who participated in a radio conversation about oral sex in a hot tub, who rated men based on their body parts, who showed up in Playboy soft porn videos.

“Imagine if 15 men had accused Clinton of assaulting or violating them, with more stepping forward each day.

“Imagine if Clinton had held a Mr. Teen USA pageant and then marched unannounced into the changing area to ogle the young bodies as some were naked and, after doing the same thing at a Mr. USA pageant, marveled on a radio show at what she was allowed to get away with.

“Imagine if in a primary election debate Clinton had boasted that there’s “no problem” with the size of her vagina.

“Imagine if Clinton had less experience in government or the military than any person who has ever become president?

“Imagine if she had said about a man running against her in the primaries, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”

“Imagine if it were Clinton who had boasted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

“Imagine if it were Clinton who had been caught on a hot mike referring in a degrading way to men’s genitals and boasting that her prominence gave her license to grab men’s crotches.

“Imagine if she had bragged about her attempts to commit adultery — and later reportedly sought to have fired from his job the married man who resisted her seduction efforts.

“Imagine that it were Hillary Clinton who had been accused of assault by her first spouse (later recanted) and later of assault in a lawsuit by a business partner.

“Imagine if Clinton had defended herself from an accusation of molesting a young man by explaining, “He would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.”

“Imagine if Clinton had body shamed Donald Trump, saying that she had observed his rear end and concluded, “I’m not impressed, believe me.”

“Imagine if Hillary Clinton had first drawn national attention not with an idealistic speech at the Wellesley commencement, but by being sued for racial discrimination by President Richard Nixon’s administration.

“Imagine if she had later been quoted by a member of her staff as saying “laziness is a trait in blacks” and had retweeted white supremacists, including one honoring the American Nazi Party.
Imagine if it were Clinton who had gone through six bankruptcies and compiled a long record of stiffing contractors, from plumbers to painters to lawyers. …

“Imagine that, instead of releasing 39 years of tax returns, showing most recently that she had paid 31 percent of her income in federal income taxes, she had refused to release any returns — and leaked pages from 1995 returns indicated that she had paid no federal income taxes at all for years….”

What do you think? Would she still be a candidate for president?

Categories Accountability, Politics

NEWS! George W. Bush Administration “Lost” 22 Million Emails Covering Crucial War Issues

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2016 //
45

Newsweek reports that the George W. Bush administration “lost” 22 million emails covering a time of crucial decisions about the war in Iraq.

“For 18 months, Republican strategists, political pundits, reporters and Americans who follow them have been pursuing Hillary Clinton’s personal email habits, and no evidence of a crime has been found. But now they at least have the skills and interest to focus on a much larger and deeper email conspiracy, one involving war, lies, a private server run by the Republican Party and contempt of Congress citations—all of it still unsolved and unpunished.Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration.

“Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons. Try Newsweek for only $1.25 per week Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails. “It’s about as amazing a double standard as you can get,” says Eric Boehlert, who works with the pro-Clinton group Media Matters. “If you look at the Bush emails, he was a sitting president, and 95 percent of his chief advisers’ emails were on a private email system set up by the RNC. Imagine if for the last year and a half we had been talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails set up on a private DNC server?”

Double standard, anyone?

What will Donald J.Trump say? Will he start ranting about the “crooked Bush administration”? Will he threaten to throw the ex-President in jail? Will the FBI launch an investigation of the 22 million missing emails?

Categories Politics

Jim Sleeper: The Second Debate Was an Indictment of the Media

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2016 //
49

Jim Sleeper blames the media for allowing the second debate to degenerate into empty posturing and failing to ask sharp questions. Worst of all, the moderators forgot that it was supposed to be a “town hall,” where citizens were supposed to interact with the candidates. Not much of that happened.

He writes:

“This is a crisis of American journalism, not only of American politics. Media critics should stop letting their colleagues off the hook in explaining what’s happening to us. Chris Lehmann did it devastatingly well in The Baffler late last month. Neal Gabler has eviscerated the journalists’ performance even more comprehensively today at Moyers & Co. Where’s everyone else?

“Journalism deserves a lot more blame for Trump’s success as a vulgar self-marketer, because that’s what so much of journalism itself has become.

“The journalism that pretends it’s a civic art that makes public deliberations go well is firmly in harness to publicly traded media corporations that, with increasing intensity and mindlessness, come on to us as passive (or infantile) consumers, not citizens. They bypass our brains and hearts on the way to our lower viscera and our wallets with moderators, pundits, and “reporters” who care mainly about ratcheting up drama and their own self-importance as tribunes.

“Neither Cooper nor Raddatz gave any hint of wanting to stimulate and to draw out anything thoughtful and strong from “ordinary” people. Their every gesture and word demonstrated only that they don’t care about that. Cooper withdrew into astonishing passivity, punctuated by little bursts of civic remonstrance, and Raddatz tried to sound both tough and balanced while hiding both her mind and her face under her bright blond helmet.

“Sorry about putting it like that, but since “production values” are all that matter to these people and their producers, I’m actually not sorry at all. What I’m writing is what they deserve for forgetting how to practice journalism as a civic art, not as reality TV.

“What especially galls me is the contempt with which the “ordinary” citizens who’d supposedly been recruited to ask good questions were set up and then ignored by the program’s designers as much they were by Trump and, to a lesser extent, Clinton. At the very least, the producers could have vetted and enabled more astute questioners.

“The truth is that they no longer knew how to do that. The few live questioners that the moderators did call on, leaving the rest to sit in silence, were decent but little prepared and intimidated by the bright lights and, undoubtedly, the Big Bully himself.”

Categories Media, Politics

The New York Times’ Editorial on the Second Debate

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
67

I can’t contain my loathing for Donald Trump. I wish I could ignore him. But I can’t. We can’t. Why was he sniffing through both debates? He looked and sounded like a coke head. Why did he lurk and loom over Clinton as she spoke? He excused his disgusting behavior by repeated reference to Bill Clinton’s abhorrent behavior. That’s the “everybody does it” excuse. He described his revolting remarks about sexual assault as “locker room banter,” which means “boys will be boys” and it’s okay as long as it’s not on tape. He claimed that Michelle Obama made videos about Hillary that were worse than anything he said; Obama’s 2008 campaign manager David Axelrod tweeted that Michelle Obama NEVER made a video about Hillary. He is repugnant and loathsome. 
The New York Times’s editorial board summarizes its reaction: 

“Donald Trump boiled his decadent campaign down to one theme during the presidential debate on Sunday night: hatred of Hillary and Bill Clinton.
“With knock-kneed Republican officeholders showing signs of summoning the nerve to desert him, Mr. Trump labored to demonize Hillary Clinton — blaming her even for his own failure to pay taxes — and to remind his core supporters that he is all that stands between her and the presidency.
“If he were in charge, Mr. Trump told Secretary Clinton at one point, “You’d be in jail.”
“When Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Trump out for his failure to apologize to the minorities, immigrants and women he’s offended, he responded by promising vengeance. Should he win, he said, he would unleash a special prosecutor to investigate her.
“Sniffing and glowering, Mr. Trump prowled behind Mrs. Clinton as she presented herself again as the only adult on stage, the only one seeking to persuade the great majority of Americans that she shares their values and aspirations. Mr. Trump, by contrast, fell back on the tricks he has learned from his years in pro wrestling and reality television, making clear how deep his cynicism goes.
“Just before the debate, desperate to shift attention from his pattern of harassment, Mr. Trump sat hunched over a blank notepad in a hotel meeting room, encouraging four women to face the cameras and tell their stories of sexual victimization. “You went through a lot,” Mr. Trump coaxed one of the women flanking him, as he bent their allegations against Bill and Hillary Clinton to serve himself. The women’s claims deserved to be investigated and aired, and they have been, repeatedly.
“During the debate, Mr. Trump struggled once again to coherently explain his policies, instead wandering down twisting, shadowy alleyways in muttering pursuit of his various claims about Mrs. Clinton, including that she, not he, was responsible for his birther lie about President Obama. He complained that the moderators were ganging up on him and failing to question Mrs. Clinton about her private email server — immediately after they had done just that.
“Mr. Trump probably performed well enough to silence the 11-hour whispering campaign among Republicans about somehow ejecting him from the ticket. That means the G.O.P. will continue asking Americans to vote for a candidate who is debasing and trivializing our politics. During the debate, it seemed somewhere between poignant and futile to hear the moderators invite undecided voters to ask about his plans for the nation.
“When Mr. Trump so grandly accepted the Republican nomination in July, he said, “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves.” By then, though, he had already campaigned for months by beating up on vulnerable Americans, including minorities and the disabled. Only in recent days has the Republican establishment started to acknowledge the magnitude of his hypocrisy.
“The videotape disclosed Friday provided gruesome evidence that the Republican standard-bearer has for years used his powerful status to prey on women. Other revelations followed, including that in 2005 he told Howard Stern on his radio show that, when he owned the Miss Universe pageant, he made a practice of “inspecting” naked contestants backstage. “You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. … And you see these incredible-looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that.”
“Now, as he struggles to close the biggest deal of his lifetime, a woman is getting the better of him. That’s not surprising, but it is apt.”

Categories Clinton, Politics, Trump

John Oliver Summarizes the Last Three Days of the 2016 Campaign: Hilarious!

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
9

This is another priceless John Oliver review, this one about the last few days of the increasingly disgusting election campaign. As he says at the outset, he taped it just before the “debate,” but his comments are priceless and hilarious. And I forgive his use of four-letter words, which are necessary in context.

Categories Humor, Politics

Daily Kos: Paul Ryan’s Critique of Trump’s Misogyny is Equally Misogynistic

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
18

Reader Ellen Lubic drew my attention to this excellent analysis of Congressman Paul Ryan’s rejection of Donald Trump’s lewd, crude remarks about women.

I must that that when I read his comments online in an instant bulletin from CNN, I found them offensive. I was driving with friends to the airport in Las Vegas on my way home from a National Parks vacation, and I read his remarks out loud. He said, “Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.”

My reaction? What? I don’t want to be put on a pedestal, championed and revered like a fragile piece of pottery. I just want to be treated the same as everyone else.

But this writer said it much better, because she knows the lengths Paul Ryan and Gus party have gone to take away women’s rights.

Excuse me? Who are you, Paul Ryan? One of King Arthur’s men? A knight of the Round Table declaring fealty to the Code of Chivalry?

Let’s get one thing straight. You are not my knight in shining armor.

I don’t need to be “championed” by you. And I certainly don’t want to be “revered” by you. As to your assertion that women should not be “objectified”? GTFO. The entire modern Republican party does nothing but objectify women. You deny our humanity daily. You have made it your number one mission to reduce us down to our uteri and said you, and you alone, control what happens to our bodies.

You hold entire hearings about women’s issues without inviting a single woman. When you do deign to allow women to speak, you condescend to, brow beat and aggressively attempt to shame them. You have launched a single-minded assault on the ability of poor women in this country to obtain healthcare. Championed our employer’s rights over our own when it comes to our private healthcare decisions. You have legislated that our doctors lie to us and rape us with ultrasound wands. In Texas, you played God by keeping a dead woman artificially “alive” so that she could serve as an incubator. In Indiana, your new hero, Mike Pence, legislated that women had to deliver aborted or miscarried fetal blood and tissue to funeral homes for burial or cremation and crusaded to severely punish women for having miscarriages in the first place.

And what about you, Paul Ryan? How have you personally “championed” women? Was it in 1998 when you said that women should be criminally prosecuted for terminating pregnancies? When you tried to prevent women serving overseas in our military from having abortions in U.S. military hospitals even when they paid for it out of their own pockets? How about when you worked with Todd Akin to narrow the legal definition of rape to “forcible rape”? Or maybe it was in 2009 when you co-sponsored the “Sanctity of Life” Act which declared a fertilized egg a “person” and outlawed abortions, most forms of contraception and in-vitro fertilization? The numerous times you have voted to defund Planned Parenthood? In 2011 when you supported the “Let Women Die Bill” that allowed hospitals to refuse to terminate pregnancies even when the woman’s life was in danger?

Was it when you opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Opposed paid family leave?

When. When have you ever “championed” women, Paul Ryan?

Donald Trump may be a crass misogynist who thinks women exist for his own pleasure but you, Paul Ryan, are just as bad if not worse. You don’t respect us. You seek to be master over us and I, for one, could do without your paternalistic brand of “championing”.

Read this great post and open the links. Hypocrisy through and through.

Categories Fraud, Politics, Trump

Ken Futernick: Can Education Fix Our Politics?

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2016 //
7

Ken Futernick wrote this post for the Harvard Press blog. Ken is a researcher who believes that collaboration is better than competition.

I first encountered Ken’s work when I read his superb paper: “Incompetent Teachers or Dysfunctional a Systems?” I urge you to read it too. He makes it clear that the billion-dollar-hunt for the “bad teacher” is not productive. And we know now that it is not.

He writes:


It’s time for those of us in education to revisit an old question: what’s our purpose? Some would say it’s to pass on what we know to the next generation.

That makes sense, provided we like what we’re passing on.

It’s hard to imagine that many Americans would want their children to inherit today’s toxic politics or to emulate the politicians who lie to the public, ignore science, peddle bigotry, and eschew civil discourse.

Not surprisingly, some students are doing just that. Last February, for instance, students attending a championship basketball game at Andrean High School in Indiana mimicked a popular presidential candidate, chanting, “build a wall” at their opponents from Bishop Noll Institute, whose students are mostly Latino.

And why wouldn’t we expect students to reject climate change, evolution, the use of vaccines, or science itself when some of their leaders do the same?

The point is that educators must be discerning about what we pass on. As the American philosopher John Dewey wrote one hundred years ago, “Every society gets encumbered with what is trivial, with dead wood from the past, and with what is positively perverse…. As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society.”

Enlightened schools do this by updating their curricula with relevant, useful content and by cultivating values like equity, critical analysis, and civil discourse. In addition to academics, they promote social, emotional, and moral development. They confront bullying and racism, teaching students to resolve their differences respectfully. They teach the value of facts and demand that students support their opinions with reasons and evidence—even when politicians don’t.

These schools aren’t engaged in partisan politics. The values they’re teaching don’t belong to political parties—they’re fundamental values of a democracy, which is why all public schools in America should foster them.

Enlightened educators also model good leadership. As I show in my book, The Courage to Collaborate: The Case for Labor-Management Partnerships in Education, a growing number of school boards, administrators, and teacher unions are working as partners, rather than as adversaries. They still disagree, sometimes vehemently, but they manage their disputes through trust, collaboration, and civil dialogue. Without the acrimony, the name-calling, and the gridlock, these educators are able to innovate, solve problems, and cultivate good teaching and powerful learning. Isn’t this the type of leadership we want students to learn?

Categories Education Reform, Politics, Students, Teachers and Teaching

Alan Singer: Why Is Eva Moskowitz Allowed to Close Her Schools for Political Rallies?

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2016 //
36

On September 28, Eva Moskowitz closed her Success Academy charter schools for the day so her students, teachers, and families could attend a political rally. Alan Singer wonders why this is permitted? The students, the staff, and families are used as pawns to advance Moskowitz’s political goals. Certainly, the children don’t need more charters. They already attend one. They can’t attend two or three. Eva is using them for her own benefit.

Who pays the bills? Families for Excellent schools. They are not the families of the students. They are billionaires and hedge fund managers whose excellent schools are private and have a tuition of $50,000 or more. You surely won’t see them hanging out with the children at these political rallies.

Face it: the kids are pawns being cynically used to advance adult interests.

Why is it legal?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Politics, Privatization
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