Archives for category: Stupid
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Politico: “1 Million Deaths Was a Choice”

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2022 //
89

Myah Ward of Politico Nightly interviewed Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine about the depressing fact that one million Americans have died due to COVID. It’s fair to say that he was outraged by the many thousands of unnecessary deaths, encouraged by Republican politicians and by hostility to science. One man, not mentioned here, could have persuaded his followers to get vaccinated and boosted, as he did. Donald Trump. But while he rightly took credit for the rapid development of vaccines, but did nothing to discourage the anti-vaxxers.

1 million deaths. Did you ever think we’d get here?

For me, the big reckoning was the fact that we’ve not really come to a real national dialogue about what happened after May 1, 2021. That was the day the White House announced that there are so many Covid vaccines that any American who wants to get vaccinated can get vaccinated. Yet we lost another 200,000-300,000 Americans after that date. Those who were defiant to vaccines were overwhelmingly in red states, and the redder the county as measured by Trump voters in the 2020 election, the higher the vaccine refusal and the greater the loss of life.

It wasn’t by accident. It was a deliberate effort by members of the House Freedom Caucus, in the House, some U.S. senators, amplified nightly on Fox News.

I don’t even call it misinformation or disinformation anymore. I call it anti-science aggression, to convince millions of Americans not to take a Covid vaccine. And at least 200,000 Americans between May 1 and the end of 2021 died needlessly from Covid because of it. And everyone’s afraid to talk about it because it’s very unpleasant to have to point out that these deaths occurred along such a strict partisan divide. Even the White House won’t talk about it in that way.

So, with an exhausted public, how would you re-engage Americans at this point? Is it by having these “unpleasant” conversations?

You can understand the first wave of deaths in New York in the spring of 2020. You can even start to understand the second wave of deaths in the summer of 2020, in Texas, in the southern U.S. when we’re just trying to understand it. But then as you move forward, you have to start to come to terms with the fact that a majority of the deaths were probably preventable. And certainly just about all of the deaths after May 1 were preventable. And I think that needs to be front and center. That these are not accidental deaths. The people who lost their lives and died after May 1 were themselves victims of anti-science aggression. If you look at the big-picture threats to the U.S. that we spend billions of dollars every year to combat, like global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or cyberattacks. Anti-science aggression kills more Americans than all those things combined by far. And yet we don’t recognize it as such. That’s critically important to point that out.

Alongside Americans being “done” with the pandemic, there’s also the concern about Covid funding running out if Congress doesn’t act. How important is this money in your view?

We have to recognize that the mRNA boosters are not holding up as well as we’d like. We’re going to have to probably go — unless we come up with a better technology, which I think we should, but that’s a different matter — we’re gonna need to ask the American people to get boosted yet again. And we’re gonna have to provide those vaccines.

And we’re going to need an ongoing amount of Paxlovid, for instance. I mean, why am I talking to you right now? I’m talking to you right now because I’m the beneficiary of Paxlovid, which I’m on right now, and I’m the beneficiary of having my second booster. And even though it’s not ideal to ask Americans to continue to boost, it’s still going to be essential.

The White House is warning we could see 100 million infections this fall. How do you see this fall and winter unfolding?

I know that’s what the White House is doing, but I don’t quite understand the logic of jumping to fall and winter. We still have two big peaks that are hitting us before fall and winter. We have this current BA.2.12.1, which is now about to become the dominant variant. It’s so transmissible, all you need to do is give a dirty look to that subvariant and you become infected. It’s up there with measles. So that’s issue No. 1. And issue No. 2 is we’ve had a terrible wave of Covid-19 both for the last two summers in Texas in the southern United States. I’m expecting that again. Even before the fall, we’re going to have another wave over the summer from variant TBD, to be determined.

Categories Accountability, Health, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans, Science, Stupid

Florida: Bond Ratings Agency Warns State that Uncertainty Over Disney Debt Will Harm State’s Rating

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2022 //
5

Fitch, the credit rating agency, warned the state of Florida that its swift decision to dissolve Disney’s special district may lead to the downgrading of the credit of other districts in the state. This would raise the cost of borrowing and cast doubt on the state’s creditworthiness. Maybe DeSantis and the legislature should have matters through more carefully.

One of the nation’s leading bond rating agencies warned Thursday that if the state of Florida doesn’t resolve a conflict over its decision to repeal Walt Disney World’s Reedy Creek Improvement District and its obligation to investors, the move could harm the financial standing of other Florida governments.

Fitch Ratings posted the alert late Thursday on its Fitch Wire web site, nearly a week after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the measure dissolving the special taxing district that governs Disney property by June 1, 2023.

Reedy Creek Improvement District holds nearly $1 billion in bond debt and last week Fitch issued a “negative watch” because of the uncertainty around how that debt will be paid and by whom.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article260873762.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Florida, Funding, Stupid

Florida: School District Bans “Everywhere Babies”

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2022 //
36

The book-banning and censorship are reaching absurd proportions. A school district in Florida just banned a beloved children’s book, “Everywhere Babies.” Caitlin Gibson wrote about it in the Washington Post. what’s next? “Goodnight Moon”? Some think it’s atheist because the little bunny doesn’t say its prayers. “Harold and the Purple Craton”? Why “purple? Is Harold gay? These censors don’t realize how ridiculous they are. They join the ranks of the ignoramuses who think they can ban ideas and books that are easily available on the internet and television.

The inspiration for the popular children’s picture book “Everywhere Babies” came to author Susan Meyers more than 25 years ago, after the birth of her first grandchild. It was around Christmas, she recalls, and she kept seeing Nativity scenes everywhere — baby Jesus embraced by his doting mother, surrounded by kindly visitors. Meyers, deeply smitten with her 5-month-old grandson, was struck by the everyday, extraordinary miracle of babies in their earliest months of life, how their development touches the lives of everyone around them. So she decided to write about it.

Since its publication in 2001, “Everywhere Babies” — a whimsical, lyrical ode to infancy, illustrated by Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator Marla Frazee — has become a staple of family bookshelves, a common recommendation in new parent groups, and a celebrated title on Best Books lists.

But for the first time in its history, “Everywhere Babies” was featured this week on an entirely different kind of list: The book was among dozens of works recently banned from public school libraries in Walton County, Fla. School district officials confirmed the removal of the books to WJHG-TV in Florida. Walton County School Superintendent Russell Hughes told the outlet that it was “necessary in this moment for me to make that decision and I did it for just a welfare of all involved, including our constituents, our teachers, and our students.”

Hughes did not respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post. A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education referred questions to Walton County, noting that “individual school districts are responsible for making these decisions,” and did not respond to follow-up questions….

Gibson interviewed the author Susan Meyers and illustrator Marla Frazee. They were shocked that their book was banned but thrilled to be in the company of illustrious writers like Toni Morrison and Judy Blume whose works were also banned.

Categories Censorship, Florida, Stupid

Florida Officials Reveal Why They Rejected Math Textbooks

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2022 //
14

Allie Pitchon of The Miami Herald reported that state officials told some publishers of math textbooks why the state would not buy their books. The initial announcement said that some math books were too “woke,” contained “critical race theory,” or included concepts from Common Core, which Governor Ron DeSantis turned against because former President Obama endorsed it. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the conservative education guru, also championed Common Core, but that did not mollify DeSantis’s rejection of it.

Publishers were left in the dark about why their math books offended DeSantis, and yesterday the state provided some details. The state informed publishers what had to make changed to get on the state approved list and gave them two weeks to resubmit.

The state posted a few examples on its website.

One example: A colored bar chart showing how levels of racial bias can vary by age group. It is part of a mathematical brain teaser involving polynomial models and is nestled on the bottom right-hand corner of page 56 in a pre-calculus online textbook consisting of more than 1,000 pages. The book is not identified on the state’s website…

Two other examples that originated with public complaints make reference to Social Emotional Learning (SEL), a methodology wherein students try to get in touch with their emotions and demonstrate empathy for others.

Here is the woke bar graph:

Publishers were well aware, the Department of Education said, that their books would be rejected if they had even a trace of “critical race theory” or “social-emotional learning” or Common Core.

The press release provided a withering quote from Gov. Ron DeSantis: “It seems some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students.”

Education Secretary Richard Corcoran chimed in, stating Florida was “focusing on providing … children with a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms.”

In a tweet, Christina Pushaw, the governor’s press secretary, went further, while addressing those who take issue with “book banning”: “The state declining to purchase certain textbooks isn’t banning them. If you want to teach your kid Woke Math, where “2+2=4” is white supremacy, you’re free to buy any CRT math textbook you want. You just cannot force Florida taxpayers to subsidize this indoctrination.” She’s right that local school districts can allocate at least part of their book buying budget toward textbooks not on the state’s approved list.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article260639257.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Bias, Common Core, Curriculum, Education Industry, Florida, Racism, Stupid

Florida Rejects 54 Math Textbooks, Claiming Many Contain “Critical Race Theory”

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2022 //
148

Florida is spinning downward into a pit of political ignorance.

The state rejected 54 math texts on grounds that some contained critical race theory, others referred to Common Core concepts.

The rejected books make up a record 41% of the 132 books submitted for review, the Florida Department of Education said in a statement.

Of them, 28 were rejected because they “incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including [critical race theory],” the statement said.

Critical race theory has been described by scholars as an examination of racism and its impact through systems, such as legal, housing and education. However, it is typically not taught in K-12.

Twelve books were rejected because they did not meet Florida’s benchmark standards, while 14 books were rejected because they both included prohibited topics and failed to meet curriculum standards.

The names of the rejected books were not included.

Since the names of the rejected books were not revealed, no one can judge how dreadful or how innocuous the content is.

State House Member Anna Eskamani said, “I get it. The goal of math is to solve problems which the Republican Party of Florida doesn’t like to do.”

Among grade levels, 70% of the math materials for kindergarten through fifth grades were rejected. Twenty percent of the materials for grades 6-8 were rejected, and 35% of materials for grades 9-12 were rejected.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Common Core, Curriculum, Florida, Stupid

Latest Study: Ivermectin Is a Medicine for Fools

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2022 //
29

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times reports on the latest study of Ivermectin, a veterinary drug for animals with parasites. The study found that Ivermectin is useless as a treatment for COVID-19. It is a quack treatment that became popular among Republicans. Anything, anything at all, was acceptable to Trumpers except vacccinations developed by reputable companies.

He writes:

The final results are in, and they’re incontrovertible: Ivermectin, that nostrum assiduously promoted by anti-vaccine advocates and conspiracy-mongers, is utterly useless against COVID-19.

That’s the conclusion of a peer-reviewed studyof more than 1,350 COVID patients treated with the drug, which is customarily used to combat parasitic diseases in humans, livestock and pets.

The study was published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, but we reported on it last August.

That’s when one of its principal investigators, Edward J. Mills of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, disclosed the preliminary results during a research symposium. The data he presented then are essentially the same as the final results published by the NEJM.

Mills said then that ivermectin had “no effect whatsoever” on COVID.

Half were given ivermectin for three days and half received a placebo. The goal was to find whether ivermectin reduced the prospect of hospitalization or an emergency room visit due to a worsening of COVID symptoms. The bottom line is that ivermectin had no statistically significant effect.

“We did not find a significantly or clinically meaningful lower risk of medical admission to a hospital or prolonged emergency department observation … with ivermectin,” the study says.

These findings are important because ivermectin has been so assiduously touted by anti-vaxxers and credulous, irresponsible fools such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has also used Senate hearings to promote hydroxychloroquine, another useless COVID treatment

Categories Health, Science, Stupid

Texas: How Stupid Is Lt. Governor Dan Patrick?

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2022 //
17

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick of Texas explains in this video why he wants to eliminate tenure in the colleges and universities of Texas. He believes in “academic freedom,” he says, but he thinks the legislature should govern what is taught in universities. He lashed out at professors who want to teach “critical race theory.” He believes that there is no academic freedom for those who want to teach the Constitution (!), but only for those who teach controversial topics.

Apparently he thinks that academic freedom and tenure should protect only those who share his views.

Just how dangerous is Dan Patrick’s proposal?

Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, understands that Patrick threatens one of our nation’s greatest treasures: its public institutions of higher education.

He writes, at NBC’s website:

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced last month a plan to phase out all tenure in Texas’ public colleges and universities, and to revoke tenure for those who teach critical race theory. These changes would have dramatic effects on public education in Texas and, ultimately, across the United States, undermining academic freedom and compromising a higher education system that is the envy of the world.

If you were to make a list of the United States’ most significant contributions to the world, our public university systems would have to be somewhere near the top. According to U.S. News’ rankings, of the top 20 universities around the world, 15 are American, and five of those are public. Thanks to these and other universities, the U.S. dominates Nobel Prizes and other scholarly achievements, while it educates tens of millions of students annually. Typically, about a million students per year come from other countries to attend American colleges and universities. Those on student visas largely return to their home countries, spreading the knowledge and values they learn here.

Rather remarkably, this is not widely celebrated. Worse, America’s public universities are currently being attacked from multiple sources, threatening both our educational integrity and global reputation, to say nothing of the way such attacks could impact student opportunities.

The first of these attacks stems from a rather long-term historical force — declining state budgets. States are simply subsidizing public education far less than they used to do. Outside just a handful of states, per-student funding from state governments dropped substantially over the past few decades. Students and their families increasingly have to make up that difference.

But there’s a more immediate threat going on, of which Patrick is only the latest instigator. Patrick is hardly the first state leader to go after tenure for university professors. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker worked to weaken tenure protections at his state’s university system. A current bill in South Carolina would end tenure in that state. Georgia made it easier last year for administrators in public universities to fire tenured professors. Tenure has long been a target of Republican state officials seeking to reduce the status of the professors they see as elitist liberals.

Tenure, of course, is complicated, involving complicated and school-specific standards. Some schools have suspiciously biased tenure patterns. But at its best, tenure serves two important purposes. First, it protects researchers from reprisals. Academics may produce findings that make state leaders uncomfortable or defensive — tenure helps assure that findings are not suppressed and altered. Think, for example, of recent academic debates over whether voter ID and other voting restrictions disproportionately affect people of color and actually reduce turnout. This is an important discussion that quite legitimately makes people on all sides of it uncomfortable. But researchers must be able to pursue the truth without fear of losing their jobs…

Second, tenure is a valuable perk for professors who could typically make more money in another line of work. In both these senses, tenure helps keep top scholarly talent at universities producing important and occasionally critical and politically unpopular research.

But Patrick’s second announcement, that he is seeking to revoke tenure protections for professors who teach critical race theory, is even more sinister. It’s important to note first that very few professors outside of law school actually teach critical race theory. Rather, the term “critical race theory” for public officials like Patrick has come to mean any lessons involving race, identity and/or history that conservatives do not like. For some, critical race theory now just means any history lesson that might make white students feel bad. It’s not hard to guess who will be blamed for teaching these sorts of lessons, and who will more readily be fired or silenced as a result…

Great public university systems with top scholars educating millions of students at (relatively) low cost are legitimately one of the U.S.’ greatest accomplishments. We are watching that accomplishment being dismantled before our eyes

Categories Academic Freedom, Funding, Higher Education, Ignorance, Stupid, Texas

Dana Milbank: How Are Anti-Vaxxers Like ‘60s Radicals?

By dianeravitch
February 21, 2022 //
60

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post compares the anti-vaxxers (those who fight for the right to get sick and die) to ‘60s radicals in this article.

The times, they are a-changin’.

Last month, when antiabortion activists and anti-vaccine protesters staged mass protests in the capital, speakers at both rallies quoted the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “Today, we are going to reclaim Martin’s dream!” the first speaker at the anti-vaccine rally, Kevin Jenkins, declared from the Lincoln Memorial, the site of King’s immortal speech. “Are we ready to reclaim the dream?”
“Yeah!” shouted back the overwhelmingly White crowd.

“Martin is alive!” Jenkins told them. “We are here today fighting for the same thing he fought for.”
The crowd rejoiced at this discovery that King, like them, had battled for the right to take deworming medication instead of highly effective vaccines.
We shall overcome … mask mandates?

At the same time, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been making a strong bid to become the Hanoi Jane of the Ukraine conflict, calling for kumbaya with Russia. Night after night, he has been taking Vladimir Putin’s side and parroting Kremlin propaganda in the standoff against NATO and the United States. (Poor Putin’s just trying “to keep his western borders secure.”)

Carlson’s flower-child viewers have been calling lawmakers with a message that would have enraged Republicans just a few years ago: Give appeasement a chance.

Now, truckers are staging mass civil disobedience to occupy Ottawa and shut down border crossings with the United States in protest of public health rules. And Republican officials say: Right on, man.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) hailed the truckers as modern-day Freedom Riders, “heroes” who are “marching for your freedom and for my freedom,” while Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said they want only “what God gave them: freedom.”

“Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal. “Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.”

Stick it to the man — by, um, refusing to take a jab.
Just how far will this new New Right go in flattering the New Left with imitation? Well, they aren’t burning bras and draft cards — but they have been known to burn face masks. As Politico’s Jack Shafer argued last week, the truckers’ takeover of Ottawa streets is an “occupation”-style protest popularized by the left with 1930s labor sit-ins, the 1968 student occupation of the Columbia University president’s office and the Occupy Wall Street movement of about a decade ago.

“The American Right Hits Its Hippie Phase” was the headline atop a July article in National Review by Kevin D. Williamson. Like the leftist radicals of the 1960s, he wrote, “the contemporary Right also hates the government, the business establishment, much of organized religion, compromise, etc., but instead of LSD and Transcendental Meditation it has hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, absurd mask politics, election trutherism, anti-vaccine activism, 1,001 conspiracy theories, and QAnon.”

Turn on, tune in — and drop your sense of irony.
Covering the hypocrisy of the Trump right is a full-time beat these days. “Law and order” Republicans now embrace insurrectionists. Those who decried “cancel culture” now ban books and history lessons. Conservatives who supported “tort reform” now enshrine the rights of private citizens to sue one another. A party that welcomed libertarians now has officials incentivizing people to report on their neighbors. Onetime Cold Warriors now sympathize with Putin.

The inconsistency over street protests is particularly black and white.

When a convoy of White people in trucks promotes chaos and lawlessness on the northern border, Republican officials call them heroes, and former president Donald Trump invites them to the United States. When a caravan of Brown people on foot posed a remote chance of chaos and lawlessness on the southern border in 2018, Trump called in the military to protect against the “MANY CRIMINALS.”

When (predominantly White) crowds protest for the right to ignore public health rules in mostly peaceful but occasionally violent and highly disruptive actions, Republican officials hail the glory of civil disobedience. When (heavily Black) crowds protested for racial justice in mostly peaceful but occasionally violent and highly disruptive actions, Trump called them “rioters, looters and anarchists” not to mention “terrorists,” “arsonists” and “violent mobs.”

“I’m old enough to remember when Black Lives Matter shut down highways and the right responded with laws making it easier to run protesters over — and get away with it!” conservative Matt Lewis wrote in the Daily Beast. It’s true: Last year, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a law granting civil immunity to people who drive through protesters blocking a street. Texas, Oklahoma and other states enacted similar laws.

Now, Republican officials are lending rhetorical support and financial protection to the White men blocking the streets of Ottawa? This isn’t “reclaiming the dream.” It’s a bad acid trip.

Categories Health, History, Hoax, Stupid, Trump

Texas: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Wants to Ban “Critical Race Theory” in Universities

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2022 //
65

This is when 21st century McCarthyism gets serious.

Dan Patrick, the talk-show host who is now Lieutenant Governor of Texas, wants to ban the teaching of “critical race theory” in higher education. Critical race theory, the study of systemic and institutionalized racism, has been taught and debated in law schools and colleges since the mid-1980s.

Patrick wants to quash academic freedom in higher education. He thinks he can prevent professors who have devoted their academic careers to the study of racism from talking about it. Maybe, he believes, if they don’t talk about and study racism, no one will know it exists. Or maybe it will just go away.

Erica Grieder wrote in the Houston Chronicle about Patrick’s plans to restrict academic freedom and to have the state spend $6 million on a “think tank” called the “Liberty Institute” to prevent errant professors from exercising their freedom to teach and speak. Last year, the state passed a law to ban CRT in K-12 schools, where (he thinks) children are being stuffed with left wing propaganda and with the claim that racism is real.

“I will not stand by and let looney Marxist UT professors poison the minds of young students with critical race theory,” he announced in a tweet.

“We banned it in publicly funded K-12 and we will ban it in publicly funded higher ed,” he continued, adding: “That’s why we created the Liberty Institute at UT.”

This was in response to a report, in the Austin American-Statesman, that the Faculty Council of the University of Texas at Austin had passed a resolution defending academic freedom.

In other words, Patrick, hearing of an innocuous nonbinding resolution in support of freedom, responded by threatening to pursue even more aggressive restrictions on freedom, while also wrapping himself in the banner of “liberty.” Naturally. This is from the lieutenant governor, arguably the state’s most powerful elected official.

Patrick, a rabid supporter of vouchers, as well as limits on free speech, is a public nuisance who menaces the freedom of students, teachers, and professors in Texas.

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Racism, Stupid, Texas

Peter Greene: How to Report Your Teacher to Governor Youngkin’s Stasi

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2022 //
15

Governor Youngkin invited parents to report the names of teachers who are violating the state’s vague and ill-defined law banning the teaching of “divisive concepts,” critical race theory, and anything else any parents object to.

Peter Greene describes the creative responses of respondents. Responses to an email address can come from anywhere, not just Virginia. You too can write to Youngkin’s Stasi.

Anyone can send their reports to the tip line email:

helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov

Greene writes:

But of course you know what else happened next. The tip line has apparently been hit with a variety of reports, like a complaint that Albus Dumbledor “was teaching that full blooded wizards discriminated against mudbloods.” Some of this has been goaded on Twitter by folks like human rights lawyer Qasim Rasgid. And John Legend correctly pointed out that under the guidelines of the decree, Black parents could legitimately complain about Black history being silenced (because, as sometimes escapes the notice of anti-CRT warriors, some parents are Black). Ditto for LGBTQ parents.

Greene also includes a useful list of questions to answer if you write the Governor: like, “who was your favorite teacher and what did they teach?”

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Creativity, Democracy, Disruption, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Stupid, Virginia
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