The Nation: Linda McMahon’s Very Important Rightwing Think Tank

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
2

Trump selected Linda McMahon to be the next Secretary of Education. She is well known for making it rich in the world of wrestling entertainment, in partnership with her husband. Less well known is her role as Chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Trump is close to AFPI, which promotes school choice and the “parental rights” movement, which promotes censorship of books and curriculum about racism and LGBT topics. They oppose any teaching that might make students “uncomfortable,” like learning about the history of racism, or that might teach students that LGBT exist.

The Nation published an article by Christopher Lewis and Jacob Plaza. The article tells the story of the think tank McMahon leads. It was launched after Trump’s loss in 2020 and its policy agenda defines Trump’s plans. To understand what Trump intends to do, learn more about AFPI.

Lewis and Plaza write:

Amid the incoming Trump administration’s flurry of unqualified, corrupt, and/or vengeance-driven cabinet nominees, it’s been easy to overlook Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick to head the US Department of Education. McMahon is best known for her role in running World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband the longtime Trump crony Vince McMahon. Linda McMahon’s background in education is exceedingly thin; she served on the Connecticut Board of Education more than a decade ago, thanks to an appointment from another politically connected friend, then–Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. McMahon has a teaching certificate but has never actually taught. Indeed, she was forced to resign her spot on the Connecticut board when the Hartford Courant reported that she’d lied on her résumé about having an education degree. Add in the alleged role of the WWE and its parent company in a sexual-abuse scandal involving “ring boys” for the wrestling league, and McMahon’s nomination, in any sanely administered political order, would be dead in the water. (McMahon and her husband both deny the abuse allegations in the pending WWE suit.)

Yet McMahon possesses one key credential for the next Trump administration—in addition, that is, to a proven track record to personal fealty to the president-elect, and a long string of Fox News appearances: She’s the former head of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the policy nerve center for MAGA governance. For all the attention focused on the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 policy agenda, AFPI has been Trumpworld’s principal policy network, serving as a haven for former Trump appointees during the Biden years. AFPI hands assembled a detailed blueprint for Trump’s return to power, including plans to make the Trump tax cuts permanent and purge the federal workforce of civil service workers deemed insufficiently MAGA. In addition to McMahon, Trump has tapped several senior AFPI figures for cabinet posts, including EPA nominee Lee Zeldin, Agriculture nominee Brooke Rollins (the think tank’s president and CEO), and its Georgia chapter chair, Doug Collins, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Veteran’s Affair

As education secretary, McMahon would be charged with administering a uniquely destructive suite of policies, even by the usual standards of Trump governance. That’s because the Department of Education has been a bête noire of the American right ever since Jimmy Carter founded the agency in 1979. By creating a layer of federal oversight over locally run schools, the DOE has, in the overheated imaginings of right-wing policy mavens, arrogated deep-state sovereignty over the rights of parents to preside over the best educational options and life chances for their children. And as the Education Department has sought to clarify and standardize anti-discrimination policy for LGBTQ+ students, it’s become a pet target for anti-trans culture warriors on the right.

McMahon probably won’t heed the growing chorus of conservative calls to abolish the DOE outright, but she can be counted on to aggressively pursue other key MAGA objectives in education policy. In line with her work at AFPI, McMahon will likely continue to promote the use of privately backed charter schools to defund public education—the most fundamental plank of right-wing education policy. In addition, she’ll probably resume her predecessor Betty DeVos’s campaign to deny basic Title IX protections to LGBTQ+ students. And it’s a safe bet that she’ll also re-up plans to promote Trump’s 1776 commission—MAGA’s agitprop answer to the 1619 Project, promoting a “patriotic” national curriculum to downplay and discourage honest discussion of America’s racial history in the schools.

Following the lead of billionaire right-wing donors, AFPI enthusiastically champions the charter-schools movement, while seeking to undermine the government’s role in providing quality public education. McMahon’s think tank has erected a whole policy infrastructure to promote charter schools, including direct public subsidies to them, the creation of education saving accounts (ESAs) for parents to enroll kids in charters, and proposals to weaken teachers’ unions in conjunction with the rise of open-shop charters. This agenda does more than harness the long-standing animus to government-backed education on the right—it advances the creation of a parallel education system for right-wing partisans. In this regard, as well as in its aggressive model of privatized education funding, the AFPI plan recalls the original role that neoliberal economics played in supporting the new ad hoc network of “segregation academies” launched in the American South after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate the nation’s schools. The same basic dictum holds for today’s American right as it did then: If you can’t segregate with law, segregate with economics.

AFPI claims that charter school students have higher scores on standardized tests. In reality, the findings here follow what holds for better-funded public schools: namely, that well-funded charter schools tend to produce better test scores, while less well-off charters fare a bit worse, with some regional variations. Students in the competitive DC charter school system’s Opportunity Scholarships program, often cited as the gold standard by charter school advocates, actually performed worse on reading tests than those who did not attend the program.

School choice and voucher programs are a drain on the public’s coffers. For hard-right ideologues like the advisers at AFPI, that’s the whole point. Privatized education is part of the broader right-wing campaign to block the public sector’s ability to finance anything, especially if it would further racial equality. The National Education Association notes that voucher programs redirect scarce public funds toward unaccountable private school programs, and found zero evidence that these programs—which increase school segregation—improve students’ performance. In some cases, there are negative impacts.

What’s more, private management naturally leads to a focus on profit, financial self-sustainability, and expansion—mandates that typically lead to steep budget cuts in the schools, even if students suffer. According to the Network for Public Education, for-profit management companies run nearly one in seven charter schools.

AFPI has also endorsed federal legislation to create national education savings accounts. Like charter schools, ESAs seek to redirect public resources to market-driven gimmicks under the broad rubric of consumer choice. When parents open an ESA, they withdraw their children from the school district and receive a deposit of public funds in a savings account authorized by the government. Parents are then allowed to spend from that account on a range of educational expenses, including tutoring, therapy, or school supplies.

ESA plans create an obvious bind by forcing parents to navigate the education industry all on their own. The ESA scheme affords no safeguards for students whose parents made poor spending choices with the funds in their account. A report in Forbes recounted the story of a family using up its entire account before paying for a single English or math class. And like the broader charter model it upholds, the savings-account system reinforces, rather than weakens, the core inequalities of the US education system; it ensures that wealthier parents will be able to afford to send their children to the best schools.

For a bracing illustration of how charter and for-profit education schemes pillage publicly funded schools, consider Chicago’s experience. In 2013, the city closed 48 public schools to cover widening budget shortfalls. And Chicago’s public schools were going broke in no small part due to the rapid expansion of a parallel charter systemcaptained by ardent school privatizers. Since the insurgent charter schools operated outside traditional governance and accountability, they accumulated millions in debt while draining desperately needed funding away from public schools. Ultimately, 17,000 students were displaced, and Chicago was left with a more unequal and racially segmented school system than it had at the outset of the city’s charter-school fiasco.

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

“Democracy”: Billionaire Bezos Abjectly Kisses Trump’s Ring

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
14

Our reader who calls him/herself “Democracy” writes here about Jeff Bezos’ shameless betrayal of the founding principles of The Washington Post, as well as its recent motto “Democracy dies in darkness.” He not only canceled the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (to avoid taking sides), but he (or David Shipley, editor of the editorial page), canceled a cartoon critical of billionaires (including Bezos) who rushed to pay court to the new, felonious president.

Why would a titan with assets of more than $200 billion bend his knee and kiss the ring of a convicted felon? Why would Mark Zuckerberg, also with assets of more than $200 billion, immediately made his peace with Trump by eliminating content moderation from Facebook, welcoming the return to FB of Nazis, conspiracy theorists, racists, and other malefactors. Are they fearful of losing a few billions? Are they worried about being left out of dinners at Mar-a-Lago?

Bear in mind that The Washington Post led the way in discrediting Joseph McCarthy (those who were alive then will never forget Herblock’s cartoons, portraying him as a thug) and exposing the Watergate Scandal, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Bezos’s cowardice is causing the loss of excellent journalists, readership, revenue–and most important–reputation.

“Democracy” wrote, as a comment on this blog:

When Eugene Meyer bought The Washington Post in 1933 he established seven “guiding principles” for the newspaper. At the very top was this:

“The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained.”

Some of the other principles were these:

*  “The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”

*  “The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it.”

*  “In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.”

*  “The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs.”

Given what has happened to The Post in the last couple of years under Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, Eugene Meyer must be spinning in his grave.

Prior to the election, The Fiscal Times reported this:

“23 Nobel Prize-winning economists expressed support for the policies proposed by Kamala Harris, warning that the policies of her opponent would be ‘counterproductive.’…The 23 Nobel laureates — more than half of all living recipients of the economics award — said that the Harris agenda focused on the middle class and entrepreneurship would ‘improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness.’…By comparison, Trump’s agenda of high tariffs and regressive tax cuts would ‘lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.’ In addition, in their view Trump represents a threat to the rule of law and political stability, necessary components of a thriving economy.”

The New York Times reported this:

“More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president…The letter praises Ms. Harris for understanding that ‘the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology.’ Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, would ‘jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,’ the letter said.”

And yet, Jeff Bezos SPIKED a Post endorsement of Harris, and then lied about it in a column that was shameful, dishonest, and disreputable to The Post and the quality journalists who work there, or who used to, because a number of them have already quit or are planning on exiting.

Bezos had a relatively simple choice.

Honor The Post’s masthead logo — “Democracy Dies in Darkness — AND the principles established by Eugene Meyer, OR not.

Bezos chose racism and misogyny and sedition, and fascism.

The Atlantic published a piece three days ago by historian Timothy Ryback on Adolf Hitler.Here’s an overview:

“Monday, he swore an oath to uphold the constitution, went across the street for lunch, then returned to the Reich Chancellery and outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling their positions with loyalists and  turned to his main agenda: an empowering law that would give him the authority to make good on his promises to revive the economy…withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners, and exact revenge on political opponents. ‘Heads will roll,’ Hitler vowed…

“When Hitler wondered whether the army could be used to crush any public unrest, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg dismissed the idea out of hand, observing ‘that a soldier was trained to see an external enemy as his only potential opponent.’…Blomberg could not imagine German soldiers being ordered to shoot German citizens on German streets in defense of Hitler’s government…Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the “parliamentarian swamp”—den parlamentarischen Sumpf—only to find himself now foundering in a quagmire of partisan politics and banging up against constitutional guardrails. He responded as he invariably did when confronted with dissenting opinions or inconvenient truths: He ignored them and doubled down.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/

Sound familiar? 

You’d think that Jeff Bezos might be aware of all of this. He likely is. But he’s chosen to collude with Trump, presumably because it helps his bank account – as if he needs that. Bezos gave $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund, which presumably Trump will pocket, and he coughed up $40 million to produce a “documentary”on Melania Trump, set to air later this year. A. Documentary. On. Melania. Trump.

Honestly, given her “accomplishments,” couldn’t a suitable “documentary” be produced for about $40?

As someone who used to deliver The Post, and who has been a reader for more than 50 years, I think it only appropriate to tell Jeff Bezos from the bottom of my heart that he can Kiss My Ass.

The American democratic republic deserves better.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Hypocrisy, Media, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Media Discovers that Bidenomics Works!

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
16

This was one of Jennifer Rubin’s last columns for The Washington Post. She resigned on January 13 to start The Contrarian, to be free of the whims of billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos wants to be Trump’s ally. Rubin wants to be an independent journalist.

She writes here about the mainstream media’s newfound appreciation for Biden’s economic policies. The latest jobs report showed a healthy increase of 256,000 new jobs, which stunned economists. During the Biden administration, new jobs were created in every quarter for four years. This is an enviable record.

Currently, Trump and Vance are saying on social media that they are inheriting “a dumpster fire.” It won’t take long until they claim credit for the vibrant economy they are inheriting from Joe Biden.

She writes:

The New York Times wrote a few days ago, “President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.” Just how good are things? Here’s how the Times described the state of the economy:

For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.

The Financial Times reported last week on “why America’s economy is soaring ahead of its rivals.” Time published an essay in November that said, “President-elect [Donald] Trump is receiving the strongest economy in modern history which is the envy of the world.”

Gosh, you are not alone if you are wondering where such upbeat reporting has been for the past few years. After all, “The economy had a strong 2024: robust growth, low unemployment and inflation descending to 3%,” former car czar Steve Rattner told us. Moreover, he has said, “All told, Biden has added 693,000 factory jobs while Trump added just 425,000 before Covid hit.7 … The rate of grocery inflation — particularly troubling for everyday Americans ­— has subsided to less than 1.6%.” Real median incomes are higher than when Trump left office, border crossings are lower.

Overall, the Biden record is impressive, especially in light of the recession and pandemic he inherited. Researchers at the University of Chicago told us: “Under the Biden administration, real GDP rose 12.6 percent, rightly cheered … as ‘a historically robust expansion’ that repeatedly defied forecasts. Since the pandemic, economic growth in the US has far outpaced that of our peer nations. Business investment is up; unemployment is low.”

There are several explanations for why we did not have coverage commensurate with the success President Joe Biden enjoyed. The news media’s fixation on polls showing what voters thought about the state of the economy and its negative news bias (which I have written about) that refused to give proper weight to Biden’s successes failed to give voters an accurate picture of Biden’s achievements. And yet now, somehow, with the election over, the media widely acknowledges that Biden’s record is strong, something they downplayed during the election.

We should not discount the disproportionate impact of rising costs (again, echoed without sufficient context in political coverage) on the public perception of the economy (which in turn got amplified to the exclusion of “good news” by the media). “Inflation in the United States reached 9% in 2022, meaning that the average cost of goods and services went up by that amount,” Johns Hopkins University’s David Steinberg explained. “That is the highest rate of inflation that this country has experienced in over 40 years.” While inflation has now dropped close to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent benchmark, “the price level today is more than 20% higher than it was four years ago. As a result, many Americans cannot afford to buy as many things as they otherwise would.”

There is something else at work as well. Utilizing 89 years’ worth of data, University of Chicago researchers found, very simply, “It is not enough to say that a strong economy favors the incumbent. … A strong economy favors Republicans, and a weak economy favors Democrats, regardless of the incumbent.” They postulate that “when the economy is weak, Americans become more risk averse, and that’s why they favor the party that promises redistribution and social insurance — Democrats. During booms, by contrast, voters are more willing to take risks and therefore more likely to elect Republicans, who favor lower taxes.”

Democrats, including Biden and former president Barack Obama, like to point out that Democrats routinely inherit recessions from Republicans, clean up the mess and yet get no credit for it. (“In finance, there’s a phenomenon known as the ‘presidential puzzle’ — stock returns have been higher under Democratic administrations than Republican ones,” the research showed. “Between 1927 and 2015, the period analyzed in our study, the average excess market return was nearly 11 percent per year higher under Democrats than Republicans.”)

And yet this does not explain why, after inheriting great economies, Republicans manage to mess things up, ushering in the conditions for Democrats to return. Let me suggest the most simple explanation: The sugar-high from the only consistent economic policy Republicans favor (supply-side economics) quickly wears off, leaving the country with higher debt, more economic inequality and underinvestment in critical areas (e.g., education, infrastructure). Coupled with reckless deregulation that often results in financial crisis (as in 2008), Republicans’ policies leave Americans reeling, ready to bring back the only party of responsible governance: the Democratic Party.

Democrats should extract several lessons from this pattern. First, the media cannot be relied on to tell the success story. Republicans have a reliable propaganda machine in right-wing media; Democrats enjoy no such luxury. (One need only look at the economic coverage during Biden’s term to see this is true.) Second, it follows that Democrats must do a much better job touting their own successes and communicating with low- and no-information voters. Biden joked he should have put his name on the stimulus checks; he was right.

And finally, before Democrats change their philosophy or dump capable leaders, they might simply run a 24/7 hard-hitting critique of the Trump economic agenda. That will set the stage for the midterms.

We already have hints what Trump will do: run up big deficits, cut taxes for the super rich, slash entitlements, enact inflationary tariffs that provoke trade wars, undertake mass deportations that prove economically disastrous and do corporation’s bidding in enacting reckless deregulation.

Voters may not have long memories (amnesia about Trump’s first term pervaded the campaign) but, fortunately for Democrats, Trump’s failures and scandals will be fresh in the minds of voters when they go to the polls in 2026

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Fake News, Lies, Media

Guess Who Will Attend Trump’s Inauguration and Sit on the Platform?

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
7

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg will not only attend Trump’s Inauguration, they will be seated together on the platform.

Trump will show them off like house pets. Which they are. Trump brought out Musk’s inner Nazi. He intimidated Zuckerberg by threatening to put him in jail. He humbled Bezos, leading him to censor his journalists, who are fleeing the Washington Post.

Will they heel, sit and stay on command?

Sad.

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Will Purge Those Who Are Not Loyal to Him

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
16

Heather Cox Richardson reports on the preparations for Trump’s return to the White House. At the top of the priority list is removing all those officials who are not loyal to Trump. Forget the fact that those who took an oath of office pledged their loyalty to the Constitution. The higher loyalty in 2025 is to Trump personally.

She writes:

The incoming Trump administration is working to put its agenda into place.

Ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) warned that the loyalty purge “threatens our national security and our ability to respond quickly and effectively to the ongoing and very real global threats in a dangerous world.”

Although experts on the National Security Council usually carry over from one administration to the next, Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller of the Associated Press today reported that incoming officials for the Trump administration are interviewing career senior officials on the National Security Council about their political contributions, how they voted in 2024, and whether they are loyal to Trump. Most of them are on loan from the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency and, understanding that they are about to be fired, have packed up their desks to head back to their home agencies.

The National Security Council is the main forum for the president to hash out decisions in national security and foreign policy, and the people on it are picked for their expertise. But Trump’s expected pick to become his national security advisor—his primary advisor on all national security issues—Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) told right-wing Breitbart News that he wants to staff the NSC with people who are “100 percent aligned with the president’s agenda.”

But during Trump’s first term, it was Alexander Vindman, who was detailed to the NSC, and his twin Eugene Vindman, who was serving the NSC as an ethics lawyer, who reported concerns about Trump’s July 2019 call to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to their superiors. This launched the investigation that became Trump’s first impeachment, and Trump appears anxious to make sure future NSC members will be fiercely loyal to him.

With extraordinarily slim majorities in the House and Senate, Republicans are talking about pushing through their entire agenda through Congress as a single bill in the process known as budget reconciliation. Budget reconciliation, which deals with matters related to spending, revenue, and the debt limit, is one of the few things that cannot be filibustered, meaning that Republicans could get a reconciliation bill through the Senate with just 50 votes. If they can hold their conference together, they could get the package through despite Democratic opposition.

House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican leaders have said that the House intends to pass a reconciliation bill that covers border security, defense spending, the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, spending cuts to social welfare programs, energy deregulation, and an increase in the national debt limit.

But Li Zhou of Vox points out that it’s not quite as simple as it sounds to get everything at once, because budget reconciliation measures are not supposed to include anything that doesn’t relate to the budget, and the Senate parliamentarian will advise stripping those things out. In addition, the budget cuts Republicans are circulating include cuts to popular programs like Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (more commonly known as Obamacare), the Inflation Reduction Act’s investment in combating climate change, and the supplemental nutrition programs formerly known as food stamps.

Still, a lot can be done under budget reconciliation. Democrats under Biden passed the 2021 American Rescue Plan and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under reconciliation, and Republicans under Trump passed the 2017 Trump tax cuts the same way.

A wrinkle in those plans is the Republicans’ hope to raise the national debt limit. As soon as they take control of Congress and the White House, Republicans will have to deal immediately with the treasury running up against the debt limit, a holdover from World War I that sets a limit on how much the country can borrow. Although he has complained bitterly about spending under Biden, Trump has demanded that Congress either raise or abandon the debt ceiling because the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tax cuts he wants to extend will add $4.6 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years, and cost estimates for his deportation plans range from $88 billion to $315 billion a year.

Republicans are backing away from adding a debt increase to the budget reconciliation package out of concern that members of the far-right Freedom Caucus will kill the entire bill if they do. Those members want no part of raising the national debt and have demanded $2 trillion in budget cuts before they will consider it. Tonight, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) told Jordain Carney of Politico that Senate Republicans expect the debt limit to be stripped out of the budget reconciliation measure.

So Republicans are currently exploring the idea of leveraging aid to California for the deadly fires in order to get Democrats to sign on to raising the debt ceiling. Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported that Trump met with a group of influential House Republicans over dinner Sunday night at Mar-a-Lago to discuss tying aid for the wildfires to raising the debt ceiling. Today, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) confirmed to reporter Hill that this plan is under discussion.

Indeed, Republicans have been in the media suggesting that disaster aid to Democratic states should be tied to their adopting Republican policies. The Los Angeles fires have now claimed at least 24 lives. More than 15,000 firefighters are working to extinguish the wildfires, which have been driven by Santa Ana winds of up to 98 miles (158 km) an hour over ground scorched by high temperatures and low rainfall since last May, conditions caused by climate change.

On the Fox News Channel today, Representative Zach Nunn (R-IA) said: “We will certainly help those thousands of homes and families who have been devastated, but we also expect you to change bad behavior. We should look at the same for these blue states who have run away with a broken tax policy…. Those governors need to change their tune now.” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) blamed Democrats for the fires and said of federal disaster relief: “I certainly wouldn’t vote for anything unless we see a dramatic change in how they’re gonna be handling these things in the future.”

Aside from the morality of demanding concessions for disaster aid after President Joe Biden responded with full and unconditional support for regions hit by Hurricane Helene (although Tennessee governor Bill Lee is still lying that Biden delayed aid to his state, when in fact he delayed in asking for it, as required by law), there is a financial problem with this argument. As economist Paul Krugman noted today in his Krugman Wonks Out, California “is literally subsidizing the rest of the United States, red states in particular, through the federal budget.”

In 2022, the most recent year for which information is available, California paid $83 billion more to the federal government than it got back. Washington state also subsidized the rest of the country, as did most of the Northeast. That money flowed to Republican-dominated states, which contributed far less to the federal government than they received in return.

Krugman noted that “if West Virginia were a country, it would in effect be receiving foreign aid equal to more than 20 percent of its G[ross] D[omestic] P[roduct].” Krugman refers to the federal government as “an insurance company with an army,” and he notes that there is “nothing either the city or the state could have done to prevent” the wildfires. “If the United States of America doesn’t take care of its own citizens, wherever they live and whatever their politics, we should drop “United” from our name,” he writes. “As it happens, however, California—a major driver of U.S. prosperity and power—definitely has earned the right to receive help during a crisis.”

Today, Biden announced student loan forgiveness for another 150,000 borrowers, bringing the total number of people relieved of student debt to more than 5 million borrowers, who have received $183.6 billion in relief. This has been achieved through making sure existing debt relief programs were followed, as they had not been in the past.

Establishment Republicans continue to fight MAGA Republicans, and MAGA fights among itself: former Trump ally Steve Bannon yesterday called Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk “truly evil” and vowed to “take this guy down.” But even as their enablers in the legacy media are normalizing Republican behavior, a reality-based media is stepping up to counter the disinformation.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Trump

Jan Resseger: Voucher Leader in Ohio Legislature Says Public Schools Cost Too Much

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
9

Jan Resseger writes today about Matt Huffman, Speaker of the House in Ohio and his determination to undermine the funding of the state’s public schools. If you read the previous post about the voucher movement in Ohio, you will recall that Huffman led the battle to enact vouchers for all families, including affluent families.

He is Catholic, he graduated from Catholic schools, and he has long been determined to get public funds to subsidize religious school tuition.

After the state was ordered to enact a plan to fund its schools fairly, relying less on property taxes, the legislature enacted the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan in 2021, which was supposed to be phased in over six years. Huffman recently declared that the plan was “unsustainable.”

Ohio has 1.75 million students in public schools. There are 173,156 students in the state’s non-public schools.

Using public dollars to pay the tuition of rich students who were already enrolled in private and religious schools is “sustainable” for the religious zealots in the legislature.

Ohio’s commitment to fair funding for public schools has been undermined by two Republican priorities:

  1. The universal voucher program now costs $1 billion a year.
  2. Republicans are determined to cut taxes and to reduce funding for public schools.

Those are Matt Huffman’s priorities, not adequate and fair funding for public schools.

Categories Accountability, Catholic Schools, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

ProPublica: Secret Papers Reveal How Ohio Politicians Worked with Religious Allies to Get Vouchers for All

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
10

Alec MacGillis wrote a story for ProPublica titled “On a Mission from God: Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools.”

ProPublica gained access to a large trove of communications among the Governor of Ohio, George Voinovich, and prominent religious figures, planning how to pass legislation to send public money to religious schools. This, despite explicit language in the Ohio state constitution prohibiting state payments to religious schools.

Here is ProPublica’s overview of the article:

Reporting Highlights

  • The Ohio Model: Rarely seen letters show how the voucher movement started in the 1990s as a concealed effort to finance urban parochial schools and expanded to a much broader push.
  • Helping the Affluent: An initiative promoted as a civil rights cause — helping poor kids — is increasingly funneling money to families who already easily afford private school tuition.
  • The Voucher Deficit: Expanding programs threaten funding for public schools and put pressure on state budgets, as many religious-based schools enjoy new largesse.

The article begins thus:

On a Thursday morning last May, about a hundred people gathered in the atrium of the Ohio Capitol building to join in Christian worship. The “Prayer at the Statehouse” was organized by an advocacy group called the Center for Christian Virtue, whose growing influence was symbolized by its new headquarters, directly across from the capitol. It was also manifest in the officials who came to take part in the event: three state legislators and the ambitious lieutenant governor, Jon Husted.

After some prayer and singing, the center’s Christian Engagement Ambassador introduced Husted, asking him to “share with us about faith and intersecting faith with government.” Husted, a youthful 57-year-old, spoke intently about the prayer meetings that he leads in the governor’s office each month. “We bring appointed officials and elected officials together to talk about our faith in our work, in our service, and how it can strengthen us and make us better,” he said. The power of prayer, Husted suggested, could even supply political victories: “When we do that, great things happen — like advancing school choice so that every child in Ohio has a chance to go to the school of their choice.” The audience started applauding before he finished his sentence.

The center had played a key role in bringing about one of the most dramatic expansions of private school vouchers in the country, making it possible for all Ohio families — even the richest among them — to receive public money to pay for their children’s tuition. In the mid-1990s, Ohio became the second state to offer vouchers, but in those days they were available only in Cleveland and were billed as a way for disadvantaged children to escape struggling schools. Now the benefits extend to more than 150,000 students across the state, costing taxpayers nearly $1 billion, the vast majority of which goes to the Catholic and evangelical institutions that dominate the private school landscape there.

What happened in Ohio was a stark illustration of a development that has often gone unnoticed, perhaps because it is largely taking place away from blue state media hubs. In the past few years, school vouchers have become universal in a dozen states, including Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. Proponents are pushing to add Texas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and others — and, with Donald Trump returning to the White House, they will likely have federal support.

The risks of universal vouchers are quickly coming to light. An initiative that was promoted for years as a civil ­rights cause — helping poor kids in troubled schools — is threatening to become a nationwide money grab. Many private schools are raising tuition rates to take advantage of the new funding, and new schools are being founded to capitalize on it. With private schools urging all their students’ families to apply, the money is flowing mostly to parents who are already able to afford tuition and to kids who are already enrolled in private schools. When vouchers do draw students away from public districts, they threaten to exacerbate declining enrollment, forcing underpopulated schools to close. More immediately, the cost of the programs is soaring, putting pressure on public school finances even as private schools prosper. In Arizona, voucher expenditures are hundreds of millions of dollars more than predicted, leaving an enormous shortfall in the state budget. States that provide funds to families for homeschooling or education-related expenses are contending with reports that the money is being used to cover such unusual purchases as kayaks, video game consoles and horseback-­riding lessons.

The voucher movement has been aided by a handful of billionaire advocates; it was also enabled, during the pandemic, by the backlash to extended school closures. (Private schools often reopened considerably faster than public schools.) Yet much of the public, even in conservative states, remains ambivalent about vouchers: Voters in Nebraska and Kentucky just rejected them in ballot referendums.

How, then, has the movement managed to triumph? The campaign in Ohio provides an object lesson — a model that voucher advocates have deployed elsewhere. Its details are recorded in a trove of private correspondence, much of it previously unpublished, that the movement’s leaders in Ohio sent to one another. The letters reveal a strategy to start with targeted programs that placed needy kids in parochial schools, then fight to expand the benefits to far richer families — a decadeslong effort by a network of politicians, church officials and activists, all united by a conviction that the separation of church and state is illegitimate. As one of the movement’s progenitors put it, “Government does a lousy job of substituting for religion.”

Please open the link to read this important article.

Thanks to ProPublica for its excellent reporting about the effort to privatize and defund American schools.

Categories Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Jennifer Rubin: Why We Started The Contrarian

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2025 //
25

Jennifer Rubin posted her first editorial as editor-in-chief of The Contrarian.

The Contrarian will be a central hub for unvarnished, unbowed, and uncompromising reported opinion and analysis that exists in opposition to the authoritarian threat. Our pre-election warnings that Donald Trump posed an unprecedented threat to our democracy were often treated as alarmist. However, the election of an openly authoritarian figure who traffics in conspiracies, lies, unconstitutional schemes and un-American notions, has moved the United States to an inflection point. The future of our democracy, and what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth” hangs in the balance. And yet corporate and billionaire media and too many in the political establishment persist in downplaying the threat and seeking to accommodate Trump and his radical agenda. We refuse to follow the herd.

Unlike most corporate or billionaire media, The Contrarian will not offer Trump the benefit of the doubt. We will not normalize him. We will not engage in false equivalence. We will not excuse enablers in the media, government or business. We will not infantilize his supporters nor treat them as victims; we will confront them with the consequences of their presidential pick.

Trump is no ordinary politician and will be no ordinary president so the response must be extraordinary. His insane pronouncements—be it a premature and utterly false declaration that the New Orleans terrorist had just come over the border or a threat to annex the Panama Canal and Greenland—cannot be ignored or treated as hyperbole. They reveal a warped mind and dangerous agenda that would take America down the road of other authoritarian states such as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.

We will not be distracted by shiny objects or phony scandals. Instead, we will call out Trump and his fellow bad actors’ dangerous, unconstitutional and immoral actions and vile rhetoric. We will put them in the context of American history and international authoritarian movements. We will call on a range of experts from psychology, sociology, political science, international relations and other fields to inform the discussion and analysis.

We do not call Trump a dictator—yet. That is because a conscientious pro-democracy movement determined to expose, denounce and counteract Trump’s authoritarian impulses has time to act, to preserve our pluralistic democracy. The Contrarian seeks to be in the vanguard of that effort. To that end, we will summon the opponents of authoritarianism from all walks of life—the media, the arts, government, academia, business, sports, culture, labor and civil society—to join a grand coalition, a national front for freedom, decency, democracy, justice, self-determination, and diversity.

The urgency of the task before us cannot be overstated. We have already entered the era of oligarchy—rule by a narrow clique of powerful men (almost exclusively men). We have little doubt that billionaires will dominate the Trump regime, shape policy, engage in massive self-dealing, and seek to quash dissent and competition in government and the private sector. As believers in free markets subject to reasonable regulation and economic opportunity for all, we recognize this is a threat not only to our democracy but to our dynamic, vibrant economy that remains the envy of the world.

Although the task before us is deadly serious, we emphatically believe that joy, humor, and most of all community are essential to preserving a free people. We will offer all three. We also realize the danger of preaching to the choir and failing to reach outside our bubble. We will offer a platform that includes multi-generational, fresh voices from whatever venue or field who can contribute to our endeavor. We are building a community of passionate defenders of democracy who are fed up with equivocation, timidity, and resignation.

We could not be more excited to begin this journey. Our irreverence, candor and refusal to pull punches may offend establishment politicians, campaign insiders, and complicit media. We hope so. Throughout all our work, we pledge to live up to our credo: Not Owned by Anybody.

Categories Censorship, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Why I Resigned from The Washington Post

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2025 //
11

Jennifer Rubin explains why she gave up her column at The Washington Post, previously one of the most prestigious positions in American journalism. Billionaire Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, with assets exceeding $200 billion, has bent his knee to kiss the ring of Trump. To stay in Trump’s good graces, he has censored the editorial board, even an editorial cartoonist. The Post is hemorrhaging great journalists. Bezos bought one of the nation’s greatest newspapers and is destroying it.

She writes today:

Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy.

The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.

I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign.

The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation.

Which is why I am so thrilled to simultaneously announce this new outlet, The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody. The Contrarian will offer daily columns, weekly features, podcasts and social media from me and fellow pro-democracy contrarians, many of whom have decamped from corporate media, others who were never a part of it. I am launching this endeavor with my cofounder, Norm Eisen. Founding contributors will include Joyce Vance, Andy Borowitz, Laurence Tribe, Katie Phang, George Conway, Olivia Julianna, Harry Litman (who recently resigned from the LA Times for reasons similar to mine for leaving the Post), and Asha Rangappa, among many other brilliant voices. We will provide fearless and distinctive reported opinion and cultural commentary without phony balance, euphemisms or gamified political punditry.

The need for upstart outlets has never been more acute. The contradiction between, on the one hand, the journalistic obligation to hold the powerful accountable and, on the other, the financial interests of billionaire moguls and corporate conglomerates could not be starker.

The Post’s own headline last month warned: “Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media; Press freedom advocates say they fear that the second Trump administration will ramp up pressure on journalists, in keeping with the president-elect’s combative rhetoric.” And yet The Post’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Trump’s opponent, forked over $1M for Trump’s inauguration through Amazon, and publicly lauded Trump’s agenda.

None of us could imagine Katharine Graham sending LBJ or Nixon a $1M check. It would have been, as it is now, a fundamental betrayal of a great American newspaper. Defense of the First Amendment is incompatible with funding or cheerleading for the very person who seeks to “drastically undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his coming administration.”

The Post’s downfall is hardly unique. ABC, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and corporate-owned cable TV networks (which have scrambled to enlist Trump-friendly voices) are catering to powerful interests, and have profound corporate conflicts. Instead of guarding their independence, they join financial leaders, politicians and other public figures currying favor with Trump and his orbit.

Through classic anticipatory obedience—a dangerous but all too familiar pattern—they normalize the authoritarian menace. If Trump has taken “attacks on the press to an entirely new level, softening the ground for an erosion of robust press freedom,” as The Post reported, it is because he finds insufficient resistance. Instead, owners whose outlets he targets quite literally rewarded him.

In closing, I want to reiterate that I have been honored to work for over fourteen years alongside the finest writers and editors in journalism. Above all, I was blessed to work for The Post under the Graham Family ownership and Fred Hiatt’s leadership of the editorial section. My admiration for their collective integrity, dedication to craft, courage, patriotism, and decency is boundless. But when new leaders sully the reputation of institutions entrusted to them and the fate of democracy is in the balance, we all must reevaluate our careers and our obligations to the world’s most essential nation.

History calls us all.

I treasure the readers who have stuck with me over the years. I invite them and all those interested in defeating authoritarianism as well as writers and content creators to join this exciting new venture in defense of democracy. Forward!

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Character, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Media

Jennifer Rubin Is Leaving the Washington Post

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2025 //
13

More evidence that Jeff Bezos’ sycophantic actions are destroying The Washington Post.

Jennifer Rubin is one of my favorite columnists. She was hired by the Washington Post to offer a view from the right, after establishing a career as a conservative. Trump’s lies and policies turned Rubin into a liberal. She is both a journalist and a lawyer. She writes clearly and forcefully.

Media specialist Brian Stelter reports that Rubin is leaving the Post to start a new venture.

Today, veteran opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin is becoming the latest in a long list of Washington Post figures to leave the troubled institution.

Rubin tells me she is partnering with former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen and launching a startup publication called The Contrarian. Its tagline, “Not owned by anybody,” is a pointed reference to billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other moguls who, in Rubin’s view, have “bent the knee” to President-elect Donald Trump.

“Our goal is to combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face,” Rubin says.

Rather than anti-Trump, the founders describe their venture as pro-democracy. They said they have already enlisted about two dozen contributors, including Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Andy Borowitz, George Conway, John Dean, Bob Kagan, Barb McQuade, Katie Phang, Asha Rangappa, Stephen Richer, and Andrew Weissmann.

Eisen, who is departing his CNN legal analyst role, will be the publisher. Rubin will be the editor-in-chief. Rubin says she resigned from the Post because it, “along with most mainstream news outlets, has failed spectacularly at a moment that we most need a robust, aggressive free press.” She adds: “I fear that things are going from bad to worse at The Post.”

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Ethics, Media
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