McKenzie Scott Gives $65 Million to Md. Group Focused on Affordable Housing

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2024 //
5

While her ex-husband Jeff Bezos gave $5 million to help house the homeless in central Florida, McKenzie Scott gave $65 million to an organization in Maryland aiming to solve the affordable housing crisis. Four years ago, she gave the same organization $50 million.

Think of it: he helps with a small (by his standards) gift to house the homeless. Scott makes a gift more than 12 times larger to address the problem of homelessness.

Let’s be clear: in a better society, large social and economic problems would be addressed by government, not by philanthropists. But Republicans oppose any attempt to help people who are unable to help themselves. They block all efforts to expand the role of government. They cling to the belief that everyone should take care of themselves; those that can’t should turn to church, family, or local charities, they believe. In the age of Trump, the organizations that help others are likely to get less or no government support.

Scott divorced Bezos in 2019. Since then, she has given $19.2 billion to charitable groups. She is still worth more than $30 billion, based on the Amazon stock she received in her divorce. She’s determined to give away a substantial amount every year.

She represents the very best of philanthropy. No one applies for help. She has a team to research possible recipients. When she decides who are the lucky winners, they get a call from out of the blue telling them the size of their reward. The winners are free to use the money as they see fit.

Entrepreneur magazine reported:

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, 54, donated $65 million to Enterprise Community Partners last month, a national nonprofit based in Maryland that aims to address the U.S.’s shortage of affordable housing.

The surprise donation left the organization shocked, reps said in a statement.

“Some of us probably wanted to cry for joy,” Janine Lind, president of Enterprise’s community development division, told the Baltimore Banner. “This came at a moment where the affordable housing sector certainly is being put to test and is struggling.”

It’s Scott’s second gift to the 42-year-old organization—the first was $50 million in 2020. The organization noted in a press release that Scott’s gift is “one of the largest reported gifts to an affordable housing organization.”

Categories Billionaires, Competition, Creativity, Philanthropy

Billionaire Jeff Bezos Gives $5 Million to Expand Homeless Shelters in Florida

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2024 //
12

Jeff Bezos’ foundation gave $5 million to expand homeless shelters in Florida. Bezos has assets of about $200 billion. There are many thoughts swirling in my head about this gift. Like, should Bezos have given more? To him, $5 million is pocket change. Should he have underwritten an expansion of affordable housing instead of expanding shelters? And more. Like, what are the consequences of online shopping replacing brick-and-mortar stores? Why is Jeff’s ex-wife McKenzie Scott so much more generous in her philanthropy than he is?

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ philanthropic fund has donated $5 million to the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida, which will use the money to expand its existing shelter and support its family outreach program.

This is the second time Bezos’ Day One Fund has supported the coalition. In 2021, the nonprofit received a $2.5 million grant.

“With the increase in individuals and families struggling with homelessness, specifically because of this affordable housing crisis, being able to utilize this grant to help those families who are unsheltered is huge for us,” said Trinette Nation, director of development for the coalition.

The Bezos Day One Fund is a $2 billion fund started in 2018 by the Amazon billionaire and his then wife, MacKenzie Scott, to support homeless families.

Categories Billionaires, Florida

A Special Message for the Season: What Kind of Society Do We Want to Be?

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2024 //
10

I frequently get comments by people who are very angry. They are hateful, and their comments are hateful. They say horrible things about anyone who dusagreees with their worldview.

I try to block them but they sometimes slip through. Life is too short to argue with people who wish you were dead.

This message is for them, but you can watch too.

Categories Bigotry, Childhood, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Love

NPE Announces Winners of “Coal in the Stocking Award” for 2024!!

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2024 //
5

The Network for Public Education announces the winners of the non-prestigious “Coal in the Stocking” Award for 2024.

This is an award given to those who have done the most damage to our public schools.

They should feel ashamed and humiliated for gaining this recognition of their odious and undemocratic behavior.

They hurt children and communities. They hurt the future of our great nation.

Open the link to see the names of the winners.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Censorship, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Separation of church and state, Vouchers, Wall of Shame

Nancy Flanagan: We Need More Hygge Classrooms

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2024 //
6

Nancy Flanagan, retired teacher, writes here about Scandinavian concepts that she admires. She points to the link between happiness and well-being, which we as a nation seem determined to ignore. These days, some people think it’s “woke” to want all children to be well-fed, well-cared for, their basic needs met. I’m willing to take that chance and that label. Call me woke.

She writes:

The ubiquitous FB meme:

In Iceland, books are exchanged as Christmas Eve presents, then you spend the rest of the night in bed reading them and eating chocolate. The tradition is part of a season called Jolabokafload, the Christmas Book flood, because Iceland, which publishes more books per capita than any other country, sells most of its books between September and November, due to people preparing for the upcoming holiday.

Nobody ever responds: That sounds awful! My family prefers watching our individual TVs!

Generally, commenters reply wistfully, longing for a country where learning is valued and books are ideal gifts, where the dark and cold are counterbalanced by intellectual curiosity and conversation.

Thanks to the Jolabokaflod, books still matter in Iceland, they get read and talked about. Excitement fills the air. Every reading is crowded, every print-run is sold. Being a writer in Iceland you get rewarded all the time: People really do read our books, and they have opinions, they love them or they hate them. At the average Christmas party, people push politics and the Kardashians aside and discuss literature.

Perhaps because I live in a region that gets 135 inches of snow each winter, these cozy, fireside literary chats are enormously appealing to me. As is the Danish concept of hygge:

“The Danish art of contentment, comfort, and connection…a practical way of creating sanctuary in the middle of very real life.”

Hygge (hoo-ga), which has no direct translation into English—surprise!—is many things to many people: Woolen socks. Candles and other gentle light. Board games. Comfortable couches and cozy quilts. Warm drinks.

Although hygge seems to have Scandinavian roots, it’s not exclusively a cold-climate thing, evidently. A rustic cottage on a lake, with its beat-up furniture, mildewed paperbacks from the 1950s and second-hand bathing suits is very hygge, according to Meik Wiking, author of “The Little Book of Hygge” and, not coincidentally, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. The mere fact that there is a Happiness Research Institute, somewhere in the world, makes me—well, happy….

Perhaps Scandinavians are better able to appreciate the small, hygge things in life because they already have all the big ones nailed down: free university education, social security, universal health care, efficient infrastructure, paid family leave, and at least a month of vacation a year. With those necessities secured, according to Wiking, Danes are free to become “aware of the decoupling between wealth and wellbeing.”

That decoupling between wealth and wellbeing is well-reflected in this headline: Children Need Homes, Not Charter Schools or Standardized Tests, and Definitely Not Tax Cuts for the Wealthy.

That’s where our intentionality lies in the U.S., where we’re spending our hard-earned tax dollars—canned curricula designed to raise test scores and alternative school governance models, endless expensive tests—when over 100,000 New York City schoolchildren were homeless last year. According to former Senator Orin Hatch, we don’t even have money for poor children’s basic health care. As a nation, we have linked simple human well-being to wealth, and sealed it with the tamper-proof cap of low opportunity.

Categories International, Joy

House Ethics Committee Releases Damning Ethics Report on Matt Gaetz, Trump’s Pick for AG

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2024 //
16

Right after the election, Trump announced that he had chosen Matt Gaetz, Congressman from Florida, as his choice to be Attorney General of the United States. The AG is the highest ranking officer of the law in the nation.

Faced with strong opposition, including enough Republican votes to stop him, Gaetz withdrew from the nomination.

Today the House Ethics committee released its long-awaited report.

(CNN) — The House Ethics Committee found evidence that former Rep. Matt Gaetz paid tens of thousands of dollars to women for sex or drugs on at least 20 occasions, including paying a 17-year-old girl for sex in 2017, according to a final draft of the panel’s report on the Florida Republican, obtained by CNN.

The committee concluded in its bombshell document that Gaetz violated Florida state laws, including the state’s statutory rape law, as the GOP-led panel chose to take the rare step of releasing a report about a former member who resigned from Congress.

“The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” panel investigators wrote.

The panel investigated transactions Gaetz personally made, often using PayPal or Venmo, to more than a dozen women during his time in Congress, according to the report. Investigators also focused on a 2018 trip to the Bahamas – which they said “violated the House gift rule” – during which he “engaged in sexual activity” with multiple women, including one who described the trip itself as “the payment” for sex on the trip. On the same trip, he also took ecstasy, one woman on the trip told the committee.

What does this say about Trump’s judgment?

Categories Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Justice, Trump

Biden Interview: Portrait of a Good Man

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2024 //
13

Ben Meiselas of the Meidas Touch blog had the rare opportunity to interview President Joe Biden in the White House. Please watch the interview.

What comes through is that President Biden is thoughtful, well-informed, and fully functional. This interview should shut up the hyenas who claim that he is senile. Trumper recently wrote on this blog that Biden was a “vegetable.” So many lies, so much hatred for a man who has tried to solve problems and help people.

The other thing that shines through is that Joe Biden is a good man. A good man. He has tried to do what is best for the American people. He has a conscience. He has a soul. He is decent. His heart is filled with kindness, not hate. He is not angry. He does not have an enemies’ list. What he does have is a long list of legislative accomplishments.

Could anyone say the same about the other guy? No.

Meiselas has been getting threats just for airing the interview. He is not intimidated.

Categories Biden, Character, Creativity, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Joy, Love

WSJ: Trump Threatens to Take Control of the Panama Canal and Greenland, Maybe Canada Too

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2024 //
16

May you live in interesting times! We do, and the times will grow even more interesting as Trump directs threats at other world leaders, reminding us that his “art of the deal” consists of bullying, bluster, blather and lying

The Wall Street Journal reported today:

President-elect Donald Trump is openly discussing provocative aspirations for U.S. territorial expansion as he prepares to return to the White House, warning about taking over the Panama Canal and wresting control of Greenland from Denmark.

His comments, delivered in public remarks and social-media posts on Sunday, come after he recently trolled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by suggesting that Canada should become the 51st state and referring to Trudeau as a governor. During the recent presidential campaign, Trump said he would deploy the U.S. military to impose a naval embargo on Mexican cartels and order the Pentagon to use American special forces to take down cartel leaders.

Taken together, the president-elect’s broadsides signal that he will pursue a confrontational foreign-policy agenda, leveraging unconventional threats and pointed demands in an attempt to gain advantage over allies and adversaries alike. Trump is often prone to provocation, and it wasn’t immediately clear if he would try to follow through on his demands. But if he does, he is likely to face stiff resistance from world leaders, who would object to any effort to undermine their sovereignty.

“We’re being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else,” Trump said at a conservative conference in Phoenix on Sunday, demanding the return of the state-run canal to the U.S. “We will never, never let it fall into the wrong hands….”

Later Sunday, in a statement announcing his pick for U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Trump signaled his continued interest in taking control of Greenland. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump said. Denmark controls the self-governing island.

Categories Ethics, Extremism, International, Lies, Trump

Andru Volinsky: The New Danger to Children of Immigrants

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2024 //
31

Andru Volinsky lives in New Hampshire, where he has been active in politics and protecting public schools. He served on the state’s Executive Council, he successfully litigated a challenge to the state’s system for funding public schoools. He ran for Governor in 2020 and unfortunately was not elected. He writes here about the risks that America’s immigrant children face today.

His article was posted on the blog of the Network for Public Education.

Andru Volinsky: The Threat to Public School Access for Children of Immigrants

Andru Volinsky alerts us to one of the other threats to education that may be coming for immigrant children. 

School children who cannot prove they are legally in the US may soon be threatened with exclusion from public schools.  Since 1982, when the Supreme Court decided the case of Plyler v. Doe, public schools have been required to accept children who immigrate to the US, regardless of their legal status. The Plyer opinion, however, was issued by a deeply divided court (five different justices wrote opinions) with only a bare majority deciding in favor of the school children. And now, much like the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, the Plyler decision is under attack by right-wing extremists. Texas governor Gregg Abbott has publicly challenged the decision and it appears there is an organized effort to overturn the right of immigrant children to attend public schools.

Earlier this year, the Saugus, MA School Committee adopted stringent proof of legal residency requirements for its school children shortly after Massachusetts governor Maura Healey announced a state of emergency concerning Massachusetts’ over 5000 recent immigrants, many of whom were from Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Saugus is a town of about 30,000 residents located just outside of Boston. The immigrants from these three nations were legally admitted to the US under a Biden administration special humanitarian parole program adopted in 2023.

Legislators in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas recently also considered legislation to either explicitly bar children from attending public school if they cannot prove they are legally in the US or to require extensive proof of legal residency that can then give local officials excuse not to admit students. The Saugus School Committee is reported to have deployed this tactic to delay admission of a six-year-old girl from Nicaragua for six months.

According to a Pew study released in July 2024, the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States was 11.0 million in 2022, the most recent year available. About 850,000 of these immigrants were children under 18.

About 4.4 million U.S.-born children under 18 live with an unauthorized immigrant parent.  More than eight million workers in the US are unauthorized immigrants. Only 5 percent of these unauthorized workers are single persons without children. The remainder are heads of families most of which are of mixed legality of their immigration status.

If we exclude children from public schools because of their immigration status, how can we expect them to become “good citizens?”

Read the full post here. You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/andru-volinsky-the-threat-to-public-school-access-for-children-of-immigrants/

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Immigration

Jamelle Bouie: Trump Got a Rude Awakening

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2024 //
29

Over the past week, the nation was treated to the return of Trump chaos. Congress needed to pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the federal government or it would shut down at midnight last Friday. Because of the process that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson used, the CR required a vote of two-thirds of the House. The House is almost evenly divided between the two parties, with a slight Republican majority. Mike Johnson had to get a bipartisan deal that satisfied both parties, and he did. On the day of the vote, Elon Musk unleashed a flurry of tweets ridiculing the deal, warning that he would fund primary challengers for any Republican who supported it and lying about the contents of the bill.

Several hours after Musk attacked the bill, Trump chimed in and warned Republicans to vote against it. He too said that any Republican who voted for it would be challenged by another Republican in the next election. Trump demanded that any CR raise the debt limit, so he could renew a big tax cut for the rich and corporations in the spring. The new round of tax cuts is expected to cost $1-2 trillion. The onus for raising the debt limit would be Biden’s, not his, he hoped.

Musk tweeted that the government should be shut down until Trump was inaugurated. Only 33 days, he tweeted. He didn’t care that government employees and members of the military would go without a paycheck for 33 days. Or that many would not have enough to get by. How would he–the world’s richest man–know?

Under pressure from Musk and Trump, the bipartisan deal failed. Speaker Johnson then cobbled together a new budget to please Trump and Musk. It raised the debt limit and deleted items that Democrats wanted. All but two Democrats and 38 Republicans voted against it, and it too failed.

Then Speaker Johnson tried again, forging a deal that members of both parties supported. It passed 366-34.

Here are the 34 Republicans who voted against the bill.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.)  

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)

Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.)

Sen.-elect and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) 

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.)

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas)

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.)

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.)

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah)

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho)

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas)

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.)

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas)

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.)

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)

Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas)

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Greg Lopez (R-Colo.)

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.)

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.)

Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.)

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.)

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.)

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.)

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas)

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas)

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.)

Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas)

Jamelle Bouie wrote that we should all take heart. Trump does not control every Republican in the House. We will find out in February and March whether every Senate Tepublican is willing to confirm Trump’s totally unqualified choices for major roles: Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth.

Bouie wrote:

The recurring theme of my writing the past few weeks is that Donald Trump is not invulnerable. His win did not upend the rules of American politics or render him immune to political misfortune. Like everything we experience, his victory was contingent — a function of specific people in specific circumstances making specific choices. To change any of these variables is to change the ultimate destination.

To put this a little differently, whatever you think of the nature of his win, Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. He is overwhelmingly strong in some areas and ruinously deficient in others. He holds so much sway over his supporters that, as he famously put it nearly 10 years ago, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose “any voters.” He’s almost incapable of managing himself or the people around him. His White House was notoriously chaotic and he remains as impulsive, dysfunctional and undisciplined as he was during his first term.

There was, in the first weeks after the election, some notion that this had changed, that we were looking at a new Trump, ready to lead a united Republican Party. But as we’ve seen over the past few days, this was premature. First, the Republican Party is far from unified, as their struggle to pass a bill to continue to fund the government showed. It took days. What’s more, Trump is not alone as a figure of influence among congressional Republicans; Elon Musk has imposed himself onto the president-elect as a consigliere of sorts and is trying to build a political empire for himself via X, the social media platform he essentially bought for this purpose.

It was from X, in fact, that Musk urged Republicans to kill the continuing resolution, throwing the House into chaos and prompting Trump to escalate the confrontation to save face, demanding a new resolution that suspended or raised the debt limit. On Thursday evening, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to pass that bill. But a number of Republicans broke ranks, and unified Democratic opposition meant it was dead on arrival.

Together, Trump and Musk have not only walked the Republican Party into an otherwise needless defeat; they also have given Democrats the jump start they apparently needed to behave like a real opposition. According to Axios, House Democrats even broke into chants of “Hell no” when confronted with proposed Republican spending cuts.

That’s more like it.

The absurd battle over the continuing resolution should stand as a vivid reminder that Trump is in a much more precarious position than he may have appeared to be in immediately after the election. With a 41 percent favorability rating, he remains unpopular. He cannot count on a functional majority in the House. He has no plan to deliver the main thing, lower prices, that voters want. And one of his most important allies, Musk, is an agent of chaos he can’t seem to control.

There have been enough presidents that there are a few models for what a well-run administration might look like. This is not one of them.

Other bad news:

There are so many memes on Twitter about “President Musk” that Trump responded, whining that he is the President-elect, not Musk. One meme shows Musk pushing a baby carriage, with Trump in it. Another shows them mouth-kissing.

The one thing Trump can’t tolerate is being laughed at. The term #PresidentMusk was trending on Twitter.

We mostly assume that Trump will not be able to sustain his bromance with Musk because Musk is richer, smarter, and younger than Trump. But Never-Trumper George Conway said in a bulwark podcast that it won’t be easy for Trump to shed Musk. Musk owns the world’s biggest social media platform. Trump can’t afford to alienate him. He also loves Musk’s money. He may be stuck with the one guy who overshadows him and makes him an object of ridicule.

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Musk, Elon, Politics, Republicans, Trump
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