Trump Claims That Democrats Staged a Coup by Replacing Biden

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2024 //
56

At the time of the Republican Convention, Trump felt sure he was on his way to a landslide victory. He had centered his campaign on the theme that Biden was senile. The attack ads were ready to roll. But only days after the lights were turned off in Milwaukee, Biden announced that he was stepping aside, and he endorsed his Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Trump was furious. How dare Biden decide not to run! Trump began to claim that what the Democrats had done was “unconstitutional” and that it was a “coup.”

Biden was pressured by party leaders to withdraw because, after his awful performance in the June debate, they feared that not only would he lose but he would hurt the chances of Democrats running for other offices. The switch at the top was unprecedented but was certainly not unconstitutional. The nation’s political parties are not even mentioned in the Constitution. They make their own rules. But facts never get in Trump’s way.

Trump continues to insist that there was a “coup,” and some in the media believe he’s setting up the basis for another violent attempt to restore him to power. His most rabid followers believe whatever he says, and this article by Colby Itkowitz and Hannah Allan in the Washington Post shows that they now believe that Harris’s substitution for Biden was illegitimate, intended to cheat Trump of the Presidency yet again.

The article reminds us that Trump predicted that the election in 2016 was rigged, that the election in 2020 was rigged, and now he’s back to the same bogus claim. The only election results he accepts as valid are his own wins.

They write:

From the moment Vice President Kamala Harris emerged as the surprise Democratic presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump began arguing that she was anointed through a “coup” rather than chosen by primary voters. After barely mentioning election integrity at the Republican convention in July, Trump is now casting the upcoming election as “rigged” against him and baselessly labeling any hurdle in his path as election interference.

“This was an overthrow of a president. This was an overthrow,” Trump said at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Saturday, referring to Harris replacing Biden on the ticket. He later added: “They deposed a president. It was a coup of a president. This was a coup.”

Trump’s efforts to undermine confidence in this year’s election are reminiscent of the tactics he used in the 2020 campaign and indicate how he could again seek to delegitimize the results if he loses, setting the stage for another combustible fight over the presidency, election and national security experts said.

“This is Donald Trump’s playbook: ‘There’s a deep state, they’re all out to get me,’” said Elizabeth Neumann, who served as a senior Department of Homeland Security official during the Trump administration and is now among his conservative critics. “Even here — as he’s going to have to face a stronger, harder candidate to defeat — his default is, ‘Well, this couldn’t possibly be legal. This is a coup. This is wrong,’ even though there are no facts to back that up.”

While some of this is “just for show,” Neumann said, Trump and his allies are also setting up the “next version of ‘Stop the Steal.’”

Trump has long insisted that his political failures are the result of some malevolent force trying to keep him out of power, and he has weakened faith in the U.S. election system despite widespread evidence that the results can be trusted. When asked to comment for this article, Trump’s campaign responded with a statement attacking Harris and again characterizing her nomination as part of a “coup.”

“President Trump and our campaign have never been more confident that we are going to win this election,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.

When Trump first ran for president in 2016, he falsely claimed that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) stole the Iowa caucuses, and he told his supporters that the general election was “absolutely being rigged” against him. After winning, he falsely said his loss in the popular vote was due to “millions of people who voted illegally.” In 2020, he baselessly claimed the influx of mail-in ballots amid the global pandemic led to widespread fraud that cost him the election, and as Congress gathered to certify the results, Trump supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol and tried to halt the process.

Trump refuses to say whether he will accept the results of the 2024 election, even as he tells his fans that the Democrats are cheating.

In an Aug. 6 post on Truth Social, Trump presented a fantastical story that envisioned Biden, “whose Presidency was Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him,” crashing this week’s Democratic National Convention to take back the nomination.

“They forced him out. It was a coup. We had a coup,” Trump said of Biden at an Aug. 9 rally in Bozeman, Mont. “That was the first coup of the history of our country, and it was very successful.”

This post-election time will be different from January 6, 2021. If Trump calls up his Proud Boys and his other militias, D.C. will be prepared. And Trump will not be in charge.

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Lies, Trump

Robert Hubbell Denounces Washington Post Editorial on Kamala’s Economic Plan

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2024 //
12

Robert Hubbell was outraged by the editorial in The Washington Post attacking Kamala Harris’s economic plan. The editorial said, basically, that her plans to help the middle class made no sense. Consider the source, he says. In one post, he listed and praised Harris’s economic priorities, then went into detail, explaining how they would benefit the average American.

This is the heart of her economic plan:

  • Increase the child tax credit.
  • Increase the earned income tax credit for wage earners without children.
  • Prohibit price gouging in food supplies.
  • Subsidize down payments for first-time [home] buyers.
  • Decrease the cost of prescription drugs.

Then he followed up by attacking the Washington Post editorial belittling her plan.

He writes:

Apologies for taking a second-bite at the apple, but Jeff Bezos just gave Kamala Harris a gift that cannot be ignored. The Bezos-owned Washington Post just issued an Editorial by the Editorial Board that was titled, “Opinion The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks.”

Oh, thank you, Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and one of the largest home delivery grocery services on the planet, thank you!

Here is what Kamala Harris should do at the convention: Put up that headline on big screen, and give a speech that contains these elements:

The Washington Post Editorial Board, which works for billionaire Jeff Bezos, thinks it’s a “gimmick” to give families with newborns a tax credit in the first year of the newborn’s life.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos thinks it’s a “gimmick” to expand the child-tax credit, the single most effective measure for lifting children out of poverty in three generations.

Billionaire Bezos, who has a super-yacht to ferry passengers to his mega-yacht, thinks it’s a “gimmick” to give low-income working Americans a $1,500 tax credit.

Billionaire Bezos, whose company, Amazon, is trying to take over the pharmacy business in America, thinks it’s a gimmick to limit out of cost prescription drug prices to $2,000 for ALL Americans, not just seniors.

Billionaire Bezos, who just bought his THIRD mansion on an island in Florida, thinks it’s a gimmick to give first time home buyers a $25,000 subsidy for a starter home.

Billionaire Bezos says that we shouldn’t prohibit “price gouging” because grocery stores are aggressively reducing prices. Let me hear from you: Is your grocery bill going down now that inflation is under control?

Billionaire Bezos is free to have his personal newspaper criticize my plan all he wants. This is America and billionaires are entitled to free speech, even if they get to buy an Editorial Board to promote their opinions.

But fair is fair. Donald Trump held a press conference last week to reiterate his plan for the economy, which has only two elements: Extending tax cuts that favor billionaires and imposing an economy killing 10% tariff on all imports.

Here is what Jeff Bezos’s editorial board had to say about Donald Trump’s insane plan that just happens to be good for billionaires like Jeff Bezos: Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. 

That’s right, in the face of an economic plan that favors Jeff Bezos but would destroy the economy for hundreds of millions of Americans, the Washington Post Editorial Board was silent–but roused itself to say that my plan aimed at helping the working poor and middle class is–according to Bezos–a bunch of gimmicks.

Now, Jeff Bezos and his employees on the Editorial Board will tell you that Bezos doesn’t weigh in the editorial stance of the Washington Post. If you believe that the panicked voice of Jeff Bezos wasn’t in the ear of every editor who did his bidding by writing that editorial–while ignoring Trump’s plan–I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I would like to sell you.

I have promised a new way forward for all Americans, one that does not involve a handful of billionaires telling us what is good for the working poor and middle class in America. I suggest that Jeff Bezos leave his private island in Florida, sell his super-yacht AND mega yacht, and spend some time with people like you–the people who built America before Amazon arrived on the scene and who will sustain it long after Amazon is gone. You are America. You are the new way forward. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Categories Bias, Billionaires, Economy, Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media

Umair Haque: Kamala’s Economic Policies Are “Brilliant”!

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2024 //
46

Umair Haque is an economist. In this post, he takes aim at journalists who have taken potshots at Kamala Harris’s economic proposals. He explains why they are, as he puts it, “brilliant.”

He writes:

It took nanoseconds. Kamala announced her economic policies. Wham! The press pounced. All in unison. Without taking even a second to think. Bad! Terrible! Awful! The Washington Post went so far as to legitimize Trump calling her a communist.

Welcome to the crackpot level of American media, and nowhere is it worse than its commentary on economics.

My friends, I’m here to tell you something. Kamala’s economic policies are brilliant. Absolutely stellar. They are the economic state of the art, reflecting not just the latest thinking, but also aimed directly at solving America’s biggest problems. Price gouging. Housing. Having a family. This is stuff that should be celebrated. America is becoming a leader again through such policies.

I know that for a fact. I’ve been the chief economist of one of the world’s largest corporations. I keep up with the literature. I’ve written peer-reviewed books about the economy. This is why so many of you follow me. I know precisely what I’m talking about.

They don’t. Journalism’s criticism of Kamala’s econ policies isn’t criticism at all. It’s a disgrace. They are just making it all up. I’m going to explain that to you, as well, because I feel that our econ journalists are an embarrassment. They lash out at Kamala—and yet they appear not to know the current state of the field at all. They’re regurgitating tired, obsolete far-right talking points from decades ago. Which have all been discredited in the real world. I’m going to explain that to you, in this dense essay, and it’s dense because I want to do justice to Kamala’s policies, and rebut some of the sheer nonsense coming from these crackpots by teaching you a thing or two about econ.

If you feel like something’s off here, it is. They’re trying to get Kamala. Just like they got Biden. This sort of thing is the equivalent of character assassination, and our media should be doing better. What do I mean?

How to Raise a Society’s (Falling) Standard of Living

The Washington Post minced no words. Instantaneously, their editorial board called Kamala’s trio of policies “gimmicks,” while their columnists savaged them, too. Fair? Spectacularly foolish.

Kamala’s first policy is to offer families a $6K tax break for having a first child. A gimmick? Give me a break. America’s median family income is about $70K. Before taxes. That’s about 10% of median income. Would you like a 10% raise? That’s what you’ll get. I think at this juncture, most Americans would be grateful for 10% more income. Half of families—that’s what “median” means—make less than that, of course. So up to half of American families could get a lift more than 10% of their incomes. 

In this day and age? We’re savaged by a “cost of living crisis.” I put that in quotes to emphasize that I don’t make it up: even the world’s most pre-eminent, and most conservative, financial institutions, like the IMF, call it that. During an historic cost of living crisis, giving people more than a 10% lift in incomes? That’s a Very Big Deal. 

Sound like a “gimmick” to you? The media didn’t even bother doing this basic math. It takes five seconds. But they appear not to even know these fundamental facts about the economy—median incomes, cost of living crisis, etcetera. Like I said: this isn’t criticism. They’re just making stuff up. The IMF itself—one of the world’s, again, most conservative institutions—has recommended governments find ways to help people address the cost of living crisis. Ways just like this.

It’s shocking to me that the editorial board of the Washington Post and their columnists wouldn’t know this. But maybe it shouldn’t be. They seem more focused on gotcha journalism these days than facts. And facts are what I’m trying to teach you. Facts enlighten us, and now you know whyKamala’s first policy is brilliant.

Many readers pointed out to me that the Post is now run by a former Murdoch editor? Does that play a role here? 

Let’s come to the second policy, which is building three million new homes. Targeted directly at the middle and working class, not to be sold to investors, aka private equity funds. Is that a…gimmick?

Three million homes. They will house three million families. That’s twelve million people. Twelve million people is 4% of America’s population. In other words, Kamala’s proposing enough housing for a sizable share of the population. If you’re one of those twelve million, is that a gimmick? Having a new, affordable home to live in? A “gimmick,” if we’re fair, is something that doesn’t really count—maybe it affects .001% of the population. But 4%? That’s very real. Far from a gimmick—that’s a policy with real, and tremendous impact. If it’s repeated in a second term, we’re talking housing for 10% of a society’s population, roughly. A gimmick? You must be kidding.

Let’s think harder about it. To build each of those homes, perhaps 10 people will be employed. Probably more, but let’s stick with ten. That’s 30 million jobs. What do 30 million new jobs do? They raise demand in the economy. What are we currently struggling with? A situation of slow demand, which the IMF—let me say it yet again, the world’s most authoritative financial institution—has called weak and sluggish and a threat to financial stability. Creating 30 million jobs right about now is an incredibly smart move, because it restores health, demand, and growth, the good kind, to the economy, when things are risky and uncertain and difficult.

Again, how hard is this to understand? I’ve explained it to you simply, and yet, media didn’t want to think any of this through for even the few seconds it took me to explain it to you. That’s disgraceful. If a media can’t do that, what purpose does it serve?

Let’s keep going. What do those 30 million jobs do, in turn? They create growth, because now, of course, more demand is flowing through the economy, more money is in people’s pockets, and they can go out and spend and invest it. As they do that, new businesses can roar, and more than that, the magical thing called certainty and confidence return. That in turn sparks a virtuous cycle of investment, which is the key to raising living standards.

And that’s really what all this is about. Raising living standards. That’s the point of an economy, after all. And yet our media, pundits, journalists, editorial boards—they seem deliberately unwilling to engage with that point and fact, instead, just regurgitating discredited talking points. All the above is “communism!” My God. Can you even imagine? If any time we talk about raising living standards, it’s “communism,” then of course, we’re not having a sane conversation anymore. We’re just trying to reason with crackpots, which is what America’s media has become, sadly.

Why American Living Standards Have Fallen

I’ll come back to that. First, let’s tackle the third proposal from Kamala, which is the one that really set the media’s hair on fire.

Price gouging. They went nuts. Price gouging?! Where? Where’s the evidence? The Post’s economics columnist went so far as to equate taking on price gouging to “price controls,” and say that was communist. So there’s the Post, calling Kamala a communist.

Let’s pause there. The Post’s columnist literally made this up. Kamala’s proposal pointedly doesn’t mention price controls. And in fact, there are already price controls in the economy. Here’s one Big One. The…minimum wage. Does it make America a “communist” society because it has a minimum wage? You see how ridiculous this is. And you also see how illiterate economics commentators are not to understand this elementary level of stuff.

Why do we want to stop price gouging, anyways? Far from being “communism,”, because that’s how we restore capitalism to good health. Price gouging is already illegal in most states, and every other developed country besides America. Why? Because it’s usually evidence of, and propelled by, “anti-competitive behaviour.” Anti-competitive behaviour means basically building monopolies. America’s economy is the most highly concentrated on earth—just a handful of gigantic companies control nearly every industry. What we want, if we’re interested in the health of capitalism, is competition.

Competition between market players, which ends up in price competition. Why do we want price competition? Because prices are “signals” in economics. The integrity of the “price signal” is paramount in economics, because it allows economies to allocate resources efficiently. But if prices are out of whack, if they’re bad signals, then an economy can’t do that. And that is why we want no price gouging—not for moral reasons, or because we’re “communists,” but because we want capitalism to be healthy, and for prices to be reliable, meaningful signals.

Again, it’s utterly shocking to me that media wouldn’t know this, or worse, not be able to tell you this. The Washington Post literally legitimized Trump calling Kamala a communist, and people went into an uproar, rightly so. But on an even deeper level, it’s worse than it seems, because, no, it’s not “communism,” we’re actually trying to defend capitalism, by making prices work the way they should.

Whew, it makes my head sort of explode, but let me return to the issue.

How do we know if there’s price gouging or not? The wrong way to do it is the way pundits tried to—revealing, again, that they don’t know what they’re doing. They looked at “longitudinal” data, aka, prices over time, in a narrow way. The correct way to do it is to look at comparative data.

Let me explain, and here’s a brief tutorial in social science, by the way.

Think about any major category of expenditure in America. Let’s take for example healthcare. Healthcare costs in America have exploded by thousands of percent over the last few decades. So has, for example, sending a kid to college. That’s also true for food, and of course housing. 

Now. In most of these categories, the same hasn’t been true in many other countries. In France, my favorite example is that the Sorbonne is free, while sending a kid to Harvard will cost $100K a year or whatnot. Healthcare’s affordable, even if it’s private, in most of the rest of the rich world. Why is that? And what does it tell us?

It tells us that something went badly wrong in America. Americans pay astronomical prices for most basic categories of goods and services compared to most if not many of their peer countries. And that’s clear evidence of price gouging.

And Americans know that by now. We all know that when you get some kind of bill, for example, from an HMO, it’s literally mostly made up. And if you call up and make a fuss, you can get them to drop some of the “charges,” because they’re fictional to begin with. 

One thing that strikes most Americans who’ve lived overseas is how much cheaper food is. It comes as a shock. Fruit, dairy, meat, even snacks—half the price or less. That, too, isn’t just evidence of price problems in America, it’s because Europe’s laws on food have been carefully designed to keep it relatively affordable for people.

Is there price gouging in America? Media and pundits have gone hysterical asking this question, and then tried to answer it in naive and unsophisticated ways. They end up missing the forest for the trees. There’s a much simpler, and yet more sophisticated way, to think about the question. If there’s not price gouging in America, how come life in peer countries is so much more affordable? 

This is all why America’s standard of living has been falling. According to the most authoritative index on the subject.

That’s a fact. Another one that those writing about economics should know. If there’s not price gouging happening, then why are living standards falling? America’s hardly out of money, housing, or jobs, after all. The reason must be that people are having a harder and harder affording the standard of living their parents and grandparents once enjoyed.

How (Not) to Think About Economics

You see my point, perhaps. Let me make it really, really clear though. There’s a lot of crackpot “research” that comes from “think tanks” in America, which is just right wing propaganda, basically. But the last really good paper on all this? By an eminent and internationally respected economist? Here’s what it found:

I review the causes and consequences of rising concentration of market shares that is occurring in most U.S. industries. While concentration is not necessarily harmful to the economy, my assessment of the available evidence leads me to conclude that Increased barriers to entry have resulted in lower investment, higher prices, and lower productivity growth. I estimate that the associated decline in competition has likely decreased aggregate labor income in the United States by more than $1 trillion between 2000 and 2019.

Now connect that to the evidence on falling living standards.

And there are literally tons of papers like that, because this is what the field has found. Its a consensus now in mainstream economics that, yes, this is a problem, monopolies, raising prices, leading to lower investment and growth. But—again—the editorial boards and journalists we’re dealing with don’t appear to actually read, know, or grasp modern economics at all, and so they don’t know this. But then what business do they have teaching you rank disinformation?

All of that’s abysmal and shocking to me. Let me sum up where we are.

Kamala’s policies aren’t gimmicks. They’re brilliant. Because they hold to transform the American economy, by raising living standards again. 

Kamala’s policies aren’t “communism.” They’re designed to keep capitalism healthy. Those are polar opposites, and that journalists and editorial boards have fallen for the former tell us what level their thinking is at—nonfunctional.

Kamala’s policies aren’t some kind of radical leftism. In fact, they are precisely the directions that the cutting edge of the field of economics, the best economists, already suggest. But because journalists and editorial boards don’t read that stuff, they don’t know that, and that’s actually disgraceful, because they’re just making stuff up, and miseducating you. The truth is that 99% of the world’s better economists would nod their heads at Kamala’s plans, and approve whole-heartedly. (And if crackpots from American thinktanks disagree, so much the better.)

We should celebrate policies this smart, innovative, and ferocious. To reflect the cutting edge of economics, to transform living standards, to lay a foundation for growth—these are brave and wise and good things. For media and journalists to paint them as the opposite is, like I’ve said, disgraceful. It betrays that they literally appear to have no idea about the very issues they’re pretending to be authorities opining on, that they hope you listen to. You shouldn’t. Their ignorance is one thing, but when ignorance joins hands with itself, it’s called folly, and nobody should make that mistake.

America Deserves Better

America deserves better than the charade media is playing out with policy. If you don’t understand the first thing about economics, as I’ve proven here, then…keep your mouth shut and go read and learn instead. It’s shocking and alarming that a major American paper, as we discussed above, would call keeping capitalism healthy “communism,” and play right into Trump’s hands, repeating his smear. Just crazy—but irresponsible, too, and egregiously outside the boundaries of good journalism. This is some of the lowest quality writing and thinking I believe I’ve ever seen—I’d flunk it out of a college class—and America deserves better.

Tomorrow, I’ll write some more about this—this is too long already. Take some time with it. This was dense, and I packed a lot of lessons and example into this essay. Let me end on this note.

I’m here to tell it to you like it is. If Kamala’s policies sucked, I’d tell you. If they were pie-in-the-sky, I’d say it. If they were fantastical or brain-dead, you’d hear it from me. The fact is that they are brilliant. Remarkable. Smart. I don’t say that lightly. Don’t let those who don’t know the first thing about economics, don’t read papers or books, and still think the wealth is going to trickle down, or right-wing thinktanks are credible—don’t let them convince you otherwise. Don’t join them in their folly. This moment is too crucial for that.

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Categories Democracy, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Harris, Kamala, Media

Houston: Enrollment Drops by 9,000

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2024 //
20

Many principals, teachers, parents, and students in Houston are fed up with Mike Miles’ lockstep, scripted curriculum. Miles boasts that test scores are going up, but far more important indicators are in decline, especially morale. After Miles stripped autonomy away from professionals, the district experienced alarming numbers of resignations. Hundreds of uncertified teachers have been hired to replace those who left.

Student enrollment sharply dropped by about 5%.

The Houston Chronicle reported:

Sarah Malik used to think Houston ISD’s Lantrip Elementary School was a great fit for her daughter.

After the departures of the school’s principal and several teachers in the spring, Malik knew they had to go. 

Malik is one of thousands of parents who pulled their child from HISD this year. Several told the Chronicle they were leaving the district due to the stringent reforms, plummeting morale, principal and teacher departures or cookie-cutter lessons that they said did not account for children’s individual learning needs during the previous academic year.

HISD’s enrollment will not be finalized until October, but it appears to be on track to drop below 180,000 students. 

If you read the literature about motivation, you will learn that the most important driver of motivation is a sense of autonomy. Read Edward Deci, Dan Ariely, Daniel Pink. Miles is crushing morale, motivation, and autonomy.

Categories Accountability, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Houston

Peter Greene: Conservatives Think States Can Support Both Public Schools and “Choice.” They Can’t.

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2024 //
21

Peter Greene critiques the conservative idea that states should support public schools and all sorts of choice. Greene explains why this idea erodes the quality of public schools, which enroll the vast majority of the nation’s students. Conservatives blame teachers’ unions for whatever they dont like about pibkic schools, but Greene denonstrates that they are wrong. Open the link to read the full article.

He writes:

In the National Review, Michael Petrilli, Thomas Fordham Institute honcho and long-time reformster, poses the argument that folks on the right don’t need to choose “between expanding parental options and improving traditional public schools.” Instead, he asserts, they “can and should do both.”

On the one hand, it’s a welcome argument these days when the culture panic crowd has settled on a scorched earth option for public schools. As Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation president, put it in his now-delayed-until-after-it-can’t-hurt-Trump-election-prospects book, “We don’t merely seek an exit from the system; we are coming for the curriculums and classrooms of the remaining public schools, too.” For many on the right, the education policy goal is to obliterate public schools and/or force them to closely resemble the private christianist schools that culture panickers favor. 

Pertrilli is sympathetic to the “let’s just give parents the money and be done with it” crowd. 

We’ve inherited a “system” that is 150 years old and is saddled with layers upon layers of previous reforms, regulations, overlapping and calcified bureaucracies, and a massive power imbalance between employees and constituents, thanks to the almighty teachers unions.

Sigh. Reforms and regulations, sure, though it would be nice for Petrilli to acknowledge that for the last forty-ish years, those have mostly come from his own reformster crowd. And I am deeply tired of the old “almighty teachers unions” trope, which is some serious baloney. But his audience thinks it’s true, so let’s move on. 

Petrilli’s point is that conservatives should not be focusing on “school choice” alone, but should embrace an “all of the above” approach. Petrilli dismisses Democrats as “none of the above” because of their “fealty to the unions,” which is, again, baloney. Democrats have spent a couple of decades as willing collaborators with the GOP ; if they are “none of the above” it’s because they’ve lost both the ability and authority to pretend to be public education supporters. The nomination of Tim Walz has given them a chance to get on the public education team, but let’s wait and see–there’s no ball that the Democratic Party can’t drop.

Petrilli sits on a practical point here (one that Robert Pondiscio has made repeatedly over the years)– public schools are a) beloved by many voters, b) not going away, and c) still educate the vast, vast majority of U.S. students. Therefore, folks should care about the quality of public education.

Petrilli then floats some ideas, all while missing the major obstacle to his idea. There are, he claims, many reforms that haven’t been tried yet, “including in red states where the teachers unions don’t have veto power.” I believe the actual number of states where the union doesn’t have veto power is fifty. But I do appreciate his backhanded acknowledgement that many states have dis-empowered their teachers unions and still haven’t accomplished diddly or squat. It’s almost as if the unions are not the real obstacle to progress.

His ideas? Well, there’s ending teacher tenure, a dog that will neither hunt nor lie down and die. First of all, there is no teacher tenure. What there is is policy that requires school districts to follow a procedure to get rid of bad teachers. Behind every teacher who shouldn’t still have a job is an administrator who isn’t doing theirs. 

Tenure and LIFO (Last In First Out) interfere with the reformster model of Genius CEO school management, in which the Genius CEO should be able to fire anyone he wants to for any reason he conceives of, including having become too expensive or so experienced they start getting uppity. 

The theory behind much of education reform has been that all educational shortfalls have been caused by Bad Teachers, and so the focus has been on catching them (with value-added processing of Big Standardized Test scores), firing them, and replacing them with super-duper teachers from the magical super-duper teacher tree. Meanwhile, other teachers would find this new threatening environment inspirational, and they would suddenly unleash the secrets of student achievement that they always had tucked away in their file cabinet, but simply hadn’t implemented.

This is a bad model, a non-sensical model, a model that has had a few decades to prove itself, and has not. Nor has Petrilli’s other idea– merit pay has been tried, and there are few signs that it even sort of works, particularly since schools can’t do a true merit pay system and also it’s often meant as a cost-saving technique (Let’s lower base pay and let teachers battle each other to win “merit” bonuses that will make up the difference).

Petrilli also argues against increased pay for teacher masters degrees because those degrees “add no value in terms of quality of teaching and learning” aka they don’t make BS Test scores go up. He suggests moving that extra money to create incentives for teachers to move to the toughest schools. 

Petrilli gets well into weeds in his big finish, in which he cites the “wisdom of former Florida governor Jeb Bush” and the golden state of Florida as if it’s a model for all-of-the-above reform and not a state that has steadily degraded and undercut public schools in order to boost charter and private operations, with results that only look great if you squint hard and ignore certain parts(Look at 4th grade scores, but be sure to ignore 8th and 12th grade results). And if you believe that test results are the only true measure of educational excellence.

So, in sum, Petrilli’s notion that GOP state leaders should support public education is a good point. What is working against it?

One is that his list is lacking. Part of the reform movement’s trouble at this point is that many of its original ideas were aimed primarily at discrediting public education. The remaining core– use standardized tests to identify and remove bad teachers– is weak sauce. Even if you believe (wrongly) that the core problem of public education is bad teaching, this is no way to address that issue. 

Beyond bad teachers, the modern reform movement hasn’t had a new idea to offer for a couple of decades. 

Petrilli also overlooks a major challenge in the “all of the above approach,” a challenge that reformsters and choicers have steadfastly ignored for decades.

You cannot run multiple parallel school systems for the same cost as a single system. 

If you want to pay for public schools and charter schools and vouchers, it is going to cost more money. “School choice” is a misnomer, because school choice has always been available. Choicers are not arguing for school choice–they’re arguing for taxpayer funded school choice. That will require more taxpayer funds. 

You can’t have six school systems for the price of one. So legislators have been left with a choice. On the one hand, they can tell taxpayers “We think school choice is so important that we are going to raise your taxes to pay for it.” On the other hand, they can drain money from the public system to pay for charters and vouchers all while making noises about how the public system is totes overfunded and can spare the money easy peasy. 

I can offer a suggestion for conservatives who want to help public schools improve.

Get over your anti-union selves.

Please open the link to finish the article.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, School Choice, Segregation, Unions, Vouchers

Dean Baker: The Little-Known Biden-Harris Success Story

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2024 //
6

Dean Baker published a terrific article in The New Republic, called “The Biggest Success Story the Country Doesn’t Know About.” Baker is a  macroeconomist who co-founded the Center for Economic and Policy Research(CEPR) with Mark Weisbrot.

He wrote:

Over the last few weeks, an extraordinary series of events has altered the course of an election that previously seemed to have few surprises in store. Eight days after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, President Joe Biden announced his historic decision to withdraw from the presidential race and cast his support for Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his stead. It will be some time before we know all the political ramifications of these events, but whatever they may be, they will not change the past.

What can the past tell us about what’s to come? Perhaps the most critical element of a candidate’s platform is their approach to the economy. In assessing Harris as a presidential candidate, people will want to look at the economic track record of the Biden-Harris administration. As always, the president takes the lead role in setting the economic course for the administration, but throughout Biden’s term in office, Harris was standing alongside him. The Republicans will surely blame her for everything that went wrong and many things that didn’t. On the other hand, Harris can take credit for what went right, and there is much here to boast about. Indeed, she can (and should) run on the outstanding—and criminally underappreciated—economic record of the Biden administration.

Under Biden, the United States made a remarkable recovery from the pandemic recession. We have seenthe longest run of below 4.0 percent unemployment in more than 70 years, even surpassing the long stretch during the 1960s boom. This period of low unemployment has led to rapid real wage growth at the lower end of the wage distribution, reversing much of the rise in wage inequality we have seen in the last four decades. It has been especially beneficial to the most disadvantaged groups in the labor market.

The burst of inflation that accompanied this growth was mostly an outcome of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine. All other wealthy countries saw comparable rises in inflation. As of summer 2024, the rate of inflation in the United States has fallen back almost to the Fed’s 2.0 percent target. Meanwhile, our growth has far surpassed that of our peers.

Furthermore, the Biden administration really does deserve credit for this extraordinary boom. Much of what happens under a president’s watch is beyond their control. However, the economic turnaround following the pandemic can be directly traced to Biden’s recovery package, along with his infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, all of which have sustained growtheven as the impact of the initial recovery package faded. While the CARES Act, pushed through when Trump was in office, provided essential support during the shutdown period, it was not sufficient to push through the recovery.

Finally, the negative assessment that voters routinely give the Biden administration on the economy seems more based on what they hear from the media or elsewhere. They generally rate their own financial situation positively and say that the economy in their city or state is doing well. It is only the national economy, of which they have no direct knowledge, that they rate poorly.

Let the Good Times Roll!

Before going through what is positive about the Biden economy, I’ll just state the obvious. Tens of millions of people are struggling to get by, or not getting by at all. This is a horrible situation, which we should be trying to change every way we can. However, this has always been the case. We have a badly underdeveloped system of social supports, so that people cannot count on getting the food, health care, and shelter they need.

It’s also the case that the spurt of inflation in 2021 and 2022 was a shock after a long period of low inflation. People found themselves paying considerably more for food, gas, shelter, and other essentials, and in many cases their pay did not keep up, especially at the time these prices were soaring.

But the Biden administration has taken important steps to directly improve the situation for low- and moderate-income people, notably by making the subsidies in the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, more generous and expanding the Child Tax Credit, or CTC. He increased the benefitsin the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, by 21 percent. Unfortunately, the expansion of the CTC, which was included in the initial recovery package, was only temporary. It expired at the end of 2021, and Biden has been unable to get the support needed in Congress to extend it.

While we should always recognize the enormous work left to be done, we need as well to acknowledge when we are making progress, and we have made an enormous amount of progress in improving living standards during Biden’s presidency. Also, the suffering of tens of millions of people at the lower end of the income distribution can’t possibly be the explanation for negative views of the economy. People at the bottom were suffering at least as much in 2019, when most people gave the economy high marks.

Categories Biden, Democracy, Economy, Elections, Environment, Higher Education

Right-Wingers Claim Tim Walz Was Not Really a Coach; GOP Investigates Whether He Is a Spy for China

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2024 //
27

Trump supporters are desperate. First, they attacked Tim Walz’s 24 years of service in the National Guard because he retired to run for Congress at a time when his unit knew they might be deployed to Afghanistan in the next two years.

The Trump rumor mill has been working overtime to depict Walz and his wife as dangerous, leftwing radicals.

Snopes debunked a rightwing rumor that Tim and Gwen Walz have a net worth of $182 million and their daughter Hope got a student loan of $82,000 forgiven. In fact, the Walz family has a net worth made up of their pensions; they own no stocks or bonds. In 2023, they had a joint income of $299,000, with almost half coming from pensions. By contrast, Republican VP candidate J.P. Vance is a multimillionaire, with a net income of $1.2 million-$1.3 million in 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal. Some Americans like the fact that Walz is not wealthy, says the WSJ, but others think he lacks the financial acumen of a wealthy man.

Now, says The New York Times, they say Walz wasn’t really a coach because he was not the head coach of the high school football team. Only the head coach, they claim, is a real coach. How petty can they be?

Meanwhile, hard–right Congressman James Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, announced that his committee will investigate Walz because of his visits to China as an exchange student and as chaperone for student exchanges. Is he a spy?

All of this is a reflection of Republican desperation and Red-baiting.

Jess Bidgood, a reporter for the New York Times, asked her colleague Alan Blinder of the New York Times to explain whether Walz was really a coach:

Fact-checking questions about Walz’s role as a coach

A surprising argument has emerged from some right-wing circles: that Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was not a high school football coach because he was his team’s defensive coordinator, not the head coach. I asked my colleague Alan Blinder, a font of football knowledge who wrote about Walz’s coaching career *and* answers my questions about sports whenever I have them, to explain what’s what.

Setting aside that assertion’s spuriousness for the moment, our reporting last week on Tim Walz as Coach Walz suggests just how comfortable he is with not being the top dog.

Rocky Almond, who coached basketball with Walz in Nebraska in the early 1990s, said that Walz had “been the supporting actor for his whole life,” recalling a trip to China that the future vice-presidential pick organized. Even though Walz was the group’s veteran Asia hand, Almond remembered a coach who never tried to seize command.

“He just was always in the background,” said Almond, who thought the vice presidency was “the perfect role” for his old colleague’s temperament.

“I think he had the intensity, but it was a positive energy,” said Jeff Tomlin, the Nebraska high school head football coach who brought Walz aboard to coach linebackers. “He was a very good assistant that way. As the head coach, you sometimes have to be an enforcer and really guard your culture and make hard decisions. As assistant, you want to be loyal to your head coach and back up your head coach, and he was all of those things.”

And as for that question of whether Walz should count as a coach at all? Some players on his Minnesota title-winning team still refer to him as “Coach Walz,” and football staffs are filled with specialty coaches who are, in fact, coaches with headsets and playbooks.

“Defensive coordinator is arguably the most important position on a coaching staff other than the head coach,” the ESPN commentator Paul Finebaum mused to me today. “You can’t win a game, let alone a state championship, without being able to stop someone.”

— Alan Blinder

Categories Character, Elections, Ethics, Lies, Republicans, Trump, Walz, Tim

Josh Marshall: Why Kamala Harris Has Not Released Policy Papers or Given Interviews

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2024 //
100

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo cites several critical headlines in major newspapers about Kamala Harris’s campaign. One says her campaign is light on details. Another says she is running a substance-free campaign. Yet another demands to know when she will meet the press. He remembers how the Washington press corps treated her as a lightweight, as a problem, as a dead weight at the top of the ticket. There was an unspoken assumption that the public was not ready for a Black woman for president, especially not this one.

He writes:

I’ve come at this debate in my head from a bunch of different directions over the last few days…. I actually got in a minor spat today with a reporter who I’d dinged for an article description which presented Harris as a sort of mystery candidate verging on a Manchurian Candidate, with unknown views and barely detailed ambitions. Are we kidding with all of this?

On the one hand, journalists press for information, details, answers. That’s what they do. It’s their job. It’s part of their job to be annoying. They press for things that people aren’t going to volunteer. But there is something uncanny and vaguely absurd hearing this mix of complaints, demands and warnings of electoral disaster leveled at a campaign which is finishing up what has to be at least among, and quite possibly the, best single month of any presidential campaign in at least half a century. Campaign success isn’t what journalists are or should be concerned about. But it defies belief that Harris and her campaign would shift gears when what they’ve been doing is working this well.

I’ve made my points on this in the earlier piece. I don’t want to rehash them here. But there is one additional point: modern political campaign journalism is almost totally indifferent to public policy. Normally, Democrats cannot get reporters to pay attention to it. So these demands for a “vision” for this and a vision for that and detailed policy papers on all the rest are just a bit weird. Where does this newfound interest come from?

The whole thing will take care of itself. Harris will do some interviews — not because reporters are demanding it but because it will make sense for her campaign. And they’ll flesh out some policies — again, ones that make sense for her campaign.

The deeper story is that most campaign reporters simply don’t know what to make of Harris’ campaign and can’t figure out how it has managed, at least for the moment, to be so successful. That’s not a criticism: I think many of Harris’ supporters are equally mystified. But they’re just happy with the results. They don’t need an explanation. But for reporters the inexplicableness requires a storyline. And this is that storyline: the substanceless campaign, the lack of interviews, yada yada yada. As Kate noted in today’s pod: Biden started doing a bunch of interviews when his campaign started to tank. Trump’s been doing a spree of them because he’s floundering and he’s trying to regain attention. Candidate do these when they need to, not when reporters demand it.

The final part of the story is rooted in official Washington’s view of Harris. To put it baldly, most elite DC journalists treated Harris with a kind of breezy disdain that could scarcely rise to the level of contempt. For the first year of her vice presidency there was an ongoing series of critical reports about issues in the Office of the Vice President, staff drama, mean bossism, general turmoil. I don’t know how much reality there was to those reports. But they set a dismal tone. You’ll remember that when Ezra Klein and others got together the calls for a Thunderdome convention, Klein referred delicately and painedly to “the Kamala Harris problem,” a problem so obvious that it scarcely required explanation: how to usher her out of the way for others from the vaunted Democratic bench.

I’m not trying to pick on Klein here. I’ve done enough of that. I note this simply because it was such a deep conventional wisdom that it hardly required explanation. Everyone in that world knew what he meant. That certainly figures into this, and in both directions. It is not only that there is this great appetite to find out just what it is Harris must be doing wrong. That backstory must have left Harris just utterly uninterested in what these folks have to say. They treated her as something between a punchline and a nonentity and now she’s the odds-on favorite, if only by a small margin, to be the next President. Why should she care?

Categories Elections, Harris, Kamala, Media

Jess Piper: Abortion Is on the Ballot in Missouri!

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2024 //
10

Jess Piper is a former teacher who lives on a farm in Missouri and fights for democracy. She urges Democrats to run everywhere. In most districts like hers, the elections are uncontested. She writes here about a groundswell to restore reproductive rights in Missouri.

Abortion is on the ballot in November in Missouri. Missouri will be the first state to overturn a complete ban. And, you read that right…I do not doubt that we will have enough votes to overturn the ban and enshrine the right to reproductive healthcare in Missouri.
Abortion rights supporters have prevailed in all seven states that already had decided ballot measures since 2022: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Vermont.
And now Missouri will have the chance.

If approved, the initiative would amend the state’s constitution to establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, remove the state’s current restrictions on abortion, allow the regulation of reproductive health care to improve a patient’s health, and require the government not to discriminate against people providing or seeking reproductive health care.

Listen, I am not going to blow smoke up your you-know-what and act like Missouri will flip blue this year, but I am going to be optimistic for a minute. Optimistic about Missouri…a state with a 22 year GOP supermajority and a GOP trifecta.

Missourians have had enough. We currently have a total abortion ban — no exceptions for rape or incest. We were the first state to ban the procedure after Roe fell with our AG out in front of cameras within minutes of the Dobbs decision.

Missourians needed 180K signatures to put reproductive rights on the ballot. We gathered 380K signatures. 200,000 more than we needed. We crushed it. We killed it. We proved that not only do most folks want to vote to restore abortion rights, but that hundreds of thousands would crawl across broken glass to find and sign a petition. 

When I was gathering signatures in rural Missouri, one woman was waiting for us as we set up the petition, signed it, and then texted her Bible group to remind them to come by and sign it. Yes, her Bible group.

And the language is clear. We were able to take out extremist language that could have confused voters. Here is the language as it will be presented on the ballot in November: Missouri Ballot Measure.

Rural folks are ready to regain access to abortion.

The protest photo above was taken in 2019. But, in rural spaces, we have been fighting much longer. People in my part of the state haven’t had access to abortion for over a decade. The only functioning clinic in the state was in St Louis and that is a 5-hour drive for folks in NW Missouri. We’ve been dealing with a lack of access for much longer than most realize. 

Even more than having abortion on the ballot? We have other initiatives to legalize sports betting and raise the minimum wage and guarantee paid sick leave. These three initiatives will bring out folks who may not vote regularly…these initiatives could be game-changers themselves by increasing turnout which is usually good for Democrats.

More than that? We have Harris at the top of the ticket and we have a pro-choice woman running to be governor in Missouri. Crystal Quade will be tasked this November with beating Mike Kehoe, our current Lt Governor, but don’t think that it can’t be done. 

Quade is a current legislator and the Minority Leader in the House. She is a proud working-class woman who has fought for Missourians by arguing for funding public schools, fighting for abortion rights and union wages, and feeding kids. 

On the other hand, Mike Kehoe voted to sell off Missouri farmland to foreign governments and for union-busting Right to Work legislation. Kehoe believes in “school choice” measures that drain public schools of funding that is then sent to private religious schools. He is also in favor of the current abortion ban.

While serving in the Missouri Senate, Kehoe backed abortion restrictions and claimed that he “voted for every pro-life, every sanctity of life bill since I’ve been in the Senate.” 

During his tenure, he voted to pass restrictions on abortion, like HB 400 in 2013, which “would require a doctor to be physically present when an abortion-inducing drug is first administered.” That bill restricted abortions, particularly in rural areas where doctors are not readily available. Additionally, in 2014, Kehoe voted to pass HB 1307 to increase the waiting period for abortions from 24 hours to 72 hours. 

So, here’s the thing…we have a chance to change Missouri in November. I don’t know that we can flip enough seats to defeat the supermajorities in the House and the Senate, but I know we can elect Crystal Quade if we all work together. And that’s exactly what we did to get the signatures to put abortion on the ballot in the first place.

It was hard work — we did it. We can elect Harris and Quade with an education campaign, engaged voters, including young voters, and an increased turnout. This is hard work. This can be done.

Everywhere I look, people are excited. Whether I’m at Walmart or Ace Hardware or Casey’s, there is hope. People, even rural people, are filled with optimism. And I’m not going to act like that is normal. Excitement and hope are sometimes hard to find in rural progressive politics, but it’s all I hear and see. 

Eyes are bright and people aren’t whispering about it. Look around…this is what democracy looks like.

~Jess

Categories Elections, Gender, Health, Missouri

A Former Student Describes Tim Walz’s Character

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2024 //
5

Doug Vose was a student in Tim Walz’s classroom many years ago. He says he votes Republican more often than Democratic. The one thing he feels strongly about is the character and authenticity of Mr. Walz.

He wrote in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The idea that “all politics is local” has been more of a theory than a reality when it comes to presidential election cycles.

This idea, however, has taken on a new meaning for me and fellow former students of Tim Walz as news of his announcement as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate led national news cycles last week.

Of particular interest for me — and I imagine for others who’ve sat in his classrooms over the years — has been the GOP’s strategy to paint Walz as an extreme coastal liberal who, if given his way, would love to pull the country into communism.

(Chuckle.)

As a 30-something who’s voted for the other guys more often than Walz’s party, I might have a unique POV on presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign painting Walz this way.

We all remember where we were on Sept. 11, 2001. I happened to be in U.S. history class at Mankato West High School when Walz poked his head in.

“They’ve just hit the Pentagon,” he said, turning to the TV in the corner of the classroom.

“Pay attention,” he told us. “You’re watching history, and your generation is going to remember this day forever.”

And of course, we did.

In the days and weeks that followed, Walz helped students of all kinds cope with their feelings about that horrible day. Students, faculty and friends gravitated to Walz to crystalize their feelings of fear, anger, hostility and sadness. After all, Mr. Walz was an Army National Guard officer, understood the minutiae of global geopolitics, but more than anything — he was a good man.

Tim and Gwen Walz were our faculty advisers for the Mankato West High School newspaper that fall, and in the wake of 9/11 the students on staff quickly pivoted to a big presentation outlining the pros and cons of retaliation in the Middle East for our next edition. A microcosm of our nation in those few weeks, the classroom was full of strong and often divided feelings. What would we say, and how would we say it?

Walz jumped in as he almost always did with student groups — from newspaper to yearbook to the burgeoning Gay-Straight Alliance that we’ve heard so much about in recent days. He challenged students to develop an informed point of view, to consider the value of empathy and to prescribe a path forward for our generation.

These were tough topics for everyone, and “Mr. Walz” served as our conscience.

In those days before his political career launched, it was very difficult for us to ascertain his political leanings. We knew he served at home and abroad in the Army National Guard. We knew he was a gun owner and perhaps the best shot of anyone we knew. We also knew that he was tremendously passionate about equal rights for everyone.

The idea that he’s a coastal liberal was as laughable then as it is now.

Since Walz has been in the governor’s office here in Minnesota, he has continued to stick to his principled approach.

He has been quite fairly criticized for Minnesota’s continued high state income taxes relative to our neighbors. Following widespread riots and looting in 2020, crime became a central issue for Minnesotans entering the 2022 gubernatorial election.

True to his history, though, Walz did not apologize for his convictions or his policies. He told Minnesotans if you don’t like sub-2% unemployment rates, if you don’t want to support a woman’s right to choose, and if you don’t like the way he commanded the National Guard during those fraught days in 2020, go ahead and vote for the other guy.

Walz won by almost 8 percentage points.

So, don’t be fooled by the easy smile and cheesy Dad jokes. When the chips are down and things get hard, this guy sticks to his convictions.

He doesn’t move his support to whichever group yells his name the loudest. He doesn’t take the politically easy route. He actually believes the things that are coming out of his mouth, whether you agree with him or not. When he’s not on TV talking, he is working to make his policies reality.

Walz digs in.

It’s the reason why for years students sought his counsel about hard things when he was a teacher at Mankato West; it’s why he was able to turn the First Congressional District blue for a decade, and it’s why he ran successfully to the right of a DFL-endorsed candidate to win the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018.

Memo to the Trump 2024 team from a dormant Republican and a Mr. Walz student:

Make the campaign about the Trump tax policy. Make it about China. Make it about the border.

Make it about anything other than leadership, decency and competency.

Because if you don’t, and this becomes a character debate, you’re way out of your league.

Doug Vose is a 2004 graduate of Mankato West High School and has been a software sales executive in the private sector for more than 15 years. He lives in Eden Prairie.

Categories Character, Elections, Ethics, Minnesota, Teachers, Walz, Tim
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