Timothy Snyder on Putin’s Paranoia

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2024 //
3

Timothy Snyder, the Yale University scholar of European history, tries to disentangle Putin’s lies about the terrorist attack on a concert hall in the suburbs of Moscow. ISIS-K claimed responsibility but Putin blames Ukraine. Of course.

Snyder writes:

            A week ago, four men associated with Islamic State attacked civilians in a concert venue near Moscow known as Crocus City Hall.  Islamic State (IS-K) claimed responsibility for the horrifying mass murder, and released videos recorded the terrorists’ perspective (don’t watch them).  Russia has since apprehended four men, who seem to be the perpetrators. 

            Russia has been engaged with Islamic State for some time.  Russia has been bombing Syria since 2015.  Russia and Islamic State compete throughout Africa for resources.  All four of the accused are Tajiks, a people subjected to discrimination inside Russia.

            These are the facts, subject to further verification and interpretation — and inherently unpredictable, as facts always are.  What was entirely predictable (and predicted) was that, regardless of the facts, Putin and his propagandists would place the blame for the attack on Ukraine and the United States.  On the internet (and in the Russian and Serbian press) this version is present.

            It is not hard to see why.  If Ukraine and the West are guilty, then Russian security services do not have to explain why they failed to stop Islamic terrorists from killing so many Russians, because Islamic terror vanishes from the story.  And if Ukrainians are to blame, then this would seem to justify the war that Russia is prosecuting against Ukraine.

Aftermath of Russian ballistic missile strike on Kyiv, 25 March

            Russian officials make a highly circumstantial argument: the terrorists’ car was stopped near Bryansk, which is in western Russia, and so vaguely near Ukraine, which means that the four Tajiks in a Renault were intending to cross the Ukrainian border, which means that they had Ukrainian backers, which means that it was a Ukrainian operation, which means that the Americans were behind it.  The reasoning here leaves something to be desired.  And the series of associations rests on no factual basis.

            The suspects were in a car near the west Russian city of Bryansk.  This much seems to be true.  The first version of the story was that they were headed for Belarus, which would make more sense, given the route.  Anyone with local knowledge would make a still more telling point. Because of the special relationship between Russia and Belarus, the Russian-Belarusian border is porous.  Once inside Belarus, it is relatively easy to pass into the European Union, because the Belarusian regime enables human smuggling into Lithuania and Poland.  Four Tajiks in a Renault would have been, in this sense, welcome in Belarus.  They would have had a decent chance to pay a smuggler to get them into the Schengen zone and thereby escape.

            The idea that the suspects were headed for Ukraine seems to be entirely invented and is extremely implausible.  As of this writing, none of the suspects seem to have said anything about Ukraine, despite the fact that they have been tortured, presumably with such a confession in mind.  And the notion of a Ukrainian escape route makes no sense.  The Russian-Ukrainian border is a place where Russian security forces are concentrated.  It is a site of combat.  It is the last place terrorists would want to go.  Four Tajiks in a Renault would have needed some very, very high-level Russian protection to get anywhere near the Russian-Ukrainian border. 

            Russian propagandists have told the population that it was not Islamic State but Ukraine who is to blame.  ISIS is just a “fake.”  The propagandists need not give reasons, and don’t.  In the press, one finds the wildest chains of association.  Britain is to blame for the attack (goes one claim) because one of the suspects was once in Turkey and the Turkish president knows the head of British foreign intelligence.

            Only Putin is permitted to set the theoretical tone for the argument for Ukrainian involvement, and yesterday (25 March) he gave that a shot.  His version went like this: Ukrainians are Nazis; Nazis do bad things; a bad thing happened; therefore Ukraine is to blame.  One does not have to be a logician to find the holes.  They are disturbingly large.   While it is true that Nazis do bad things, it does not follow that all bad things are done by Nazis. 

            And the factual premise is empirically false. One should not have to say this at this point of the war, but the Ukrainians are not the Nazis in this conflict.  The Ukrainian far right has never done well in elections, and is far less prominent than in any European state you care to name, let alone the United States.  Ukrainians have an active civil society, a vibrant press, multiple political parties, and freedom of speech.  Ukraine’s president won a free and fair election.  He is also, incidentally, Jewish.  The Ukrainian minister of defense, for that matter, is a Muslim.  The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces was born in Russia, where his parents still reside.  This kind of political and social pluralism is unusual by any standards.

By contrast, Russia under Putin is a one-man dictatorship. If “Nazi” stands for dictatorship, suppression of speech and the press, then Russia is the Nazi state.

Open the link to finish the essay.

Categories Evil, Extremism, International

U.S. Supreme Court Allows Gerrymandered Districts to Remain in Place

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2024 //
3

Republican legislatures have redrawn districts to protect Republican members of congress. They have gerrymandered districts by removing likely Democratic voters, especially African Americans. In South Carolina, the legislature “exiled” 30,000 African American voters, moving them to a different district, to ensure Nancy Mace’s re-election. The Supreme Court has the power to reverse these gerrymanders, but it has repeatedly slow-walked its decision making.

The Supreme Court is skewing district lines for the benefit of Republicans, which is just as outrageous as its decision to slow down Trump’s D.C. trial because of his ridiculous claim that the President has “absolute immunity” for anything he does, even attempting to overturn the election he lost. His immunity claim is as meritless as his insistence that he was exercising his First Amendment rights when he tried to persuade others to join in his criminal attempt to change the outcome of the election by finding fraud when there was none.

Patrick Marley of The Washington Post reported:

In a scenario that has played out in three states in recent years, a federal court ruled Thursday that time had run out to draw a new congressional district in South Carolina and that the state would have to proceed this fall with an existing election map the court had previously deemed illegal.

The ruling echoes redistricting cases in other Southern states where courts found that congressional maps violated the voting rights of Black voters and other people of color but allowed them to be used anyway, at least temporarily. In recent years, that happened in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.

In the latest instance, a panel of three judges decided to let South Carolina use a new map drawn by the Republican-led legislature because the Supreme Court had not yet decided an appeal that will ultimately determine how the district should be drawn. Voting rights advocates decried the ruling, saying it is unjust to hold even one election in districts that are unconstitutional.

“Once an election happens, you kind of can’t get back that election,” said Leah Aden, senior counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which brought the South Carolina lawsuit.

The ruling came a day after a different federal court upheld a congressional map in Florida that favors Republicans and erases a seat held by a Black Democrat. Those decisions, along with others in recent months, mean the congressional maps for 2024 are largely set. Republicans narrowly control the House, and voters this fall will decide whether to let them keep it.

Also Thursday, a federal appeals court issued a ruling that all but ensures North Carolina will use state legislative maps this fall that Democrats and voting rights advocates say dilute Black representation in the statehouse.
Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, said appeals take so long that states sometimes get a chance to use illegal maps for one or two election cycles before they are forced to draw new ones.

“It’s becoming more common,” he said. “Courts used to go out of their way to have voters not vote on a map that had been deemed illegal. Now, unless you get everything resolved, you have to vote on a map that is illegal. The courts can undermine voters’ rights through the process.”

Last year, a panel of three judges concluded that South Carolina’s Republican-led legislature “exiled” 30,000 Black voters from the state’s 1st Congressional District to make it safer for a White GOP incumbent, Rep. Nancy Mace.

South Carolina appealed, and both sides asked the Supreme Court to expedite the case to ensure a final ruling was in place well ahead of election season. The justices heard arguments in October but have yet to rule. At the time, a majority of the justices signaled they were inclined to allow the state to use the boundaries drawn by lawmakers.

With no decision and the June 11 primary on the horizon, South Carolina sought permission to use the map this year even though it had been deemed unconstitutional. The panel of judges unanimously agreed Thursday to keep the map in place for this election.

It noted that courts typically don’t allow maps to be used once they have been found to be invalid. “But with the primary election procedures rapidly approaching, the appeal before the Supreme Court still pending, and no remedial plan in place, the ideal must bend to the practical,” the judges wrote.

Last year the panel, which consists of two judges nominated by President Barack Obama and one by President Biden, found the map illegally split neighborhoods in the Charleston area to make Mace’s race easier. The new lines constituted a racial gerrymander that “exiled over 30,000 African American citizens from their previous district,” the panel found.

But on Thursday, with no decision from the Supreme Court, the panel determined it had to allow that map to be used this fall because there is little time left. Primary ballots must be sent to military and overseas ballots by April 27 under federal law, the judges noted.

“The district court had no choice,” said Richard L. Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. “So I think really the fault here lies with the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The Supreme Court has been handling cases more slowly of late. At this point during its 2005 term, the court had decided more than half of the cases in which it heard oral arguments, according to Empirical SCOTUS, which tracks court cases. This term, the court has decided just 22 percent of such cases.

Categories Education Reform

Alert the Secret Service and FBI! Trump Circulates Images of Biden as Victim of Violence

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2024 //
29

It may be a federal crime to threaten the life of the president of the United States. Who would know this better than a former President?

Yet Trump posted an image of President Biden, kidnapped and bound with rope lying in the back of a truck.

Olga Lautman posted this on her blog, Trump Tyranny Tracker.

Earlier today, Trump exhibited his alarming inclination towards violence by sharing a video on Truth Social depicting President Joe Biden bound in the back of a pickup truck. This disturbing act is just the latest instance of Trump injecting political violence into our national discourse. The recollection of Ambassador Yovanovitch’s ordeal stands as a stark reminder of Trump’s perilous nature and the threats he poses to democracy.

The Meidas Touch blog has similar images. Apparently Trump saw these Trump trucks while visiting on Long Island and liked them so much he posted them on “Truth Social.”

Some MAGA Republicans have been displaying this graphic depicting President Joe Biden bound with rope and laying in the bed of a pickup truck apparently kidnapped. Trump is now encouraging such imagery.

The bound Biden graphic on another pickup truck

This is loathsome. It also might be criminal. The Secret Service and FBI should investigate those who encourage violence against the President.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Oklahoma: EPIC Theft of Public Dollars by For-Profit Online Charter School

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2024 //
4

Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch lays out the details of Oklahoma’s biggest charter scandal. The owners of the for-profit online charter school Epic have been charged with embezzling millions of taxpayer dollars.

The size of the scandal alleged at the state’s largest online school befits the school’s name: epic. 

Investigators say two men at the helm of Epic Charter Schools defrauded taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars over a decade. Details of the scheme, which the state auditor called the largest abuse of taxpayer dollars in Oklahoma history, will be unveiled in court this week. 

A hearing in the embezzlement case against David Chaney and Ben Harris begins Monday. Oklahoma County District Special Judge Jason Glidewell allotted five days for the preliminary hearing, which is like a mini-trial, with witnesses and evidence and cross-examination. The purpose is for the judge to determine whether there’s enough probable cause to proceed to trial.

Chaney and Harris are each charged with fifteen felonies, including embezzlement, money laundering, computer crimes and conspiracy to defraud the state. They have denied wrongdoing.

Epic’s former chief financial officer, Josh Brock, faces the same felony charges but waived his preliminary hearing. He is expected to be one of several witnesses this week and will likely take a plea deal…

Prosecutors’ review of Epic Youth Services’ bank accounts revealed the company collected more than $69.3 million in management fees between 2013 and 2021, court records show. Of that, the trio split $55 million: Harris received $25 million, Chaney received $23 million and Brock received more than $7 million.  

Categories Corruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Oklahoma, Virtual Charter Schools

Wake-Up, New Hampshire! Koch and ALEC Import “Young Americans for Liberty” to Cancel Democracy

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2024 //
3

New Hampshire is under siege by Koch-funded libertarians who want to eliminate public services, government and democracy.

Former State Senator Jeanne Dietsch issues a warning about this invasion. New Hampshire already has a “Free State Movement” that promotes anti-government sentiment and elects representatives to the Legislature to oppose any government services.

Now comes Koch money and ALEC plans to advance the movement of selfish individualism.

Log on to Granite State Matters to watch a 17-minute video about the siege of New Hampshire.

In her newsletter, she reports:

“Wake Up NH” News Update

Teams are powering up! Will we alert enough people in time?

More people are waking up to the millions pouring into New Hampshire to buy our elections. Seats were full at all the “Wake Up” presentations in key swing districts. In its first two weeks, the Wake Up video has had hundreds of views. Over 500 copies of “NH: Battleground in the Fight to Dismantle Democracy” have already been distributed for reading and passing along. Five percent are in Spanish. Even as I am writing this, someone called asking for more books.

Many New Hampshire residents do not even know who the Free Staters are. Or they think they are just gentle, harmless hippies who want to smoke weed and shoot guns. They do not realize that FSP “movers” are urged to run for town office shortly after they arrive. As they move into positions of power in towns, they defund police, libraries and other town services. At the county level, they privatize nursing homes. Residents reliant only on Medicare or Medicaid are forced to leave. At the state level, they use tax funds for vouchers and deny taxpayers the right to audit or quality-control the recipients. All in the name of “Liberty.”

State Representative candidates used to spend less than $1000 on an average campaign even five years ago. Now, in swing districts, Young Americans for Liberty pays students to canvass, telephone and postcard for their priorities and their candidates; 25,825 doors, 118,800 phone calls and 21,755 mailers in 2022. One Democratic candidate reported that he raised $30,000, but his “liberty” opponent was given $70,000 in campaign funds.

Who are the ‘Liberty’ promoters?

The number of Free Staters and Liberty Alliance members in New Hampshire is small. At the annual NH Liberty Forum, fewer than 300 people attended, and some of those were from out-of-state. But the desire to turn New Hampshire into their model “Libertarian Homeland” is intense.

Walking into the Forum felt a little like walking into the Red Sox bleachers with a Yankees cap on. But almost everyone was very polite. The most common complaint was “Why didn’t you put me on your extremist list?” The ones already on the list sported yellow buttons proudly announcing the fact. I explained that they can apply through the signup button. A few have. They seem to believe that announcing they want to end democracy in our state will increase their popularity. The message is reinforced in their social media and clubs.

I found that FSPers love to discuss the reasons they detest majority rule by democracy. They seem unconcerned about the consequences of removing environmental regulations. They did not expect billionaires’ 10,000:1 spending advantage over the median American would be a problem.Turning NH into the ‘Wild West’

When asked to name an example of a Libertarian Utopia, Free Staters often cite the “Wild West.” Before becoming states, these territories had little formal law and even less enforcement. Survival of the fittest, or the best armed, ruled.

What they never mention, however, is settlers’ encroachment upon native people. These original residents were pushed out or moved onto reservations so settlers could have their “liberty.”

In Prospera, a flagship libertarian project in Honduras, poor, native Hondurans are being bought out. Peter Thiel and other VCs have bought a third of the island, now privately governed. A newly elected Honduran government is trying to get rid of them, but the billionaires have taken the nation to World Bank arbitration. 

Libertarians in New Hampshire want to push current residents out…

Everyone can do something to stop libertarians 

[Jeanne recommends actions here.]


We currently have 94 YAL members in the NH legislature. Whether you are housebound, shy or broke, you can still help wake up your friends, neighbors, communities and networks…

Still time for May 14 town meeting & ballot candidate filing

  • Ballot April 9 Towns Deliberative session & candidate filing past
  • Town Meeting May 14 Candidate filing, Mar 27-Apr 5
  • Ballot May 14 Towns Deliberative Mar 30 – Apr 6; Candidate filing Mar 27- Apr 5

May 14 meeting and ballot towns still have a chance to make sure you have trustworthy pro-democracy candidates for every seat. Even openings for Cemetery Trustee and Planning Board are important. Anti-democracy candidates are coached to start in innocuous positions to build name recognition before running for higher office. Preparing for State Elections

Candidates for state office register June 5-14. Now is the time to ensure that your districts have good options for electable pro-democracy candidates. Remind House candidates that if they have a majority, they can vote the first day of session to allow remote attendance at hearings. This can make a huge difference in the burden of serving. How to Identify Anti-democracy Candidates

How can voters identify those trying to thwart democracy? Watch for a candidate who wants to:

  • DEFUND, CLOSE, OR TOTALLY DEREGULATE what they’re elected to run. For instance, a zoning board candidate might point out a harmful zoning law and then conclude that all zoning regulations should be repealed.
  • HARASS OR THREATEN those managing the town, county, or other employees. For instance, they may demand extra reviews, audits, copies, meetings, or forms.
  • PROMOTE anti-intellectual and anti-scientific attitudes and policies, for instance, encouraging the legalization of inappropriate medications.
  • HIDE FROM TAXPAYER SCRUTINY the use or outcomes from taxpayer spending, such as educational vouchers.
  • MAKE ELECTIONS & VOTING MORE DIFFICULT by requiring hand counts, unusual documentation, complicating absentee voting and so on.

If you identify new candidates who meet these crtieria, please let us know so we can add them to the watch list.

*******************

News about Concord
Muzzle-the-people bill goes down in flames! 

A bipartisan majority of the NH House voted 211-129 to “indefinitely postpone” HB 1479. This was an ALEC look-alike bill being pushed across the nation to muzzle any state or local official from testifying. It would have barred any advocate from a membership organization, like NH Municipal Association, from testifying for or against laws that affected towns. It would have barred staff of any nonprofit that took a state grant from testifying on behalf of children, or mentally ill or whomever they represent.
     Sean Themea came to NH last week to speak at the NH Liberty Forum. Themea is COO of the Texas-based, Koch-funded Young 

Americans for Liberty, Texas resident Themea asked the NH audience to support HB 1479. He stated that the bill would keep lobbyists funded by NH DOT from asking to increase gas taxes. NH road maintenance funding has been flat over 12 years. But higher gas taxes eat into petroleum demand and profits.
  The bill’s impacts would have far exceeded petro profits. HB 1479 would have muzzled the voices of NH teachers, town officials, and activists not funded by plutocrats.
    This was not “Liberty” legislation. It was a pay-to-have-your-say bill. And the NH House defeated it, soundly, bipartisanly! The following people voted “Nay”, meaning they supported this look-alike bill put forward by plutocrats to muzzle those who oppose their interests:

Alexander, Joe, Hills. 29
Ammon, Keith, Hills. 42
Ankarberg, Aidan, Straf. 7
Aron, Judy, Sull. 4
Aures, Cyril, Merr. 13
Avellani, Lino, Carr. 4
Aylward, Deborah, Merr. 5
Bailey, Glenn, Straf. 2
Ball, Lorie, Rock. 25
Bean, Harry, Belk. 6
Belcher, Mike, Carr. 4
Berezhny, Lex, Graf. 11
Berry, Ross, Hills. 39
Bickford, David, Straf. 3
Boyd, Stephen, Merr. 10
Brown, Richard, Carr. 3
Burnham, Claudine, Straf. 2
Coker, Matthew, Belk. 2
Comtois, Barbara, Belk. 7
Connor, James, Straf. 19
Corcoran, Travis, Hills. 44
Cordelli, Glenn, Carr. 7
Costable, Michael, Carr. 8
Davis, Arnold, Coos 2
DeSimone, Debra, Rock. 18
Dolan, Tom, Rock. 16
Doucette, Fred, Rock. 25
Drago, Mike, Rock. 4
Dumais, Russell, Belk. 6
Dunn, Ron, Rock. 16
Erf, Keith, Hills. 28
Ford, Oliver, Rock. 3
Gagne, Larry, Hills. 16
Gorski, Ted, Hills. 2
Gould, Linda, Hills. 2
Granger, Michael, Straf. 2
Greeson, Jeffrey, Graf. 6
Griffin, Gerald, Hills. 42
Harrington, Michael, Straf. 18
Harvey-Bolia, Juliet, Belk. 3
Hill, Gregory, Merr. 2
Hoell, J.R., Merr. 27
Janigian, John, Rock. 25
Janvrin, Jason, Rock. 40
Kaczynski, Thomas, Straf. 5
Kelley, Diane, Hills. 32
Kennedy, Stephen, Hills. 13
Kenny, Catherine, Hills. 13
Khan, Aboul, Rock. 30
King, Seth, Coos 4
Kofalt, Jim, Hills. 32
Kuttab, Katelyn, Rock. 17
Ladd, Rick, Graf. 5
Lascelles, Richard, Hills. 14
Layon, Erica, Rock. 13
Leavitt, John, Merr. 10
Lekas, Alicia, Hills. 38
Lekas, Tony, Hills. 38
Lewicke, John, Hills. 36
Love, David, Rock. 13
Lynn, Bob, Rock. 17
Mannion, Dennis, Rock. 25
Mannion, Tom, Hills. 1
Mazur, Lisa, Hills. 44

McConkey, Mark, Carr. 8
McGough, Tim, Hills. 12
McGuire, Carol, Merr. 27
McGuire, Dan, Merr. 14
McLean, Mark, Hills. 15
Moffett, Michael, Merr. 4
Nagel, David, Belk. 6
Newton, Clifford, Straf. 6
Noble, Kristin, Hills. 2
Notter, Jeanine, Hills. 12
Nutting, Zachary, Ches. 11
Osborne, Jason, Rock. 2
Ouellet, Mike, Coos 3
Pauer, Diane, Hills. 36
Pearson, Mark, Rock. 34
Pearson, Stephen, Rock. 13
Perez, Kristine, Rock. 16
Peternel, Katy, Carr. 6
Phillips, Emily, Rock. 7
Phinney, Brandon, Straf. 9
Ploszaj, Tom, Belk. 1
Polozov, Yury, Merr. 10
Popovici-Muller, Daniel, Rock. 17
Porcelli, Susan, Rock. 19
Post, Lisa, Hills. 42
Potenza, Kelley, Straf. 19
Potucek, John, Rock. 13
Pratt, Kevin, Rock. 4
Prudhomme-O’Brien, Katherine, Rock. 13
Qualey, James, Ches. 18
Quaratiello, Arlene, Rock. 18
Reid, Karen, Hills. 27
Rhodes, Jennifer, Ches. 17
Roy, Terry, Rock. 31
Santonastaso, Matthew, Ches. 18
Seaworth, Brian, Merr. 12
See, Alvin, Merr. 26
Seidel, Sheila, Hills. 29
Sellers, John, Graf. 18
Sheehan, Vanessa, Hills. 43
Simon, Matthew, Graf. 1
Sirois, Shane, Hills. 32
Smart, Lisa, Belk. 2
Smith, Jonathan, Carr. 5
Smith, Steven, Sull. 3
Soti, Julius, Rock. 35
Spillane, James, Rock. 2
Spilsbury, Walter, Sull. 3
Stapleton, Walter, Sull. 6
Stone, Jonathan, Sull. 8
Summers, James, Rock. 20
Tenczar, Jeffrey, Hills. 1
Terry, Paul, Belk. 7
Thomas, Douglas, Rock. 16
True, Chris, Rock. 9
Tudor, Paul, Rock. 1
Turcotte, Len, Straf. 4
Ulery, Jordan, Hills. 13
Verville, Kevin, Rock. 2
Vose, Michael, Rock. 5
Wallace, Scott, Rock. 8
Walsh, Thomas, Merr. 10
Wherry, Robert, Hills. 13
Wood, Clayton, Merr. 13
Yokela, Josh, Rock. 32

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Categories ALEC, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Citizenship, Dark Money, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Koch Brothers, New Hampshire, Privatization

Heather Fox Richardson: A Tribute to Immigrants

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2024 //
39

In 1958, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts published a book titled A Nation of Immigrants. During the years of the Soviet Union’s existence, politicians liked to point out that Communist nations locked their borders to keep people from moving out, while we welcomed those who managed to escape from Communism. It may be hard to remember in a climate where immigrants are demonized and called rapists and murderers, but our nation used to boast of its immigrant heritage.

In this article, Heather Cox Richardson reflects on that heritage and points out that the Republican Party championed immigration. She does not mention the immigration restriction acts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which excluded or limited admission of Asians, Italians, Russians, Poles, and others who were not Northern Europeans (Nordics).

In the past days, we have learned that the six maintenance workers killed when the bridge collapsed were all immigrants, natives of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Around 39% of the workforce in the construction industry around Baltimore and Washington, D.C., about 130,000 people, are immigrants, Scott Dance and María Luisa Paúl reported in the Washington Post yesterday. 

Some of the men were undocumented, and all of them were family men who sent money back to their home countries, as well. From Honduras, the nephew of one of the men killed told the Associated Press, “The kind of work he did is what people born in the U.S. won’t do. People like him travel there with a dream. They don’t want to break anything or take anything.”  

In the Philadelphia Inquirer today, journalist Will Bunch castigated the right-wing lawmakers and pundits who have whipped up native-born Americans over immigration, calling immigrants sex traffickers and fentanyl dealers, and even “animals.” Bunch illustrated that the reality of what was happening on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when it collapsed creates an opportunity to reframe the immigration debate in the United States.

Last month, Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post noted that immigration is a key reason that the United States experienced greater economic growth than any other nation In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The surge of immigration that began in 2022 brought to the U.S. working-age people who, Director Phill Swagel of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office wrote, are expected to make the U.S. gross domestic product about $7 trillion larger over the ten years from 2023 to 2034 than it would have been otherwise. Those workers will account for about $1 trillion dollars in revenues. 

Curiously, while Republican leaders today are working to outdo each other in their harsh opposition to immigration, it was actually the leaders of the original Republican Party who recognized the power of immigrants to build the country and articulated an economic justification for increased immigration during the nation’s first major anti-immigrant period. 

The United States had always been a nation of immigrants, but in the 1840s the failure of the potato crop in Ireland sent at least half a million Irish immigrants to the United States. As they moved into urban ports on the East Coast, especially in Massachusetts and New York, native-born Americans turned against them as competitors for jobs.

The 1850s saw a similar anti-immigrant fury in the new state of California. After the discovery of gold there in 1848, native-born Americans—the so-called Forty Niners—moved to the West Coast. They had no intention of sharing the riches they expected to find. The Indigenous people who lived there had no right to the land under which gold lay, native-born men thought; nor did the Mexicans whose government had sold the land to the U.S. in 1848; nor did the Chileans, who came with mining skills that made them powerful competitors. Above all, native-born Americans resented the Chinese miners who came to work in order to send money home to a land devastated by the first Opium War.

Democrats and the new anti-immigrant American Party (more popularly known as the “Know Nothings” because members claimed to know nothing about the party) turned against the new immigrants, seeing them as competition that would drive down wages. In the 1850s, Know Nothing officials in Massachusetts persecuted Catholics and deported Irish immigrants they believed were paupers. In California the state legislature placed a monthly tax on Mexican and Chinese miners, made unemployment a crime, took from Chinese men the right to testify in court, and finally tried to stop Chinese immigration altogether by taxing shipmasters $50 for each Chinese immigrant they brought.   

When the Republicans organized in the 1850s, they saw society differently than the Democrats and the Know Nothings. They argued that society was not made up of a struggle over a limited economic pie, but rather that hardworking individuals would create more than they could consume, thus producing capital that would make the economy grow. The more people a nation had, the stronger it would be.

In 1860 the new party took a stand against the new laws that discriminated against immigrants. Immigrants’ rights should not be “abridged or impaired,” the delegates to its convention declared, adding that they were “in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.”

Republicans’ support for immigration only increased during the Civil War. In contrast to the southern enslavers, they wanted to fill the land with people who supported freedom. As one poorly educated man wrote to his senator, “Protect Emegration and that will protect the Territories to Freedom.”

Republicans also wanted to bring as many workers to the country as possible to increase economic development. The war created a huge demand for agricultural products to feed the troops. At the same time, a terrible drought in Europe meant there was money to be made exporting grain. But the war was draining men to the battlefields of Stone’s River and Gettysburg and to the growing U.S. Navy, leaving farmers with fewer and fewer hands to work the land. 

By 1864, Republicans were so strongly in favor of immigration that Congress passed “an Act to Encourage Immigration.” The law permitted immigrants to borrow against future homesteads to fund their voyage to the U.S., appropriated money to provide for impoverished immigrants upon their arrival, and, to undercut Democrats’ accusations that they were simply trying to find men to throw into the grinding war, guaranteed that no immigrant could be drafted until he announced his intention of becoming a citizen. 

Support for immigration has waxed and waned repeatedly since then, but as recently as 1989, Republican president Ronald Reagan said: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation…. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

The workers who died in the bridge collapse on Tuesday “were not ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’” Will Bunch wrote, quoting Trump; “they were replenishing it…. They may have been born all over the continent, but when these men plunged into our waters on Tuesday, they died as Americans.”

Categories Education Reform, History, Immigration

So You Want to Hire a Conservative Commentator!

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2024 //
16

NBC showed the nation how NOT to hire a conservative commentator. They picked a MAGA firebrand who stood squarely behind Trump’s lies about the election. Their entire stable of in-air stars at MSNBC revolted, along with Chuck Todd of NBC, the network’s chief political honcho.

It was not Ronna McDaniel’s conservative views they rejected, but her lying. Lying is unethical.

Jill Lawrence, a journalist who writes at The Bulwark, a site for anti-Trump Republicans, offered the following advice:

YOU HAVE TO DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE, and where if not at the Big Lie?

If the Ronna McDaniel saga were a miniseries or magazine piece, it would be called “The Five-Day Tenure of a Great Get”: It starts last Friday when NBC News announces that it has hired the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee as a political commentator. A massive backlash ensues, led by the network’s on-air talent, over McDaniel’s role in trying to reverse the 2020 election results, her year of denying them, and her continued attempts to underminethem. Okay, maybe not that great a get. By Tuesday, she’s out.

We live in complicated media times, and mistakes are constantly made—even now. They’ve been made since 2015 and the struggle will continue as long as Donald Trump is a dominant presence in American life.

I’ve been through it on the inside, and the McDaniel debacle brought back a lot of memories. The hardest journalism job I’ve ever had was being commentary editor of USA Today during “the reign of Donald Trump and his loyalists’ deadly attack on the Capitol to try to keep him in power,” as I called it in a 2021 interview. “Handling op-eds during this period was the challenge of a lifetime. I’ve never been so familiar with the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the criminal code and the unique angst of fact-checking in the Trump era.”

As that era continues to drag on, so do the challenges. And let’s be blunt: This is an asymmetrical problem. With so many Republicans tethered to Trump, MAGA, and their self-serving fictions, how do you showcase conservative voices while maintaining professional standards of truth, reality, and facts that aren’t “alternative”?

At USA Today, our editing team of liberals and conservatives tried like hell to do both. We had conservative regulars, conservative guest columnists, and first-person essays by conservatives. One column I edited mentioned the “liberal mob” and I remember chuckling at the phrase—it was an opinion, and the author was certainly entitled to it. I also remember fact-checking a Joe Biden op-ed during his 2020 campaign, and it was not difficult—because there were facts in it, and they were confirmable.

Most if not all traditional news outlets want very much to publish viewpoints across the ideological spectrum. David Mastio, my center-right editor and immediate boss at USA Today, used to mock-sigh as he told me that “You do ‘wrong’ so well.” He did, too, from my center-left perspective.

A commitment to viewpoint diversity is part of a business model, of course, but it’s also part of a fairness model—and a way to sharpen readers’ thinking, as well as our own. Whatever the motivation for this commitment, it can be difficult to maintain in our fraught media moment: the ongoing clashes over evidence and reality make it easy for a journalist or manager or organization to get into trouble.

I saw it when a conservative friend lost a job over insisting on facts in a commentary about Trump—by a pro-Trump writer. We all saw it when CNN aired a live Trump town hall with a cheering audience and an outgunned moderator, reviewed by the network’s own media writer as “a spectacle of lies.” And don’t even get me started about the time the news section of USA Today fact-checked a high-level Trump official’s “opposing view” to a USA Today editorial. (Spoiler: It was Peter Navarro, who reported to prison last week to serve four months for contempt of Congress.)

The temptation to hire big names like McDaniel is understandable, especially if—like NBC News—you have $300,000 lying around to pay her. Trump himself had the occasional byline on our page, and he was fact-checked. Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence wrote the “opposing view” in 2016 when the editorial board, breaking with USA Today tradition, said Trump was “unfit for the presidency.” Pence also wrote it in 2020 after we went even further and endorsed Biden—the first time in the paper’s history that the board endorsed a presidential candidate.

That election was, or should be, a line of demarcation. Before the Big Lie, and after it. Before the January 6th Capitol attack, and after it.

My 2021 Christmas wish was zero tolerance for the Big Lie, Stop the Steal crowd in Congress. I laid it all out in a column that ran with the headline “Oust Trump coup planners, enablers and provocateurs from public office. They betrayed us.” But they’re still there, from House Speaker Mike Johnson on down.

There’s nothing news organizations can do about that, or about Trump’s current starring roles as presumptive GOP presidential nominee and defendant in his many criminal and civil trials, or about the endless dilemma of when and how and whether to cover him in year nine of his lies and outrages.

What they can do, at the very least, is stop rewarding Big Lie opportunists like McDaniel.

Categories Elections, Lies, Trump

Alabama: Democrat Wins Special Election by Focusing on Abortion

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2024 //
9

Alabama has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, and its highest court recently banned in vitro fertilization. In a special election for the legislation, candidate Marilyn Lands swept to victory by emphasizing reproductive rights.

Politico reported:

An Alabama Democrat who campaigned aggressively on abortion access won a special election in the state Legislature on Tuesday, sending a message that abortion remains a winning issue for Democrats, even in the deep South.

Marilyn Lands won a state House seat in a rare competitive race to represent a district that includes parts of Huntsville. Lands, a mental health professional, centered her bid on reproductive rights and criticized the state’s near-total abortion ban along with a recent state Supreme Court ruling that temporarily banned in vitro fertilization. 

“Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation,” Lands said in a statement. “Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception.”

Her opponent, Madison City Council member Teddy Powell, focused his campaign on economic development and infrastructure.

Lands spoke openly about her own abortion experience, when she had a nonviable pregnancy that ended in abortion two decades ago. Her campaign ran a television ad sharing that story.

“It’s shameful that today women have fewer freedoms than I had two decades ago,” Lands says in the ad.

Open the link to finish the story.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Democrats, Elections, Gender

John Merrow Confers the TAMPU Awards!

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2024 //
9

John Merrow was the PBS correspondent on education for many years. Since he stepped down from this important role, I have discovered that he is quite a wonderful person. I didn’t think so when he burnished Michelle Rhee’s reputation, but he redeemed himself when his last hour-long segment on her delved into the cheating scandal that consumed her final year as chancellor of the DC schools.

But now I know John as a generous friend. When I was suffering in the aftermath of knee surgery, he printed out “Dr. Merrow’s Advice.” Every year, he is committed to riding the same number of miles as his age and thus far he has kept his pledge. He very kindly recommends organizations to receive donations in support of his bike ride, and NPE has been among them. We were very gratified by his recognition and support.

And now he has created an award he calls “TAMPU”—Towards a More Perfect Union. I love the award because its first recipient is Peter Greene, who is one of the best educational thinkers and writers of our time.

He writes at his blog, The Merrow Report:

I’ve always loved the elegant, aspirational phrase, “Toward a More Perfect Union,” found in the opening sentence of our Constitution.  It was our Founding Fathers’ first priority, ahead of establishing justice, ensuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

I think it’s time to do more to honor those who in their daily lives attempt to move us “Toward a More Perfect Union.” To that end, and only slightly with tongue in cheek, I suggest we create an award–call it the TAMPU Prize–acknowledging those who are attempting to push the envelope forward.  

While someone else works out the rules and timing, I am jumping the gun and awarding the TAMPU Prize to three remarkable people who are on my mind this week.  Please read on, and please add your own names.

The first TAMPU recipient is from the world of education, Peter Greene. Mr. Greene, whom I do not know, spent 39 years teaching English and now devotes his time to turning over rocks to expose wrong-doing in public education, to celebrate accomplishments, and to make us think.  You can find a lot of his well-researched columns here on Forbes Magazine, but he also blogs regularly at ‘Curmudgucation,’ a word I assume he made up.  

Here’s how Mr. Greene describes himself:  I started out life in New Hampshire and finished growing up in Northwest Pennsylvania. I attended a non-traditional education program that no longer exists at Allegheny College, a small liberal arts college, student taught in Cleveland Heights, and landed my first job in Lorain, Ohio. The year started with a strike and ended with a large workforce layoff, so I came back home, bought a mobile home, and lived in a trailer court while I subbed in three districts.

After a year, I started landing year-long sub jobs with the same school district I had graduated from in the mid-seventies. It was not the plan, but there was a woman… After thirty-some years in that district, I’ve taught pretty much every brand of English we have here, 7-12. But high school is my home; middle schoolers are, as I said back when I taught them, the emotional equivalent of having someone scream in your ears all day. God bless, MS teachers. And now, after thirty-nine total years in the classroom, I’ve retired.

My second recipient is Jessica Craven, a veritable ‘Energizer Bunny’ who’s working to help our democracy survive extremism of all sorts, but particularly MAGA.  She blogs almost every day, with a newsletter she calls “Chop Wood, Carry Water,” a title that carries a message: This is what you do when the chips are down–Get to work!

Click here to begin the “Chop Wood, Carry Water” experience.  Here’s how she introduces herself and her newsletter: 

What goes on here? Well, this newsletter is dedicated to saving democracy, addressing the climate crisis, preserving our freedoms, electing better lawmakers, and, in general, creating a better country—one simple action at a time. As the author, I’m essentially a bundler. Not of donations, but of easy things each of us can do to make a difference. I do these things, too—because I want my kid to grow up in a democracy AND because doing them makes me feel less anxious. My motto? Hope is an action.

I have no idea where Ms Craven lives with her husband, child, cat, and dog. Ms Craven publishes at least six times a week and always tells readers how to get involved.  She makes activism easy, no small feat.   “Chop Wood, Carry Water” is free, but I hope you will do as I do and subscribe ($60 per year). 

My final TAMPU recipient (this time around) is National Book Award recipient Jonathan Kozol, whose new book, “An End to Inequality,” is the 12th in his illustrious career. Now 87, Jonathan burst on the scene in 1967 with “Death at an Early Age,” which I can remember devouring.  His new book–which he says will be his last–is a passionate call for racial justice in education and the larger society.  Never one to call for compromise, he rejects all forms of tokenism.  “There is no such thing as perfectible apartheid. It’s all a grand delusion,” he writes. “Apartheid education isn’t something you can ‘fix.’ It needs to be dismantled.”  For more, see Dana Goldstein’s recent profile of Jonathan in the New York Times.

(Digression: I’ve known Jonathan for a long time, and he kindly wrote a glowing preface to a book of mine, “Choosing Excellence,” back in 2001. Unfortunately, my (inept) publisher misspelled his first name. Jonathon!  When they sent me an advance copy, I saw the error and immediately called the publisher.  “Sorry,” they said, “But the initial printing is only 5,000 copies. We will correct it on the next printing.” 

I explained very calmly that I would sue their asses if they released that printing, and I suggested that they shred those 5,000 copies and reprint it.  Instead, they hired people to paste over the error with a small sticker that spelled his name correctly. Somewhere I have the uncorrected version and a pasted-over version, as well as a clean copy from the second printing.)

So those three, Jessica Craven, Peter Greene, and Jonathan Kozol, are pushing and pulling us toward A More Perfect Union.  Who else deserves our attention?  Make your suggestions here.  

Thanks, 

John

Categories Character, Creativity, Democracy, Education Reform, Ethics, Joy

John Thompson: Oklahoma Explores the Zombie Policy of Merit Pay

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2024 //
14

During the past few decades, we have seen the persistence of failed policies in education. Most of them were codified by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top: give standardized tests; punish teachers and schools where scores are low or do not rise; reward teachers and schools where scores go up. Pay bonuses to teachers if their students’ scores go up. Tie teacher pay to student scores. Close schools with low scores. Turn low-scoring schools over to private management. Give vouchers to parents to send their children wherever they want.

All of these remedies failed. They encouraged cheating and gaming the system. They encouraged educators to avoid schools that enrolled the neediest students. They demoralized teachers who were idealistic and wanted to teach the joy of learning. Test prep became far more important than intellectual curiosity.

All of these are zombie policies. No matter how consistently they fail, policymakers won’t let go of them.

Merit pay is a policy that has been tried since the 1920s. It has never accomplished anything. I summarized the research on merit pay in my last three books: The Death and Life of the great American School System; Reign of Error; and Slaying Goliath. The research is overwhelming: merit pay doesn’t improve education and doesn’t even raise test scores. Yet in true zombie style, it never dies. It should.

John Thompson writes here about the revival of the merit pay zombie in Oklahoma:

As the “mass exodus” of teachers from Oklahoma schools continues, the legislature has rejected an across-the-board pay raise for teachers. Instead, several legislators are searching for a fix for the state’s “flawed” bonus system. If that doesn’t work, maybe Walters’ use of public money to spread his attacks on “on the radical left” will bring educators back to Oklahoma …

Seriously, Walters’ push for his vision of incentive pay prompted some education advocates to ask me to research performance pay. I sure appreciated the oportunity to reread new and older research on the subject.

Twenty-five years ago, I opposed performance pay because there were better ways to improve teacher quality. But I didn’t have major concerns; although its likely benefits would be small, I thought its downsides shouldn’t be a big deal. However, starting with No Child Left Behind and taking off with Race to the Top, test scores were weaponized, and the dangers of performance pay grew dramatically. Output-driven teachers’ salaries, joined at the hip with unreliable and invalid accountability metrics, promoted educational malpractice that undermined meaningful teaching and learning, increasing in-one-ear-out-the-other, worksheet-driven instruction. Teamwork was damaged, trust was compromised, the flight of educators from classroom increased, and the joy of student learning declined significantly.

During that time, I communicated frequently with data-driven analysts working for think tanks, who almost never had experience in urban schools. Their job was to provide evidence that performance pay, and other incentives and punishments, can work. They ignored educators and social scientists who tackled the real policy question – how will those experiments work? 

Sometimes, merit pay produced modest test score gains, but there was no way of determining whether those test scores revealed an increase or a drop in meaningful learning. Neither did they address the overall learning losses due to teachers being pressured to focus on metrics, as opposed to children. In 2012, a Rand study concluded, “most studies have found no effects on student outcomes.” By 2015, the U.S. Department of Education found that large incentives, such as $15,000 per teacher, may attract talent, but:

In addition to creating an environment that lends itself to narrowed pedagogical approaches and teaching to tests (and even cheating on them), this article suggests that merit pay schemes that require teachers to compete with one another may likely undermine positive collaboration.

Around the time of the 2018 Oklahoma teacher walk-out for higher pay, Denver threatened a strike to get rid of performance pay. Chalkbeat explained the complexity of balancing for larger or smaller payments to teachers in diverse classrooms. It went into depth answering the question, “How did a pay system that once seemed to hold so much promise bring teachers to their breaking point?”  The concise conclusion was, “lack of trust.”

Education Week studied the minimal effects of performance pay in Tennessee and Texas, which implemented expensive reward-and-punish, and often short-lived programs. The negative effects of the Houston plan, which State Superintendent Ryan Walters seems to support, are especially relevant for Oklahoma. The Houston teachers’ union president explained, “Performance pay demeans students and undermines teachers, so if the focus is on pay for performance, you’re incentivizing the test-and-punishment model.” Similarly, Education Week cited comprehensive studies that concluded that the relatively more effective programs “avoided an overemphasis on test scores.” But even many or most of the more successful programs were unlikely to survive.

Finally Education Week reported how the $200 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation merit pay experiments “did little to boost retention of high-performing teachers,” and it “had little effect on student achievement.”

At the peak of merit pay mandates, and now, Bixby Superintendent Rob Miller explained, “Teacher merit pay is one of the more persistent and seemingly indestructible zombie ideas related to education.” Miller said, “Merit pay for teachers has been tried again and again since the 1920s.” He cited cognitive and social science that explained why performance pay experiments were doomed to fail, as well as numerous evaluations of how it failed in the 21st century.  Miller now asks, “Is it fair to place the primary responsibility on teachers and schools for outcomes strongly affected by factors outside their control?” and answers, “Doing so damages school culture and teacher morale and obstructs meaningful dialogue about school improvement.”

At a time when Ryan Walters is threatening to put the worst of the failed policies of the last twenty years on steroids, I was struck by a recent column by Thomas Dee, a fervent believer in output-driven accountability. Even though he seems to think that teachers were to blame, Dee also seems to acknowledge that performance pay had disappointing results. Now he recommends:

It may be possible to achieve durable political support for a teacher evaluation system if that system focuses narrowly on identifying master teachers and providing them with training and extra pay to coach their peers but takes a more incremental approach toward dismissing underperforming teachers.

Dee’s latest almost brings me back to 25 years ago, before NCLB, when the schools I knew were improving, and a win-win approach to performance pay didn’t seem so problematic. At the urging of the union, the Oklahoma City Public School System briefly implemented the Toledo peer review plan, which included a fair and efficient plan for removing ineffective teachers. The best evidence is that the plan was a reliable method for improving classroom instruction. But, it and so many other promising programs were undercut by corporate school reform.

Maybe I’ll once again be open to a compromise involving constructively built, non-punitive merit pay incentives, once the destructive school cultures advanced by corporate school “reform” have disappeared. But, I won’t hold my breath.  

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Failure, Merit pay, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Oklahoma, Race to the Top, Research
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