U.K.: Two Teens Lure Transgender Girl to Her Death

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2023 //
10

When I read this story, I was horrified by its brutality. What struck me was that this teen who was murdered wasn’t bothering anybody, was loved by her parents, but somehow somehow thought she was an easy mark and didn’t deserve to live. It made me think of how certain politicians are endangering kids like this by their rhetoric. I don’t know anyone who is trans, but I wonder why the politicians are stirring up fear and hatred about them. Can’t we just live and let live?

The New York Times reported:

Two teenagers were found guilty on Wednesday of murdering Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old transgender girl who was stabbed 28 times at a park in northwest England in February, local prosecutors said.

The two, both 16 and referred to by prosecutors only as “Girl X” and “Boy Y,” had carefully planned the killing in a series of WhatsApp messages, before attempting to cover up their crime, the Crown Prosecution Service in the United Kingdom said in a statement.

The two had pleaded not guilty, but were convicted by a jury after an 18-day trial in Manchester Crown Court, local authoritiessaid. Their lawyers could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday evening.

Justice Amanda Yip told the two teens, who will not be named because of their age, that she would “have to impose a life sentence” but would need to consider the minimum time they would be required to serve before being considered for release, the BBC reported.
“The planning, the violence and the age of the killers is beyond belief,” prosecutors said in the statement, noting that Brianna, a student in the town of Birchwood, had been stabbed in a public park in broad daylight in a “frenzied and ferocious attack.” Prosecutors described the “deadly influence” of the two teens upon one another, as their fantasies of torture and murder manifested into a reality that left Brianna dead.

Speaking after the trial, Brianna’s mother, Esther Ghey, said that she was glad the two teens, who she said had failed to “display an ounce of remorse,” would spend many years in prison. “To know how scared my usually fearless child must have been when she was alone in that park, with someone that she called her friend, will haunt me forever,” Ms. Ghey said.

According to court documents, Brianna was discovered on the afternoon of Feb. 11 by a couple walking in Culcheth Linear Park, about 12 miles west of Manchester, when they noticed the two teens standing near what they believed to be a dog. As the couple approached, the teens fled, and they instead found Brianna, stabbed multiple times in the head, back, chest and neck.

The extent of the wounds, which included deep and severe lacerations to Brianna’s veins, heart and bones, prosecutors added, left “no doubt that she was the victim of a sustained and violent assault.” Shortly afterward, emergency medical workers arrived at the park, and pronounced Brianna dead.

According to prosecutors, “Girl X,” and “Boy Y,” who were both 15 at the time, were close friends who often texted about their crushes and relationships. They were also “preoccupied with violence,” prosecutors added, sharing violent videos of torture, debating the merits of various nerve agents as means to murder, and plotting how to kill people.

In December 2022, “Girl X” also confided in “Boy Y” that she was “obsessed” with Brianna, whom she had met about a month earlier, according to prosecutors. Brianna was born as a boy, but was living as a girl and using female pronouns, they said. By January, however, “X’s fascination with Brianna had turned darker,” prosecutors said, leading her to confide in “Boy Y” that she had tried to kill Brianna with an overdose of ibuprofen tablets.

People “already know she is depressed,” “Girl X” wrote in a message to “Boy Y” on Jan. 23, indicating that she believed others were likely to get suspicious. But “for some reason she has a high tolerance like I gave her some today that should have been enough to kill her,” she added. Although Brianna had felt ill and vomited, “she didn’t die,” “Girl X” said in the message. According to the documents, Brianna’s mother confirmed her daughter had been sick that week, and that her vomit had contained what she thought were grape skins but could have been the remnants of ibuprofen tablets.

In the following days, the two teens continued discussing various methods for killing Brianna, as well as four other people they knew, according to prosecutors, and by late January, had formulated their plan to stab her in the park. On Feb. 10, “Girl X” told “Boy Y” that she had sent a message to Brianna encouraging her to come to the park the following day to take drugs, and that Brianna had confirmed she would be there at 1 p.m. “Boy Y” confirmed he was bringing his hunting knife, prosecutors said.

Brianna, who had red hair and glasses, and that day wore a short gray tartan skirt, long white socks and a fluffy white hooded jacket, left home around 12:45 p.m. on Feb. 11, according to prosecutors. About an hour after leaving home, Brianna, who according to her mother, rarely went out alone, texted her mother: “I’m on the bus by myself, I’m scared.”

Categories Gender

Here Are the Books Removed from Classroom Shelves in Orange County, Florida

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2023 //
49

Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel reported the list of banned books.

Please scan the list and let me know which you think should never be banned. Are there any on the list that you think should not be in any 3-8 classroom? Any that should not be available in high school?

Here is a list of the 673 books removed from teachers’ classroom shelves in Orange County for fear they might violate state law and rules on “sexual conduct:” Some might be returned to shelves after further review.

“In the Belly of the Beast,” Jack Henry Abbott
“The Pool Was Empty,” Gilles Abier
“The Poet X,” Elizabeth Acevedo
“With the Fire on High,” Elizabeth Acevedo
“Call Me By Your Name,” Andre Aciman
“Things You Shouldn’t Say Past Midnight,” Peter Ackerman
“Half of a Yellow Sun,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Changes,” Ama Ata Aidoo
“River of Darkness,” Rennie Airth
“Say You’re One of Them,” Uwem Akpan
“Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda,” Becky Albertalli
“The Upside of Unrequited,” Becky Albertalli
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” Sherman Alexie
“The House of the Spirits,” Isabel Allende
“In the Midst of Winter,” Isabel Allende
“The Blood of Flowers,” Anita Amirrezvani
“Wintergirls,” Laurie Halse Anderson
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” Jesse Andrews
“The Haters,” Jesse Andrews
“I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou
“Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas,” Maya Angelou
“Lucy in the Sky,” Anonymous
“And Eternity,” Piers Anthony
“On a Pale Horse,” Piers Anthony
“Four Plays,” Aristophanes
“From Blood and Ash,” Jennifer L. Armentrout
“Storm and Fury,” Jennifer L. Armentrout
“City of the Lost,” Kelley Armstrong
“Mosquitoland,” David Arnold
“Damsel,” Elana K. Arnold
“Infandous,” Elana K. Arnold
“Red Hood,” Elana K. Arnold
“What Girls Are Made Of,” Elana K. Arnold
“Oryx and Crake,” Margaret Atwood
“The Handmaid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood
“The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel,” Margaret Atwood
“The Testaments,” Margaret Atwood
“Alias Grace,” Margaret Atwood
“Hag-Seed,” Margaret Atwood
“Madd Addam Trilogy,” Margaret Atwood
“The Blind Assassin,” Margaret Atwood
“The Clan of the Cave Bear,” Jean M. Auel
“The Clan of the Cave Bear, The Valley of Horses, The Mammoth Hunters
(Earth’s Children, #1-3),” Jean M. Auel
“The Tale of John Barleycorn: From Barley to Beer,” Mary Azarian
“My Friend Dahmer,” John “Derf” Backderf
“Six of Crows,” Leigh Bardugo
“Dance Nation,” Clare Barron
“Wise Young Fool,” Sean Beaudoin
“Herzog,” Saul Bellow
“The Color Master,” Aimee Bender
“The Seven Rays,” Jessica Bendinger
“Glimpse,” Stacey Wallace Benefiel
“The History Boys,” Alan Bennett
“Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife,” Linda Berdoll

“Best in Show,” Laurien Berenson
“Dark Eye,” William Bernhardt
“Friday Night Lights: A Town A Team And A Dream,” H.G. Bissinger
“Geektastic,” Holly Black
“Red Glove,” Holly Black
“I Was a Teenage Fairy,” Francesca Lia Block
“Sex on the Brain,” Deborah Blum
“Forever…,” Judy Blume
“Midwives: A Novel,” Chris Bohjalian
“Bronxwood,” Coe Booth
“The Best American Short Stories 2015,” T.C. Boyle
“The Road to Wellville,” T.C. Boyle
“The Darkest Minds,” Alexandra Bracken
“The Dark Garden,” Eden Bradley
“The Mists of Avalon,” Marion Zimmer Bradley
“Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood,” Ann Brashares
“The Last Summer of You and Me,” Ann Brashares
“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” Ann Brashares
“Electric Girl,” Michael Brennan
“The Demon’s Surrender,” Sarah Rees Brennan
“Monkey Man,” Steve Brewer
“Over the Edge,” Suzanne Brockmann
“Candy,” Kevin Brooks
“Angels & Demons,” Dan Brown
“The Bridges of Madison County (musical),” Jason Robert Brown
“A Secret Splendor,” Sandra Brown
“Above and Beyond,” Sandra Brown
“In a Class by Itself,” Sandra Brown
“Lethal,” Sandra Brown
“Seduction by Design,” Sandra Brown
“Send No Flowers,” Sandra Brown
“Unspeakable,” Sandra Brown
“Doing It,” Melvin Burgess
“The Neon Rain,” James Lee Burke
“The Glister,” John Burnside
“Running with Scissors,” Augusten Burroughs
“Summer and the City,” Candace Bushnell
“The Carrie Diaries,” Candace Bushnell
“Kindred,” Octavia E. Butler
“Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation,” Octavia E. Butler
“El Gigante Solitario,” Mary Cappellini
“Xenocide,” Orson Scott Card
“How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity,” Michael Cart
“The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories,” Angela Carter
“Kisses From Hell,” Kristin Cast
“Chosen,” P.C. Cast
“Marked,” P.C. Cast
“The Big Sleep,” Raymond Chandler
“The Big Sleep; The High Window; The Lady in the Lake; The Long
Goodbye; Playback; Farewell, My Lovely,” Raymond Chandler
“Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories / The Big Sleep / Farewell My
Lovely / The High Window,” Raymond Chandler
“The Year of Living Awkwardly,” Emma Chastain
“Pieces,” Stephen Chbosky
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” Stephen Chbosky
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower YA edition,” Stephen Chbosky
“The Lady and the Unicorn,” Tracy Chevalier
“My Wicked Wicked Ways,” Sandra Cisneros
“The Tesla Testament,” Eugene Ciurana
“Chain Of Iron,” Cassandra Clare
“Chain Of Thorns,” Cassandra Clare
“Queen of Air and Darkness,” Cassandra Clare
“The Red Scrolls Of Magic,” Cassandra Clare
“Little Bee,” Chris Cleave
“The Girls,” Emma Cline
“Ready Player One,” Ernest Cline
“Scooter Girl,” Chynna Clugston-Flores
“Disgrace,” J.M. Coetzee
“Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List,” Rachel Cohn
“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” Rachel Cohn
“Finding Yvonne,” Brandy Colbert
“The Goats,” Brock Cole
“American Gangster,” Max Allan Collins
“Brules: A Novel,” Harry Combs
“The Lords of Discipline,” Pat Conroy
“Captain Marvel,” Gerry Conway
“Coma: A Novel,” Robin Cook
“Leviathan Wakes,” James S.A. Corey
“Heroes,” Robert Cormier
“Scarpetta,” Patricia Cornwell
“Three Complete Novels: Postmortem, Body Of Evidence, All That
Remains,” Patricia Cornwell
“Postmortem,” Patricia Cornwell
“Nearly Gone,” Elle Cosimano
“A Veil Removed,” Michelle Cox
“The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” Hannah Crafts
“First Semester,” Cecil R. Cross II
“Running Loose,” Chris Crutcher
“Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress,” Sijie Dai
“Esperanza Rising,” Julie Danneberg
“Cendrillon,” Luc Darbois
“Sir Apropos of Nothing,” Peter David
“The Westing Game,” Beatrice G. Davis
“Never Cry Werewolf,” Heather Davis
“Corelli’s Mandolin,” Louis de Bernieres
“Gates of Paradise,” Melissa de la Cruz
“Sunset Boulevard,” Zoey Dean
“Tall Cool One,” Zoey Dean
“American Beauty,” Zoey Dean
“The Feeling of Falling in Love,” Mason Deaver
“The Girl Before,” J.P. Delaney
“The Inheritance Of Loss,” Kiran Desai
“This Lullaby,” Sarah Dessen
“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” Junot Díaz
“Blade Runner (do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep),” Philip K. Dick
“Don’t Get Caught,” Kurt Dinan
“Strangers She Knows,” Christina Dodd
“These Shallow Graves,” Jennifer Donnelly
“Room,” Emma Donoghue
“The Cases that Haunt Us,” John E. Douglas
“November Blues,” Sharon M. Draper
“Panic,” Sharon M. Draper
“House of Sand and Fog,” Andre Dubus III
“A Stolen Life: A Memoir,” Jaycee Dugard
“Submarine,” Joe Dunthorne
“Paso a Paso,” José Antonio Echeverria
“The Circle,” Dave Eggers
“Perfect Chemistry,” Simone Elkeles
“The Authority,” Warren Ellis
“Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison
“The Gathering,” Anne Enright
“The Painter from Shanghai,” Jennifer Cody Epstein
“The Round House,” Louise Erdrich
“Sophomore Undercover,” Ben Esch
“Like Water For Chocolate,” Laura Esquivel
“Middlesex,” Jefferey Eugenides
“The Horse Whisperer,” Nicholas Evans
“Sleepless,” Thomas Fahy
“Ask the Dust,” John Fante
“Bad Days In History,” Michael Farquhar
“The Comedy Writer,” Peter Farrelly
“White Oleander,” Janet Fitch
“Madame Bovary,” Gustave Flaubert
“Dark Places,” Gillian Flynn
“Sharp Objects,” Gillian Flynn
“Separation of Power,” Vince Flynn
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” Jonathan Safran Foer
“The Carnival at Bray,” Jessie Ann Foley
“The Guest List,” Lucy Foley
“The Pillars of the Earth,” Ken Follett
“World Without End,” Ken Follett
“Come Back,” Claire Fontaine
“If I Stay,” Gayle Forman
“Just One Day,” Gayle Forman
“The Jane Austen Book Club,” Karen Fowler
“Joy Special of the Day,” Elaine Fox
“You Hear Me?,” Betsy Franco
“Palo Alto,” James Franco
“Dime,” E. R. Frank
“Cold Mountain,” Charles Frazier
“The Likeness,” Tana French
“Anansi Boys,” Neil Gaiman
“The House of Bernarda Alba,” Federico García Lorca
“Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” Gabriel García Márquez
“Love in the Time of Cholera,” Gabriel García Márquez
“Annie on My Mind,” Nancy Garden
“Killjoy,” Julie Garwood
“Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert
“Howl and Other Poems,” Allen Ginsberg
“Girl in Pieces,” Kathleen Glasgow
“Fat Kid Rules the World,” Kelly L. Going
“Bee Season,” Myla Goldberg
“Kenang-Kenangan Seorang Geisha (Memoirs of a Geisha),” Arthur Golden
“Memoirs of a Geisha,” Arthur Golden
“Sister Mischief,” Laura Goode
“A Reliable Wife,” Robert Goolrick
“Forever for a Year,” B.T. Gottfred
“The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy,” B.T. Gottfred
“The Nerdy and the Dirty,” B.T. Gottfred
“Tomorrow Girls,” Eva Gray
“An Abundance of Katherines,” John Green
“Looking for Alaska,” John Green
“Will,” John Grayson
“Paper Towns,” John Green
“Sex Plus: Learning, Loving and Enjoying Your Body,” Laci Green
“The Quiet American,” Graham Greene
“None Of The Above,” I.W. Gregorio
“Changeling,” Philippa Gregory
“The Other Boleyn Girl,” Philippa Gregory
“A Time to Kill,” John Grisham
“The Firm,” John Grisham
“John Grisham Value Collection: A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Client,”
John Grisham
“From Where I Watch You,” Shannon Grogan
“Water For Elephants,” Sara Gruen
“The Freedom Writers Diary,” Erin Gruwell
“Snow Falling On Cedars,” David Guterson
“A Map of the World,” Jane Hamilton
“We’ll Always Have Summer,” Jenny Han
“The World’s Strongest Librarian,” Joshua Hanagarne
“Fly Away,” Kristin Hannah
“The Art of Fielding,” Chad Harbach
“Jude the Obscure,” Thomas Hardy
“Chocolat,” Joanne Harris
“The Lollipop Shoes,” Joanne Harris
“The Silent Wife,” A.S.A. Harrison
“Plainsong,” Kent Haruf
“The Best 100 Poems of Gwen Harwood,” Gwen Harwood
“Necropolis,” Jordan L. Hawk
“Second Skin,” John Hawkes
“The Girl on the Train,” Paula Hawkins
“Catch-22,” Joseph Heller

“The Collected Plays,” Lillian Hellman
“Demian the Story of Emil Sinclairs Youth,” Hermann Hesse
“Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend.,” Hermann Hesse
“Siddhartha (Dual-Language),” Hermann Hesse
“Siddhartha: A Novel,” Hermann Hesse
“Skin Tight,” Carl Hiaasen
“The Island,” Elin Hilderbrand
“Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition,” Katie Rain Hill
“Here Comes Santa Claus,” Sandra Hill
“Royal Assassin,” Robin Hobb
“The Dress Lodger,” Sheri Holman
“Watch Me,” A.J. Holt
“November 9,” Colleen Hoover
“Heart Bones,” Colleen Hoover
“Hopeless,” Colleen Hoover
“It Ends With Us,” Colleen Hoover
“It Starts With Us,” Colleen Hoover
“Layla,” Colleen Hoover
“Losing Hope,” Colleen Hoover
“Regretting You,” Colleen Hoover
“Verity,” Colleen Hoover
“Confess,” Colleen Hoover
“Ugly Love,” Colleen Hoover
“Impulse,” Ellen Hopkins
“Burned,” Ellen Hopkins
“Collateral,” Ellen Hopkins
“Crank,” Ellen Hopkins
“Fallout,” Ellen Hopkins
“Identical,” Ellen Hopkins
“Love Lies Beneath,” Ellen Hopkins
“People Kill People,” Ellen Hopkins
“Perfect,” Ellen Hopkins
“Tilt,” Ellen Hopkins
“Tricks,” Ellen Hopkins
“I Never,” Laura Hopper
“The Changeling,” Kate Horsley
“The Kite Runner,” Khaled Hosseini
“A Thousand Splendid Suns,” Khaled Hosseini
“Taken at Dusk,” C.C. Hunter
“Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley
“M Butterfly,” David Henry Hwang
“Icy Sparks,” Gwyn Hyman Rubio
“A Widow for One Year: A Novel,” John Irving
“The World According to Garp,” John Irving
“Never Let Me Go,” Kazuo Ishiguro
“Bit of a Blur,” Alex James
“Fifty Shades Series,” E.L. James
“Green River Killer: A True Detective Story,” Jeff Jensen
“No One to Trust,” Iris Johansen
“All Boys Aren’t Blue,” George M. Johnson
“Truly Devious 3-Book Box Set,” Maureen Johnson
“The Graduate,” Terry Johnson
“Choice Words,” Peter H. Johnston
“The Recognition of Sakuntala,” Arthur William Ryder Kalidasa
“Scent of Danger,” Andrea Kane
“Confessions of a Not It Girl,” Melissa Kantor
“The Big Bad Wolf Tells All,” Donna Kauffman
“Milk and Honey,” Rupi Kaur
“The Sun and Her Flowers,” Rupi Kaur
“Summer in the City of Roses,” Michelle Ruiz Keil
“Street Dreams,” Faye Kellerman
“Mr. Ding’s Chicken Feet,” Gillian Kendall
“The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend,” Kody Keplinger
“YOU: A Nove,” Caroline Kepnes
“On The Road,” Jack Kerouac
“The Book of Longings,” Sue Monk Kidd
“Four Past Midnight,” Stephen King
“Dolores Claiborne,” Stephen King
“Lisey’s Story,” Stephen King
“Night Shift,” Stephen King
“The Drawing of the Three,” Stephen King
“The Wastelands,” Stephen King
“Under the Dome,” Stephen King
“Prodigal Summer: A Novel,” Barbara Kingsolver
“Confessions of a Shopaholic,” Sophie Kinsella
“Shopaholic and Baby,” Sophie Kinsella
“Fear the Hunters,” Robert Kirkman
“Miles Behind Us,” Robert Kirkman
“Don’t Say a Word,” Andrew Klavan
“Primary Colors,” Joe Klein
“Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs,” Chuck Klosterman
“Gender Queer: A Memoir,” Maia Kobabe
“City of Night,” Dean Koontz
“Twilight Eyes,” Dean Koontz
“The Bear Went Over the Mountain,” William Kotzwinkle
“Born on the Fourth of July,” Ron Kovic
“The Pirate,” Jayne Ann Krentz
“The Poppy War,” R F. Kuang
“Dark Triumph,” Robin La Fevers
“Grave Mercy,” Robin La Fevers
“The Namesake,” Jhumpa Lahiri
“I Know This Much Is True,” Wally Lamb
“Search for Safety,” Paul Langan
“Survivor,” Paul Langan
“Liar,” Justine Larbalestier
“My Sister Rosa,” Justine Larbalestier
“The Splendid and the Vile,” Erik Larson
“Recipe Box,” Sandra Lee
“Furyborn,” Claire Legrand
“Mystic River,” Dennis Lehane
“The Grass Is Singing,” Doris Lessing
“Another Day,” David Levithan
“Dexter Is Delicious,” Jeff Lindsay
“Last Night at the Telegraph Club,” Malinda Lo
“The Dirt on Sex,” Justin Lookadoo
“Character, Driven,” David Lubar
“The Bourne Identity,” Robert Ludlum
“The Robert Ludlum Value Collection: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne
Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum,” Robert Ludlum
“Brave New Girl,” Louisa Luna
“Game,” Barry Lyga
“I Hunt Killers,” Barry Lyga
“Boy Toy,” Barry Lyga
“A Court of Frost and Starlight,” Sarah J. Maas
“A Court of Mist and Fury,” Sarah J. Maas
“A Court of of Wings and Ruin,” Sarah J. Maas
“A Court of Silver Flames,” Sarah J. Maas
“A Court of Wings and Ruin,” Sarah J. Maas
“House of Earth and Blood,” Sarah J. Maas
“A Court of Thorns and Roses,” Sarah J. Maas
“Fall on Your Knees,” Ann-Marie MacDonald
“Easter Rising,” Michael Patrick MacDonald
“Guyaholic,” Carolyn Mackler
“The Hike,” Drew Magary
“Son of a Witch,” Gregor Maguire
“Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West,” Gregory Maguire
“Wicked: Memorias de una bruja mala,” Gregory Maguire
“The Natural,” Bernard Malamud
“Nectar in a Sieve,” Kamala Markandaya
“Slightly Single,” Wendy Markham
“Blue is the Warmest Color,” Jul Maroh
“A Game of Thrones,” George R.R. Martin
“A Dance with Dragons,” George R.R. Martin
“A Feast for Crows,” George R.R. Martin
“A Storm of Swords,” George R.R. Martin
“The Mystery Knight,” George R.R. Martin
“The Official A Game of Thrones Coloring Book,” George R.R. Martin
“A Clash of Kings,” George R.R. Martin
“Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling’s Disgustingly Dirty Joke Book,” Jackie Martling
“Paper Dollhouse,” Lisa M. Masterson
“Strange Intimacy,” Anne Mather
“Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour,” Morgan Matson
“The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn,” Robin Maxwell
“The Good Lord Bird,” James McBride
“Perfect Fifths,” Megan McCafferty
“Second Helpings,” Megan McCafferty
“Freedom’s Choice,” Anne McCaffrey
“All the Pretty Horses,” Cormac McCarthy
“No Country for Old Men,” Cormac McCarthy
“Outer Dark,” Cormac McCarthy
“Man o’ War,” Cory McCarthy
“Sold,” Patricia McCormick
“The Revolution of Little Girls,” Blanche McCrary Boyd
“The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” Martin McDonagh
“Sophomore Switch,” Abby McDonald
“Amsterdam,” Ian McEwan
“Atonement,” Ian McEwan
“On Chesil Beach,” Ian McEwan
“Duquesa by Default,” Maura McGiveny
“Beautiful Disaster,” Jamie McGuire
“The Memory of Running,” Ron McLarty
“Lonesome Dove,” Larry McMurtry
“Everything You Want Me to Be,” Mindy Mejia
“Talking in the Dark,” Billy Merrell
“Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined,” Stephenie Meyer
“Pretty Woman,” Fern Michaels
“The Real Deal,” Fern Michaels
“The Authority,” Mark Millar
“Circe,” Madeline Miller
“The Song of Achilles: A Novel,” Madeline Miller
“Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (The Signet Classic Poetry
Series),” John Milton
“Paradise Lost,” John Milton
“Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and
Being a Human (A Graphic Novel),” Erika Moen
“All My Friends Are Dead,” Avery Monsen
“Watchmen,” Alan Moore
“Camp Confidential,” Melissa J. Morgan
“The Year of Secret Assignments,” Jaclyn Moriarty
“The Center of Everything,” Laura Moriarty
“Seikai 1,” Hiroyuki Morioka
“The Bluest Eye,” Toni Morrison
“Beloved,” Toni Morrison
“Paradise,” Toni Morrison
“Song of Solomon,” Toni Morrison
“Kafka on the Shore,” Haruki Murakami
“Heart of Stone,” C.E. Murphy
“Dead End,” Jason Myers
“Street Love,” Walter Dean Myers
“Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks,” Lauren Myracle
“Rhymes with Witches,” Lauren Myracle
“Shine,” Lauren Myracle
“L8R G8R,” Lauren Myracle
“The Infinite Moment of Us,” Lauren Myracle
“ttfn,” Lauren Myracle
“TTYL,” Lauren Myracle
“yolo,” Lauren Myracle
“The Art of Hana-Kimi,” Hisaya Nakajo
“Skin,” Donna Jo Napoli
“Linden Hills,” Gloria Naylor
“The Men of Brewster Place,” Gloria Naylor
“The Women of Brewster Place,” Gloria Naylor
“Like a Love Story,” Abdi Nazemian
“Getting Somewhere,” Beth Neff
“On the Volcano,” James Nelson
“Suite Francaise,” Irene Nemirovsky
“The Sympathizer,” Viet Thanh Nguyen
“We Are All Made of Molecules,” Susin Nielsen-Fernlund
“Holding Up the Universe,” Jennifer Niven
“Breathless,” Jennifer Niven
“Everlasting,” Alyson Noël
“Evermore,” Alyson Noël
“Night Star,” Alyson Noël
“Where I end and You Begin,” Preston Norton
“Sweat,” Lynn Nottage
“Plague in the Mirror,” Deborah Noyes
“Back Roads,” Tawni O’Dell
“Beasts,” Joyce Carol Oates
“The Assignation: Stories,” Joyce Carol Oates
“We Were the Mulvaneys,” Joyce Carol Oates
“Panic,” Lauren Oliver
“Before I Fall,” Lauren Oliver
“When the Emperor was Divine,” Julie Otsuka
“Ars Amatoria,” Ovid
“Metamorphoses,” Ovid
“Where the Crawdads Sing,” Delia Owens
“Choke,” Chuck Palahniuk
“Invisible Monsters Remix,” Chuck Palahniuk
“Lullaby,” Chuck Palahniuk
“In Order to Live,” Yeonmi Park
“The Dogs of Babel,” Carolyn Parkhurst
“Learning Tree,” Gordon Parks
“Bel Canto,” Ann Patchett
“The Patron Saint of Liars,” Ann Patchett
“Honeymoon,” James Patterson
“Private,” James Patterson
“Sail,” James Patterson
“Sam’s Letters to Jennifer,” James Patterson
“Sideways,” Alexander Payne
“A Day No Pigs Would Die,” Robert Newton Peck
“The Leftovers,” Tom Perrotta
“Out Stealing Horses,” Per Petterson
“Prague,” Arthur Phillips
“Fishtailing,” Wendy Phillips
“A Spark of Light,” Jodi Picoult
“Handle with Care,” Jodi Picoult
“Picture Perfect,” Jodi Picoult
“The Pact: A Love Story,” Jodi Picoult
“The Storyteller,” Jodi Picoult
“The Tenth Circle,” Jodi Picoult
“Nineteen Minutes,” Jodi Picoult
“A Year and a Day,” Leslie Pietrzyk
“Thirst No. 1,” Christopher Pike
“Thirst No. 2,” Christopher Pike
“Thirst No. 4,” Christopher Pike
“Thirst No. 5,” Christopher Pike
“Into White,” Randi Pink
“It Doesn’t Have to Be Awkward: Dealing with Relationships, Consent,
and Other Hard-to-Talk-About Stuff,” Drew Pinsky
“Yes Please,” Amy Poehler
“Tinisima,” Elena Poniatowska
“Behind the Shadows,” Patricia Potter
“The Whistling Toilets,” Randy Powell
“The Cabin,” Natasha Preston
“The Cellar,” Natasha Preston
“Caves Graves,” Natalie Prior
“Jane Swann’s Way,” Marcel Proust
“La Belle Sauvage,” Philip Pullman
“Burning Glass,” Kathryn Purdie
“The Family,” Mario Puzo
“Gabi, a Girl in Pieces,” Isabel Quintero
“The Elegant Gathering of White Snows,” Kris Radish
“The Fountainhead,” Ayn Rand
“Modern Love,” Andrew Rannells
“Punkzilla,” Adam Rapp
“Beautiful,” Amy Reed
“The Cute Girl Network,” M.K. Reed
“Such a Fun Age,” Kiley Reid
“The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” Taylor Jenkins Reid
“Stop in the Name of Pants!,” Louise Rennison
“Stone Fox,” John Reynolder
“Wide Sargasso Sea,” Jean Rhys
“The Vampire Armand,” Anne Rice
“The Witching Hour,” Anne Rice
“Life,” Keith Richards
“Juliet Takes a Breath,” Gabby Rivera
“Redeeming Love,” Francine Rivers
“The Atonement Child,” Francine Rivers
“Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal,” Mary Roach
“Birthright,” Nora Roberts
“The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters,” Elisabeth Robinson
“Normal People,” Sally Rooney
“Jack of Hearts (and other parts),” L.C. Rosen
“Portnoy’s Complaint,” Philip Roth
“The Casual Vacancy,” J.K. Rowling
“The God of Small Things,” Arundhati Roy
“All of Us with Wings,” Michelle Ruiz Keil
“Elegies for Angels Punks and Raging Queens,” Bill Russell
“The Dead-Tossed Waves,” Carrie Ryan
“Leviathan Wakes,” James S.A. Corey
“And They Lived …,” Steven Salvatore
“Bait,” Alex Sanchez
“Once a King, Always a King,” Reymundo Sanchez
“Option B,” Sheryl Sandberg
“The Fool’s Run,” John Sandford
“Vampire, Interupted,” Lynsay Sands
“Push,” Sapphire
“Blindness,” José Saramago
“Jesus Land: A Memoir,” Julia Scheeres
“Uses for Boys,” Erica Lorraine Scheidt
“The Reader,” Bernard Schlink
“The Beginning of Everything,” Robyn Schneider
“Bully,” Jim Schutze
“The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue,” V.E. Schwab
“The Gift of Forgiveness,” Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt
“Living Dead Girl: A Novel,” Elizabeth Scott
“Lucky,” Alice Sebold
“The Lovely Bones,” Alice Sebold
“Naked,” David Sedaris
“Peony in Love,” Lisa See
“Writing My Wrongs,” Shaka Senghor
“Equus,” Peter Shaffer
“Skin and Bones,” Sherry Shahan
“Demon Apocalypse,” Darren Shan
“Forbidden Knowledge,” Roger Shattuck
“Tweak,” Nic Sheff
“The Stone Diaries,” Carol Shields
“Sea Glass: A Novel,” Anita Shreve
“Alichino,” Kouyu Shurei
“The Food Chain,” Nicky Silver
“If I Was Your Girl,” Ni-Ni Simone
“Wilder,” Andrew Simonet
“The Straight Girl’s Guide to Sleeping with Chicks,” Jen Sincero
“The Silence and the Roar,” Nihad Sirees
“The Primal Blueprint,” Mark Sisson
“Prep: A Novel,” Curtis Sittenfeld
“You Think It, I’ll Say It,” Curtis Sittenfeld
“Stay In Line,” Teddy Slaterguess
“A Thousand Acres,” Jane Smiley
“The Way I used to Be,” Amber Smith
“Joy in the Morning,” Betty Smith
“Tree Grows In Brooklyn,” Betty Smith
“The Geography of Girlhood,” Kirsten Smith
“Betwixt,” Tara Bray Smith
“Anatomy of a Boyfriend,” Daria Snadowsky
“Sadar’s Keep,” Midori Snyder
“No Visible Bruises,” Rachel Louise Snyder
“MARS,” Fuyumi Soryo
“Summer on Wheels,” Gary Soto
“The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” Muriel Spark
“It Happened to Nancy,” Beatrice Sparks
“At First Sight,” Nicholas Sparks
“Message in a Bottle,” Nicholas Sparks
“Nights in Rodanthe,” Nicholas Sparks
“The Guardian,” Nicholas Sparks
“The Rescue,” Nicholas Sparks
“The Wedding,” Nicholas Sparks
“Small Town Girl,” Lavyrle Spencer
“Everyone likes Eggs,” Jerry Spinelli
“Star (French Edition),” Danielle Steel
“The Gift,” Danielle Steel
“East of Eden,” John Steinbeck
“Still Missing,” Chevy Stevens
“Earth (the book) A Visitors Guide to the Human Race,” Jon Stewart
“Every Last Word,” Tamara Ireland Stone
“Marcelo in the Real World,” Francisco X. Stork
“Until the Twelfth of Never,” Bella Stumbo
“Sophie’s Choice,” William Styron
“We Should Hang Out Sometime,” Josh Sundquist
“The Kitchen God’s Wife,” Amy Tan
“The Valley of Amazement,” Amy Tan
“American Colonies,” Alan Taylor
“Just Friends,” Billy Taylor
“The Spectacular Now,” Tim Tharp
“Concrete Rose,” Angie Thomas
“The Loners,” Lex Thomas
“Picking Cotton,” Jennifer Thompson-Cannino
“Blankets,” Craig Thompson
“First Time,” Meg Tilly
“Sigh, Gone,” Phuc Tran
“Milk Glass Moon,” Adriana Trigiani
“Stuck in Neutral,” Terry Trueman
“The RattleRat,” Janwillem Van de Wetering
“Red Thunder,” John Varley
“Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything,” Raquel Vasquez Gilliland
“Y: The Last Man,” Brian K. Vaughan
“When We Make It,” Elisabet Velasquez
“The Covenant of Water,” Abraham Verghese
“Shojo Beat,” Viz Media
“Dicey’s Song,” Cynthia Voight
“All I Want is Everything,” Cecily Von Ziegesar
“Don’t You Forget about Me,” Cecily Von Ziegesar
“Tempted,” Cecily Von Ziegesar
“You Know You Love Me,” Cecily Von Ziegesar
“It Had To Be You,” Cecily Von Ziegesar
“Slaughterhouse-Five,” Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel,” Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
“The Color Purple,” Alice Walker
“Black White and Jewish,” Rebecca Walker
“We All Looked Up,” Tommy Wallach
“A Thousand Country Roads: An Epilogue to The Bridges of Madison
County,” Robert James Waller
“The Bridges of Madison County,” Robert James Waller
“The Glass Castle,” Jeannette Walls
“Stargazing,” Jen Wang
“Salvage the Bones,” Jesmyn Ward
“Numbers,” Rachel Ward
“Something Worth Saving,” Sandi Ward
“The Graduate,” Charles Webb
“Girl Boy Etc,” Michael Weinreb
“Chasing Harry Winston,” Lauren Weisberger
“Little Altars Everywhere: A Novel,” Rebecca Wells
“A Certain Slant of Light,” Laura Whitcomb
“The Professor and the Madman,” Simon Winchester
“Happiness Sold Separately,” Lolly Winston
“A Man in Full,” Tom Wolfe
“The Interestings,” Meg Wolitzer
“Turkish Delight,” Jan Wolkers
“Brighter than Gold,” Cynthia Wright
“Native Son,” Richard Wright
“Blu’s Hanging,” Lois-Ann Yamanaka
“Revolutionary Road,” Richard Yates
“Armageddon Summer,” Jane Yolen
“The Sun Is Also a Star,” Nicola Yoon
“Everything, Everything,” Nicola Yoon
“Nothing But Your Ski,” Cathy Ytak

Compiled by staff writer Richard Tribou. Source: List obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project and confirmed by Orange County Public Schools.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, DeSantis, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom to Read, Literacy, Literature

Orange County, Florida, Removed 673 Books from Classroom Shelves

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2023 //
20

Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel reported the banned books list in Orange County. I haven’t read most of them, but several of the banned books that I had read were very surprising to me.

The next post will identify all the books on the list.

Postal wrote:

A total of 673 books, from classics to best-sellers, have been removed from Orange County classrooms this year for fear they violate new state rules that ban making “sexual conduct” available to public school students.

The list of rejected books, which the district began compiling during the summer, will get another review from Orange County Public Schools staff, so some could eventually be put back on shelves. But for now, teachers who had them in their classrooms have been told to take them home or put them away so students cannot access them.

The books run the gamut, from John Milton’s 17th-century epic poem “Paradise Lost” to John Grisham’s 1991 New York Times bestseller “The Firm.” John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” and John Irving’s “The World According to Garp” made the list, too.

The list also includes popular novels by Stephen King, Sue Monk Kidd and Jodi Picoult, classics like “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” “Jude the Obscure,” and “Madame Bovary,” and award-winning books like “A Thousand Acres,” “Beloved,” and “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

The books that surprised me most were:

PARADISE LOST

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN

MADAME BOVARY

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Do you think teenagers will rush to read Milton’s Paradise Lost or Flaubert’s Madame Bovary now that they are banned?

The next post will have the full list.

Categories Censorship, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Libraries, Literacy, Literature

Benjamin Netanyahu Is a Maniac!

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2023 //
51

The continuation of Israel’s war in Gaza is madness. Initially, Israel’s invasion was a righteous response to the heinous atrocities of October 7. Israel has the right of self-defense.

But Netanyahu’s determination to eliminate every trace of Hamas is an insane goal. He will never succeed because the violence he is inflicting on Gaza is creating new recruits for Hamas.

He should declare success and end the war. There is nothing to be gained other than more hatred, more death, and more destruction by continuing to drop bombs on helpless people.

One day, he orders a million or so Gazans to move to the south of Gaza to avoid the bombing; then he bombs the south. No place is safe. Unless his goal is to kill all life in Gaza, his battle plan is madness.

The bombing is not only destroying civilians, it is destroying historic mosques, churches, museums, and precious cultural archives. Attacking such sites is contrary to international law and serves no purpose.

End the war. Stop the killing. Bring home the hostages. Talk peace.

Categories Cruelty, International

Is the U.S. a “Democracy” or a “Republic?”

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2023 //
51

I first heard this question posed when I was in high school in the 1950s. The question was always posed by the John Birch Society, an extremist rightwing group. Frankly, I never truly understood why folks on the right kept hammering this as a big deal. Whichever term you use, you are talking about a society governed by a representative body.

A reader recently posted the claim that the U.S. is a republic, not a democracy.

Our reader Democracy responded:

When someone says that the US is actually a “republic” and not a democracy,” it is actually a good sign that he is a Know-Nothing who subscribes to authoritarianism and is OPPOSED to a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Constitutional scholar Eugen Volokh wrote this in The Washington Post more than eight years ago:

“John Adams used the term ‘representative democracy’ in 1794; so did Noah Webster in 1785; so did St. George Tucker in his 1803 edition of Blackstone; so did Thomas Jefferson in 1815. Tucker’s Blackstone likewise uses ‘democracy’ to describe a representative democracy, even when the qualifier ‘representative’ is omitted…”

“James Wilson, one of the main drafters of the Constitution and one of the first Supreme Court Justices, defended the Constitution in 1787 by speaking of the three forms of government being the ‘monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical,’ and said that in a democracy the sovereign power is ‘inherent in the people, and is either exercised by themselves or by their representatives.’ And Chief Justice John Marshall — who helped lead the fight in the 1788 Virginia Convention for ratifying the U.S. Constitution — likewise defended the Constitution in that convention by describing it as implementing ‘democracy’ (as opposed to ‘despotism’), and without the need to even add the qualifier ‘representative.’”

“… there is no basis for saying that the United States is somehow ‘not a democracy, but a republic.’ ‘Democracy’ and ‘republic’ aren’t just words that a speaker can arbitrarily define to mean something (e.g., defining democracy as ‘a form of government in which all laws are made directly by the people’). They are terms that have been given meaning by English speakers more broadly. And both today and in the Framing era, ‘democracy’ has been generally understood to include representative democracy as well as direct democracy.”

I’d say we are a “democratic republic” and let it go with that.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism

My View: Harvard Should Support President Claudine Gay

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2023 //
43

Since the infamous day when a hostile Congressional committee grilled three female university presidents about anti-Semitism on their campuses, one of the three (from the University of Pennsylvania) resigned, and pressure has been building to force out Harvard’s President Claudine Gay.

The three were asked by a pugnacious Rep. Elise Stefanik if a call for genocide against Jews on their campus would violate college policy against bullying and harassment. They all answered that it depended on the context.

Rep. Stefanik and her fellow Republicans were appalled and treated their responses as an outrage. The three women tried to backtrack, but they faced a disastrous backlash, as though they endorsed genocide against Jews.

Stefanik tweeted her triumph over the three presidents of prestigious universities:

“One down. Two to go,” Stefanik wrote in a post on X after Magill announced her resignation.

“@Harvard and @MIT, do the right thing,” Stefanik added. “The world is watching.”

Now the rightwing hate machine has trained its guns on Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president. Led by the infamous Chris Rufo, who knows how to manufacture crises and smear campaigns, the effort to oust President Gay has focused on allegations of plagiarism in her 1997 dissertation and her published articles.

Apparently the House Committee will now investigate Dr. Gay for plagiarism. I truly don’t understand how the question of plagiarism became a fit subject for a Congressional investigation.

The charges thus far have come from Rufo, the rightwing Washington Free Beacon, and Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. The Washington Free Beacon gave concrete examples from her work, but without putting them into context (I.e., did she name the authors whose work she was citing in the body of the text?).

Having reviewed the allegations, I concluded that they were surely embarrassing to Gay, but none was so egregious as to destroy her career. In a few instances, she cited the authors of a paper, then took a quote from the cited work without inserting quotation marks. She is making corrections and adding quotation marks.

The campaign against Claudine Gay shows rightwing cancel culture at its zenith.

My view: any decision about Dr. Gay should be made by the Harvard Corporation, not by a rightwing lynch mob and not by a vengeful Congressional committee. Rufo and his friends would like nothing better than to claim victory over America’s most prestigious institution of higher education.

If I were a member of the Harvard Corporation, I would vote to support her.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Censorship, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

Thom Hartmann: Do Not Be Fooled By These GOP Scams

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2023 //
113

Thom Hartmann explains the lies, hoaxes, And scams that Republicans use to deceive middle-income people to vote for them, against their self-interest. He shows how Jeb Bush tilted the election of 2000 in favor of his brother George.

This is a must-read.

Hartmann writes:

The GOP — to keep the support of “average” American voters while they work entirely for the benefit of giant corporations, the weapons and fossil fuel industries, and the morbidly rich — have run a whole series of scams on voters ever since the original Reagan grift of trickle-down economics.

Oddly, there’s nothing comparable on the Democratic side. No lies or BS to justify unjustifiable policies: Democrats just say up-front what they’re all about:

Healthcare and quality education for all. Treat all people and religions with respect and fairness. Trust women to make their own decisions. Raise the pay of working people and support unionization. Get assault weapons off the streets. Do something about climate change. Clean up toxic waste sites and outlaw pesticides that damage children. Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Nonetheless, the media persists in treating the two parties as if they were equally honest and equally interested in the needs of all Americans. In part, that’s because one of the GOP’s most effective scams — the “liberal media bias” scam — has been so successful ever since Lee Atwater invented it back in the early years of the Reagan Revolution.

For example, right now there’s a lot of huffing and puffing in the media about how the Supreme Court might rule in the case of Trump being thrown off the ballot in Colorado. They almost always mention “originalism” and “textualism” as if they’re honest, good-faith methods for interpreting the Constitution when, in fact, they’re cynical scams invented to justify unjustifiable rulings.

Thus, the question: how much longer will Americans (and the American media) continue to fall for the GOP’s scams? 

They include:

— Originalism: Robert Bork came up with this scam back in the 1980s when Reagan appointed him to the Supreme Court and he couldn’t come up with honest or reasonable answers for his jurisprudential positions, particularly those justifying white supremacy. By saying that he could read the minds of the Founders and Framers of the Constitution, Bork gave himself and future generations of Republicans on the Court the fig leaf they needed.

The simple fact is that there was rarely a consensus among the Framers and among the politicians of the founding generation about pretty much anything. And to say that we should govern America by the standards of a white-men-only era before even the industrial revolution much less today’s modern medicine, communications, and understanding of economics is absurd on its face.

— Voter Fraud: This scam, used by white supremacists across the South in the years after the failure of Reconstruction to prevent Black people from voting, was reinvented in 1993, when Bill Clinton and Democrats in Congress succeeded in passing what’s today called the “Motor Voter” law that lets states automatically register people to vote when they renew their driver’s licenses. Republicans freaked out at the idea that more people might be voting, and claimed the new law would cause voter fraud (it didn’t).

By 1997, following Democratic victories in the 1996 election, it had become a major meme to justify purging voting rolls of Black and Hispanic people. Today it’s the justification for over 300 voter suppression laws passed in Red states in just in the past 2 years, all intended to make it harder for working class people, minorities, women, the elderly dependent on Social Security, and students (all Democratic constituencies) to vote.

The most recent iteration of it is Donald Trump‘s claim that the 2020 election, which he lost by fully 7 million votes, was stolen from him by voter fraud committed by Black people in major cities.

As a massive exposé in yesterday’s Washington Post titled “GOP Voter-Fraud Crackdown Overwhelmingly Targets Minorities, Democrats” points out, the simple reality is that voter fraud in the US is so rare as to be meaningless, and has never, ever, anywhere been documented to swing a single election. 

But Republicans have been using it as a very effective excuse to make it harder for Democratic voters to cast a ballot, and to excuse their purging almost 40,000,000 Americans off the voting rolls in the last five years.

Right To Work (For Less): back in the 1940s, Republicans came up with this scam. Over the veto of President Harry Truman, they pushed through what he referred to as “the vicious Taft-Hartley Act,” which lets states make it almost impossible for unions to survive. Virtually every Red state has now adopted “right to work,” which has left their working class people impoverished and, because it guts the political power of working people, their minimum wage unchanged.

— Bush v Gore: The simple reality is that Al Gore won Florida in 2000, won the national popular vote by a half-million, and five Republicans on the Supreme Court denied him the presidency. Florida Governor and George W. Bush’s brother Jeb had his Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris, throw around 90,000 African Americans off the voting rolls just before the election and then, when the votes had come in and it was clear former Vice President Al Gore had still won, she invented a new category of ballots for the 2000 election: “Spoiled.”

As The New York Times reported a year after the 2000 election when the consortium of newspapers they were part of finally recounted all the ballots:

“While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush’s name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore’s name while punching the hole for Gore. [Florida Secretary of State] Katherine Harris decided that these were ‘spoiled’ ballots because they were both punched and written upon and ordered that none of them should be counted.

“Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous.”

George W. Bush “won” the election by 537 votes in Florida, because the statewide recount — which would have revealed Harris’s crime and counted the “spoiled” ballots, handing the election to Gore (who’d won the popular vote by over a half-million) — was stopped when George HW Bush appointee Clarence Thomas became the deciding vote on the Supreme Court to block the recount order from the Florida Supreme Court.

Harris’ decision to not count the 45,599 more votes for Gore than Bush was completely arbitrary; there is no legal category and no legal precedent, outside of the old Confederate states simply refusing to count the votes of Black people, to justify it. The intent of the voters was unambiguous. And the 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court jumped in to block the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (in violation of the 10th Amendment) just in time to prevent those “spoiled” votes from being counted, cementing Bush’s illegitimate presidency.

— Money is “Free Speech” and corporations are “persons”: This scam was invented entirely by Republicans on the Supreme Court, although billionaire GOP donors — infuriated by campaign contribution and dark money limits put into law in the 1970s after the Nixon bribery scandals — had been funding legal efforts to get it before the Court for years.

In a decision that twists logic beyond rationality, the five Republicans on the Court — over the strong, emphatic objections of all the Democrats on the Court — ruled that our individual right to free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment also includes the “right to listen,” as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America and they wrotein Citizens United:

“The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.”

Without being able to hear from the most knowledgeable entities, they argued, Americans couldn’t be well-informed about the issues of the day.

And who was in the best position to inform us? As Lewis Powell himself wrote in the Bellottidecision, echoed in Citizens United, it’s those corporate “persons”:

“Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the First Amendment seeks to foster…”

“Political speech is ‘indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.’ … The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.”

They doubled down, arguing that corporations and billionaires should be allowed to dump unlimited amounts of money into the political campaigns of those politicians they want to own so long as they go into dark money operations instead of formal campaigns. What was called “bribery” for over 200 years is now “free speech”:

“For the reasons explained above, we [five Republicans on the Supreme Court] now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

— Cutting taxes raises revenue: As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, the idea promoted by Reagan, Bush, and Trump to justify almost $30 trillion in cumulative tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations is “The Biggest Tax Scam in History.”

Reagan first pitched this to justify cutting the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 25% in the 1980s, and it was reprised by both George W. Bush and Donald Trump for their own massive tax breaks for their well-off donors and peers.

The simple fact is that America went from a national debt of over 124% of GDP following World War II to a national debt of a mere $800 billion when Reagan came into office. We’d been paying down our debt steadily, and had enough money to build the interstate highway system, brand new schools and hospitals from coast to coast, and even to put men on the moon.

Since Reagan rolled out his tax scam, however, our national debt has gone from less than a trillion in 1980 to over 30 trillion today: we’re back, in terms of debt, to where we were during WWII when FDR raised the tippy-top bracket income tax rate to 90% to deal with the cost of the war. We should be back to that tax rate for the morbidly rich today, as well.

— Destroying unions helps workers: In their eagerness to help their corporate donors, Reagan rolled out a novel idea in 1981, arguing that instead of helping working people, corrupt “union bosses” were actually ripping them off.

Union leaders work on a salary and are elected by their members: the very idea that they, like CEOs who are compensated with stock options and performance bonuses and appointed by their boards, could somehow put their own interests first is ludicrous. Their only interest, if they want to retain their jobs, is to do what the workers want.

But Reagan was a hell of a salesman, and he was so successful with this pitch he cut union membership in America during his and his VP’s presidency by more than 50 percent.

— Corporations can provide better Medicare than the government: For a corporation to exist over the long term, particularly a publicly-traded corporation, it must produce a profit. That’s why when George W. Bush and friends invented the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 they allowed Advantage providers to make as much as 20 percent in pure profit.

Government overhead for real Medicare is around 2% — the cost of administration — and corporations could probably run their Advantage programs with a similar overhead, but they have to make that 20% profit nut, so they hire larger staffs to examine every single request to pay for procedures, surgeries, tests, imaging, and even doctors’ appointments. And reject, according to The New York Times, around 18% of them.

“Advantage plans also refused to pay legitimate claims, according to the report. About 18 percent of payments were denied despite meeting Medicare coverage rules, an estimated 1.5 million payments for all of 2019.”

When they deny you care, they make money. If they ran like real Medicare and paid every bill (except the fraudulent ones), they’d merely break even, and no company can do that. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to claim that “choice” in the marketplace is more important than fixing Medicare.

With the $140 billion that for-profit insurance companies overcharge us and steal from our government every year, if Medicare Advantage vanished there would be enough money left over to cut Medicare premiums to almost nothing and add dental, vision, and hearing. But don’t expect Republicans to ever go along with that: they take too much money from the insurance industry (thanks to five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court).

— More guns means more safety: Remember the NRA’s old “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”? They’re still at it, and there’s hardly a single Republican in America who will step up and do anything about the gun violence crisis that is uniquely experienced by our nation.

Bullets are now the leading cause of death among children in the US, and we’re literally the only country in the entire world for which that is true. And a child living in Red state Mississippi is ten times more likely to die from a gun than a child in Blue state Massachusetts. But as long as the NRA owns them, Republicans will never do anything about it.

— The media has a liberal bias: This canard was started by Lee Atwater in an attempt to “work the refs” of the media, demanding that they stop pointing out the scams Republicans were engaging in (at the time it was trickle-down). The simple reality is that America’s media, from TV and radio networks to newspapers to websites, are overwhelmingly owned by billionaires and corporations with an openly conservative bent.

There are over 1500 rightwing radio stations (and 1000 religious broadcasters, who are increasingly political), three rightwing TV networks, and an army of tens of thousands of paid conservative activists turning out news releases and policy papers in every state, every day of the year. There are even well-funded social media operations.

There is nothing comparable on the left. Even MSNBC is owned by Comcast and so never touches issues of corporate governance, media bias (they fired Brian Stelter!), or the corruption of Congress by its big pharma and Medicare Advantage advertisers.

— Republicans are the party of faith: Republicans claim to be the pious ones, from Mike Johnson’s creepy “chastity ball” with his daughter, to their hate of queer people, to their embrace of multimillionaire TV and megachurch preachers. But Democrats, who are more accepting of people of all faiths and tend not to wear their religion on their sleeves, are the ones following Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus, arguably the founder of Christianity, was emphatic that you should never pray in public, do your good deeds in private as well, and that the only way to get to heaven is to feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, and love every other human as much as you love yourself.

Republicans, on the other hand, wave their piety like a bloody shirt, issue press releases about their private charities, and fight every effort to have our government feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, or even respect, much less love, people who look or live or pray differently from them.

— Crime is exploding and you’re safer living in an area Republicans control: In fact, crime of almost all sorts is at a low not seen since 1969. Only car thefts are up, and some of that appears to have to do with social media “how to” videos and a few very vulnerable makes of autos.

New FBI statistics find that violent crime nationwide is down 8 percent; in big cities it’s down nearly 15 percent, robbery and burglary are down 10 and 12 percent respectively. 

But what crime there is is overwhelmingly happening in Red states. Over the past 21 years, all types of crime in Red states are 23 percent higher than in Blue states: in 2020, murder rates were a mind-boggling 40 percent higher in states that voted for Trump than those Biden carried.

— Global warming is a hoax: Ever since fossil fuel billionaires and the fossil fuel industry started using the legal bribery rights five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court created for them, virtually every Republican politician in the nation is either directly on the take or benefits indirectly from the massive infrastructure created by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel barons. As a result, it’s almost impossible to find even one brave, truthful Republican who’s willing to do anything about the climate crisis that is most likely to crash not just the US but civilization itself.

— Hispanic immigrants are “murderers and rapists”: Donald Trump threw this out when he first announced his candidacy for president in 2015, saying, “They are bringing drugs. They are bringing crime. They’re rapists.” In fact, Hispanic immigrants (legal or without documentation) are far less likely, per capita and by any other measure, to commit crime of any sort than white citizens.

— Helping people makes them lazy. The old Limbaugh joke about “kicking people when they’re down is the only way to get them up” reveals the mindset behind this Republican scam, which argues that when people get money or things they didn’t work for it actually injures them and society by making them lazy. The GOP has used this rationalization to oppose everything from unemployment insurance in the 1930s to food stamps, Medicaid, and housing supports today.

In fact, not only is there no evidence for it, but studies of Universal Basic Income (UBI), where people are given a few hundred dollars a month with no strings attached, finds that the vast majority use the extra funds to improve themselves. They upgrade their housing, look for better jobs, and go back to school.

If the morbidly rich people behind the GOP who promote this scam really believed it, they’d be arguing for a 100% estate tax, to prevent their own children from ending up “lazy.” Good luck finding any who are leaving their trust-fund kids destitute.

— Tobacco doesn’t cause cancer: Back in 2000, soon-to-be Indiana Governor and then-Congressman Mike Pence wrote a column that was published statewide saying, “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill.” Pence’s family had made money off tobacco for years with a small chain of now-bankrupt convenience stores called “Tobacco Road,” but he was also being spiffed by the industry.

Similarly, George W. Bush pushed the “Healthy Forests Initiative” as president after big contributions from the timber industry: “healthy” meant “clear cut.” Bush also had his “Clear Skies Initiative” that let polluters dump more poison into our air. And the Trump administration, after big bucks and heavy lobbying from the chemical and Big Ag industries, refused to ban a very profitable pesticide used on human food crops that was found to definitely cause brain damage and cancer in children.

— For-profit utilities produce cheaper and more reliable electricity than government-owned and -run ones: This one goes back to the Reagan era, with Republicans arguing that the “free market” will always outperform government, including when it comes to generating and distributing electricity. In fact, each of us has only one wire coming into our homes or offices, so there is no possible competition to drive either improved performance or lower prices among for-profit utilities.

In fact, non-profit community-owned or government run utilities consistently produce more reliable electricity, serve their customers better, and charge lower prices. And the differences have become starker every year since, in 1992, President GHW Bush ended federal regulation of electric utilities. It’s why Texas, which has almost completely privatized its power grid, suffers some of the least reliable and most expensive electricity in the nation when severe weather hits.

— The electoral college protects our democracy: There was a time when both Democrats and Republicans wanted to get rid of the Electoral College; a constitutional amendment to do that failed in Congress by a single vote back in 1970. But after both George W. Bush and Donald Trump lost the White house by a half-million and three million votes respectively but ended up as president anyway, Republicans fell newly in love with the College and are fully planning to use it again in 2024 to seize power even if ten million more people vote for Biden this time (Biden won by 7 million votes in 2020).

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Republicans are now defending billionaires buying off Supreme Court justices and most recently Lever News found that they’ve been spiffing over 100 other federal judges — who regularly vote in favor of the interests of corporations and the morbidly rich — in addition to Alito, Thomas, Roberts, et al.

Republicans are also claiming that:

— Trump isn’t a threat to our democracy and his promises to be a dictator are “mere hyperbole.” 
— Letting Putin take Ukraine won’t put Taiwan and other democracies at risk.
— Ignoring churches routinely breaking the law by preaching politics while enjoying immunity from taxes is no big deal. 
— Massive consolidation to monopoly levels across virtually every industry in America since Reagan stopped enforcement of our anti-trust laws (causing Americans to pay an average of $5,000 a year more for everything from broadband to drugs than any other country in the world) is just the way business should be run.
— Teaching white children the racial history of America will make them feel bad, rather than feel less racist and more empathetic. 
— Queer people are groomers and pedophiles (the majority in these categories are actually straight white men).
— Banning and burning books is good for society and our kids.
— Ending public schools with statewide voucher programs will improve education (every credible study shows the opposite).

I could go on, but you get the point. When will America — and, particularly, American media — wake up to these scams and start calling them out for what they are?

I’m not holding my breath, although you could help get the ball rolling by sharing this admittedly incomplete list as far and wide as possible.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Bush, Jeb, Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Extremism, Fake, Florida, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Inequality, Lies, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans

Merry Christmas! Reach Out and Spread Joy

By dianeravitch
December 25, 2023 //
25

Merry Christmas to all of those who read this blog!

Thank you for reading and sharing your views.

If you are surrounded by family and friends, enjoy them and treasure them.

If you are not, go to a church or community center and help others. Some are serving Christmas dinner and would welcome your help. Find out where community groups are sharing with others. Help them. They need you.

Categories Joy, Love

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner: A Reason to Smile

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2023 //
12

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner find “a reason to smile” in the music of the season. They even include three beautiful renditions of “Silent Night.”

‘Tis the season for many things, and one of those is music. Christmas carols fill the air. Even those who do not celebrate the holiday often find resonance in the beauty the music can evoke. The songs speak of many things: the story of Christmas, its celebration, and the sights and sounds of winter. There are words of peace, contemplation, and goodwill. 

The very act of caroling is itself an expression of art and a symbol of the bonds that hold us together. The merging of voices in song, with or without accompanying instrumentation, is a profoundly human endeavor present in cultures in every part of the world. And while professional musicians certainly have put their stamp on the season (hello, Mariah Carey), this is also a time for amateur voices — from street corners to holiday parties to church sanctuaries — to shine. 

There is so much beautiful talent in this world, especially when we can come together in peace. The melding voices of a choir offers a particularly precious sign of hope at a time that is all too fractured and discordant. 

We wanted to celebrate Christmas in song as A Reason To Smile, while also acknowledging that this holiday is not a religious tradition of many of our readers. We have chosen what has been dubbed the most recorded Christmas song of all time, “Silent Night.” The words come from an 1816 poem — “Stille Nacht” — written by Austrian priest Joseph Mohr. The story goes that he was inspired by an evening walk amid a quiet snow-filled landscape. An era of violent conflict had recently convulsed Europe with the Napoleonic Wars. A silent night was something to cherish. 

The music came a few years later, a collaboration with a local teacher and organist, Franz Xaver Gruber. The original melody evolved slightly over the years to what we know today. A song with more than 137,000 recordings offers a lot of options to feature. We chose a few from different musical genres, proving there are many ways to honor a classic and celebrate the season. 

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, and a restful and reflective time to all. 

We start with the wonderful opera star Jessye Norman accompanied by a boys choir: 

https://youtu.be/v2Ml1JJxASI

Here is country superstar Brad Paisley’s version:

And we close with a jazzy rendition, courtesy of the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis:

https://youtu.be/lSnM7Pq7PuM

Open the link to listen to the YouTube videos, if you wish.

Categories Joy

Romeo and Julieta in Rio: A Beautiful Love Story

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2023 //
12

Every once in a while, I read a beautiful story that has nothing to do with education or politics, and I want to share it. This is one of those stories. It’s about two macaws. One is caged in an aviary. The other is wild and free. They are in love.

Terrence McCoy wrote in The Washington Post:

RIO DE JANEIRO — One recent afternoon, a smitten blue-and-yellow macaw grabbed a clawful of carrots and banana and took flight. He flapped to the top of the aviary at the Rio de Janeiro zoo and latched onto the netting. Just beyond, on the other side of the enclosure, was his love — the only wild macaw in a city that hasn’t seen a free one of their kind in two centuries.

She beckoned to him. He went to her. On opposite sides of the netting, they rubbed beaks. He passed her his food. They clung together, grasping claws, and wouldn’t let go.

Every day for more than two decades, zookeepers attest, the wild macaw has flown to the Rio de Janeiro zoo where dozens of her species are kept captive — including her partner.

In the animal kingdom, blue-and-yellow macaws are among the most faithful. They can live into their fifties, but when one finds a partner, it’s for life. The pair typically spend their days and nights together. They nibble, cuddle and even kiss. Whatever food they have, they share. If one dies, the surviving partner’s anguish is profound. Few ever couple again.

But even for such an animal, zookeepers and biologists say this Rio de Janeiro romance is nothing short of extraordinary.

Because it would violate Brazilian legislation to cage her, and because it would breach zoo policy and ethical standards to free him, the couple have only ever lived and loved on separate sides of the netting, unable to consummate their relationship.

Romeo and Julieta, zookeepers call them. An impossible love.

“I worked at the zoo for 28 years, and I never saw anything like this,” said Anderson Mendes Augusto. “There’s no explanation.”

The tale has long enchanted the city, dazzling visitors, prompting a poem by one of Brazil’s most celebrated poets — and giving rise to a series of interpretations. Some have seen a commentary on fidelity and companionship. Others have discerned the contemporary themes of conservation and environmentalism. And still more have gleaned an allegory for Rio de Janeiro itself, a city carved from a lush forest now grappling with its own loss of wildness.

But at the aviary, the relationship appeared simpler: just two birds in love.

As the zoo closed, they were still up there, holding onto one another. The only person left inside was zookeeper Daniel Miranda. Soon it was time for him to go home, too. So he finished his last duties, walked through the gate and left the aviary empty of all visitors — save one.

To finish the story, open the link. I hope it’s not behind a paywall.

Categories Joy
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