The Notorious John Eastman Explains Why He Plotted a Coup

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2023 //
25

Laura K. Field writes about John Eastman, once a prominent lawyer, who advised Trump and his team about how to overturn the 2020 election. Her post appears at The Bulwark, a place created by Republican Never Trumpers. Eastman is involved in disbarment proceedings for his role in the failed coup.

FOR NEARLY TWO YEARS NOW, since he was revealed in September 2021 to be the author of the notorious “coup memos,” John Eastman has been walking a bizarre legal and political tightrope.

On the one hand, we have the man who filed a legal claim on behalf of President Donald Trump in Texas in December 2020 seeking to invalidate millions of votes. The man who was invited to join Trump’s unofficial legal team later that month, where he wrote the two elaborate memos delineating various paths that Trump and Vice President Mike Pence could take to delay or overturn the election count. Who tried in person to persuade Pence that, at the very least, he had the authority to delay the vote count; who spoke at Trump’s “Save America” rally on January 6th, repeating conspiratorial lies about election fraud; whose emails that same day reveal that during the siege of the Capitol that he blamed Pence for not acting as he had advised; who was caught on video (by an undercover activist) boastingabout working to overturn the election; who lost his academic appointments in the aftermath of these events; whom a federal judge concluded had “more likely than not” broken the law; who may soon be disbarred in the state of California; and who is so worried about being indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith that he has requested a postponement of those disbarment proceedings.

On the other hand we have a man who has tried to distance himself from his own memos, at one point calling himself “the white knight here, talking [Trump] down from the more aggressive position” in advance of January 6th. This other Eastman has consistently maintained that his recommendations to Pence and Trump were narrow, sensible, and moderate. That he had merely recommended “hitting pause” on the vote count on January 6th, so that the relevant election controversies could be adjudicated by the states. That to follow the other paths articulated in his memos would have been reckless.

The gulf between these two Eastmans—the eager-to-act conspiratorial Eastman and the reticent lawyerly one—shrunk a bit last week, with the release of the third and final installment of an Eastman interview with the Claremont Institute’s main financial backer, chairman of the board, and gonzo anti-woke warrior, Thomas D. Klingenstein. In this interview, Eastman comes close to saying that his own electoral shenanigans and legal wrangling have been a sideshow. In sentiments reminiscent of Michael Anton’s “The Flight 93 Election” essay and subsequent writing, Eastman makes it clear—without fully dropping his lawyerly persona—that for him, the deeper reason for standing by Trump through his January 6th saga was that he thinks Democrats are destroying the country.

LAST WEEK, I WROTE about the first and second parts of Eastman’s interview with Klingenstein. In the first, they trot through a long list of disproven allegations of 2020 election fraud. The second is about January 6th and the question of Pence’s legal authority to delay or overturn the election.

Now comes the concluding installment, which begins by focusing on the question of prudence: Given all the complex considerations involved in the 2020 election, was it prudent for Eastman and Trump to pursue the course of action that they did?

The interview is full of odd claims and intriguing revelations. For example, at one point Eastman says that in his considerations of prudence he did not take into account the possibility of mob violence, because he was working in “a different department,” that “Trump himself had authorized the call-up of 20,000 members of the National Guard for January 6th” (not true), and that Eastman just assumed that “those things were handled.”

Eastman also suggests in this segment that he believed there was a “fair prospect” that he would have been able to win “a majority of the [Supreme] Court” in support of Pence’s right “merely to delay,” or at least to get the Court not to touch the issue as nonjusticiable.

But the interview really gets disturbing in its last ten or so minutes, when it turns to the question of Eastman’s deepest motives. Why was it so important to Eastman to see Trump re-elected? Klingenstein suggests that the “biggest” factor motivating Eastman “is the current circumstances in the country, the political and social condition.”

Eastman agrees. After some discussion about how the legal situation surrounding the 2020 election was different from the legal situation in two other close elections, those of 1960 and 2000, Eastman makes clear that the more important distinction he sees among those three elections is that “the stakes” in 2020 were higher—that they were literally life or death:

Certainly not in 1960, but also not in 2000, were the stakes about the very existential threat that the country is under as great as they are.

We’re not talking about, you know, handing over to John Kennedy, instead of Richard Nixon, who’s gonna deal with the Cold War. We’re talking about whether we are going to, as a nation, completely repudiate every one of our founding principles, which is what the modern left wing which is in control of the Democrat party believes—that we are the root of all evil in the world and we have to be eradicated.

This is an existential threat to the very survivability, not just of our nation, but of the example that our nation, properly understood, provides to the world. That’s the stakes.

Obviously, when the stakes are this high, you do whatever you can to fight back. As Anton put it about the 2016 election, you “charge the cockpit or you die.” So when the opportunity came along to be part of a challenge to the normal election processes, Eastman was eager to join the fight.

The interview does not, it seems to me, involve a moment where Eastman fully “comes clean” about trying to overthrow a legitimate election (as Josh Marshall has suggested). Rather, what Eastman does is zoom in and out between what we might call the deeper cause of his actions—his belief, entirely consonant with Anton’s original “Flight 93 Election” bullshit, that liberals and the left pose an existential threat to the country and are traitors to the country’s founding principles—and the immediate rationale or pretext for his behavior, which is the premise of the stolen election.

In the very next part of the interview, Eastman zooms out:

Trump seems to understand that [i.e., the stakes] in a way a lot of Republican establishment types in Washington don’t, and it’s a reason he gets so much support in the hinterland and the ‘flyover country.’ People are fed up with folks, you know, get-along-go-along while the country is being destroyed.

And then Eastman zooms back in to argue that these high stakes justified his involvement in Trump’s post-election machinations:

And so I think the stakes are much bigger, and that means a stolen election that thwarts the will of the people trying to correct course, and get back on a path that understands the significance and the nobility of America and the American experiment is really at stake and we ought to fight for it.

Eastman and Klingenstein seem almost to suggest that stolen elections are a dime a dozen in American history, but only in this instance was it worth the fight.

At this point in the interview, Eastman all but drops the façade, and zooms out all the way. When asked by Klingenstein once again whether he maybe would have made a different prudential calculation in 1960 or 2020, Eastman says yes, “I may have come to a different conclusion.” Then he proceeds to explain:

Look, our founders lay this case out. The prudential judgment they make in the Declaration of Independence is the same one. There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that says, you know, a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable—or tolerable, while they remain tolerable—but at some point the abuses have become so intolerable that it is not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.

So that’s the question. Have the abuses and the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back.

This is an extraordinary thing to admit. For one thing, by the time you’re appealing to the Declaration of Independence in that way you are in effect admitting that you were trying to overthrow your government.

It may be obvious but it’s worth saying this out loud: Violence is implicit in this line of argument. Lincoln understood this when he spoke of Americans’ “revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow” their own government. The men and women who charged the Capitol understood this. Eastman and Klingenstein, sitting in their suits and ties in an elegant study lined with books, may deny having violent intentions, may even abjure the use of force, but implicit in their rhetoric in this interview and elsewhere (Klingenstein’s website: “The essential thing is for Republicans to understand we are in a war and then act accordingly”) is a justification for violence.

AS THE INTERVIEW CONCLUDES, Eastman goes on to maintain, again, that supposed Democratic election-stealing played a part in his prudential calculation. But he says plainly enough throughout that the more fundamental motive concerned the basic state of the country and his political and philosophical disagreements with Democrats. A few minutes after his appeal to the Declaration, Eastman will claim that Democratic efforts to destroy the country have accelerated rapidly—“it’s been an exponential increase in the last few years”—and as an example he quotes the culture wars: “You’re gonna let 50-year-old-men naked into teenage girls’ showers at public pools, or drag queens doing story hours to 6-year-olds.”

Of course. The trans people and drag queens left Eastman no choice. The Democrats made him do it.

The Klingenstein-Eastman interview is, in the main, situated squarely in the muck of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and obtuse speculative reasoning about the vice president’s proper role in the congressional counting of Electoral College votes. In this third installment, however, as Eastman goes on about Democratic bogeymen and the higher “stakes” of the 2020 election, it becomes quite clear that, at some point, for these men and in this fight, anything goes. Pretexts and premises be damned.

Given the overall sham quality of Eastman and Trump’s political and legal arguments to date, it seems quite likely that they both reached that point a long time ago. At this point the two men have gone all in. Nothing’s going to stop them now.

Except, maybe, in Eastman’s case at least, the American courts and rule of law.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Fraud, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner: The War to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2023 //
12

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner wrote in their blog Steady about the importance of saving public education from the forces trying to destroy and privatize it. They remind us and the general public that public schools unite us; privatization is inherently divisive. It is ironic that the red states are implementing voucher plans as the evidence about the failure of vouchers and the null effects of charter schools grows stronger. (The boldfacing of passages in their essay was added by me).

It is back to school. Students of all ages flock to campuses and classrooms. Fleeting memories of summer are quickly replaced by tests and textbooks.


Getting into the swing of a new semester has always included an adjustment period, but this is a particularly difficult time for many of our nation’s students and their parents, guardians, teachers, and others entrusted with the education of young minds.


The pandemic wreaked havoc with the emotional, intellectual, and social development of America’s youth. Dismal test scores provide depressing data of yawning learning deficits. Talk to anyone in or around schools and you hear stories of setbacks and struggle — heaps of qualitative data suggesting a staggering scale of generational loss.
As usual, those who were already the most marginalized have paid the heaviest price. The pandemic exacerbated existing disruptions and placed greater strain on finances and time, particularly in large urban districts and small rural ones tasked with educating children from families struggling economically.


We like to tell ourselves that the United States is a great meritocracy, but wealth and levels of family education continue to play outsized roles in dictating a child’s likelihood of academic success long before she learns her ABCs. The simple truth is that kids come to school from widely different circumstances, and these influence their ability to thrive, independent of whatever innate intelligence or drive they may possess. The pandemic made these differences more acute.


The United States does possess a system (or more accurately, a collection of thousands of systems) that, if nurtured and respected, could foster greater equality of opportunity. And it is exactly the institution that is now struggling the most: public education. America’s public schools were once the envy of the world as engines of opportunity and upward mobility. If the nation had the will, they could return to that status once again.


Our public schools certainly weren’t perfect in the past, especially during legal racial segregation, when the lie of “separate but equal” (separate is never equal) helped enshrine white supremacy. The segregated schools of the Jim Crow Deep South were a shameful injustice and a stain on our national identity. They were inconsistent with our founding documents, which spoke eloquently about equality among people. Of course there was (and remains, to some extent) de facto segregation throughout America based on who lives in what neighborhoods. Well-financed suburban schools were often part of the draw of “white flight” from urban districts.


The very ethos of public education should be one of inclusion for America’s diverse population. It should be a place where children of different backgrounds come together to learn both from teachers and from each other. Our schools should be places that allow students to wrestle with what it means to be part of this great country, including understanding America’s uneven and often bloody road to greater equality.


Sadly, in recent years, we have seen a grave regression from these noble goals. Our schools and school districts have become fiercely contested frontlines in an era of stepped-up culture wars. As reactionary political forces target what we teach our children, it is no accident that truth, empathy, and our democratic values have become casualties.

A chief concern is how and what we teach about our history, particularly the Black experience, and race and ethnicity more generally. We have written here before about the shameful whitewashing of racial violence and injustice, including slavery, by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But this effort is not limited to him or that state. There is a national movement to not tell the full — and unfortunately tragic — reality of race in American history and how it continues to shape the nation.


Another serious concern is the othering of LGBTQ+ students and teachers. After years of progress, we see a wave of intolerance spread across America, including in our schools.


Few institutions in American life are as essential to the continuation of our democracy as the public schools. In a time of ascendent autocracy, attacks on our schools — how they are run, what they teach, what books they have in their libraries — are among the most pernicious, pathetic, and painful assaults on the health of our nation.

Several months back, Texas Monthly ran a striking piece of journalism with the headline, “The Campaign to Sabotage Texas’s Public Schools.” It tells a story that extends beyond the raucous school board meetings and book banning campaigns that have gotten the most attention. There is a movement afoot, and not just in Texas, to destroy public schools more generally, to privatize education through vouchers and other means.


In this context, the various culture fights become battles in a larger war over the very future and viability of public education:

Taken individually, any of these incidents may seem like a grassroots skirmish. But they are, more often than not, part of a well-organized and well-funded campaign executed by out-of-town political operatives and funded by billionaires in Texas and elsewhere. “In various parts of Texas right now, there are meetings taking place in small and large communities led by individuals who are literally providing tutorials—here’s what you say, here’s what you do,” said H. D. Chambers, the recently retired superintendent of Alief ISD, in southwest Harris County. “This divisiveness has been created that is basically telling parents they can’t trust public schools. It’s a systematic erosion of the confidence that people have in their schools.

The ideal of quality, integrated public schools for all children in the United States epitomizes the promise of our country’s founding as a place of equality and opportunity for all. It thus makes sense that would-be autocrats and protectors of privilege would seek to undermine our public schools by whatever means necessary. We must see this as what it is: as much a threat to the nation as was the violent storming of our Capitol.

The future of the United States depends on an educated and empathetic citizenry. It requires us to share a sense of common purpose and recognize our common humanity. It requires an environment that allows every child to thrive and see themselves included in the American story. It requires quality public education. Full stop.

A historic battle to save this institution and the very idea of good public schools has been underway for some time. It is now intensifying. Attention must be paid.

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Dark Money, Democracy, DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Gender, History, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Privatization, Providence, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

You Are Invited to the 10th Conference of the Network for Public Education in D.C.!

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2023 //
3

Please sign up now for the 10th Annual Conference of the Network for Public Education on October 28-29 in D.C.

We have a lineup of stellar speakers, including Randi Weingarten, Becky Pringle, and Dr. Marvin Dunn, the leading scholar of African American history in Florida.

Categories Academic Freedom, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Resistance

Steven Singer: Why Teach for America Failed

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2023 //
30

Steven Singer considers the trajectory of Teach for America and concludes that it failed. Enrollment in the program is down. No one believes any more that TFA newcomers are “better” than experienced teachers. What’s the point of hiring a newby instead of someone who wants to make teaching their career?

Steven Singer writes:

Teach for America (TFA) was a solution to a problem it helped create.

Educators have been leaving the profession for decades due to poor salary, poor working conditions, heavy expectations and lack of tools or respect.

So Wendy Kopp, when in Princeton, created a program to fast track non-education majors into the classroom where they would teach for a few years and then enter the private sector as “experts” to drive public policy.

These college graduates would take a five week crash course in education and commit to at least two years in the classroom thereby filling any vacant teaching positions.

Surprise! It didn’t work.

In fact, it made things worse. Apparently deprofessionalizing education isn’t an incentive to dive into the field.

That isn’t to say everyone who went through the program became a bad teacher. But the few good and committed educators that did come through the program could have done so even more successfully by graduating with a degree in education.

Now the organization created in 1990 is expecting its lowest enrollment in 15 years. TFA anticipates placing slightly less than 2,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall. That’s two-thirds of the number of first-year teachers TFA placed in schools in fall 2019, and just one-third of the number it sent into the field at its height in 2013.

Apparently fewer people than ever don’t want to train for four to five years to become lifelong teachers – and neither do they want to be lightly trained for a few years as TFA recruits, either – even if that means they can pass themselves off as education experts afterwards and get high paying policy positions at think tanks and government.

On the one hand, this is good news.

Watering down what it means to be a teacher is even less popular than actually being an educator.

On the other hand, we have a major crisis that few people are prepared to handle.

The US is losing teachers at an alarming rate.

After decades of neglect only made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re missing almost a million teachers.

Nationwide, we only have about 3.2 million teachers left!

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 567,000 fewer educators in our public schools today than there were before the pandemic. And that’s on top of already losing 250,000 school employees during the recession of 2008-09 most of whom were never replaced. All while enrollment increased by 800,000 students.

Meanwhile, finding replacements has been difficult. Across the country, an average of one educator is hired for every two jobs available.

Not only are teachers paid 20% less than other college-educated workers with similar experience, but a 2020 survey found that 67% of teachers have or had a second job to make ends meet.

It’s no wonder then that few college students want to enter the profession.

Over the past decade, there’s been a major decline in enrollment in bachelor’s degree programs in education.

Beginning in 2011, enrollment in such programs and new education certifications in Pennsylvania — my home state— started to decline. Today, only about a third as many students are enrolled in teacher prep programs in the Commonwealth as there were 10 years ago. And state records show new certifications are down by two-thirds over that period.

To put that more concretely, a decade ago roughly 20,000 new teachers entered the workforce each year in the Commonwealth, while last year only 6,000 did so, according to the state Department of Education (PDE).

But don’t look to most of the so-called experts to solve the problem. A great deal of them are former TFA recruits!

Through programs like TFA’s Capitol Hill Fellows Program, alumni are placed in full-time, paid staff positions with legislators so they can “gain insights into the legislative process by working in a Congressional office” and work “on projects that impact education and opportunities for youth.”



Why do so many lawmakers hire them? Because they don’t cost anything.

Their salaries are paid in full by TFA through a fund established by Arthur Rock, a California tech billionaire who hands the organization bags of cash to pay these educational aides’ salaries. From 2006 to 2008, alone, Rock – who also sits on TFA’s board – contributed $16.5 million for this purpose.



This isn’t about helping lawmakers understand the issues. It’s about framing the issues to meet the policy initiatives of the elite and wealthy donors.



It’s about selling school privatization, high stakes testing and ed-tech solutions.

Please open the link and keep reading.

Categories Education Industry, Teach for America, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching

How Vouchers Undermine Democracy

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2023 //
10

A reader who uses the sobriquet “Retired Teacher” posted the following succinct summary of the harm caused by vouchers.

Vouchers represent anti-democratic education policy. Instead of serving the interests of society, vouchers turn unaccountable public dollars over to unaccountable schools and parents that can often do as they wish with the money. Vouchers are also a form of taxation without representation. When vouchers are used to supplement tuition for affluent children, which is often the case, they represent a massive transfer of wealth from working class to the affluent. They undermine community stability and force austerity on the public schools that serve the most students. They do not save poor students from failing schools. They create an economic reality that legitimizes the defunding of public education.

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Maureen Dowd: Trump Is a Sore Loser and a Fool

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2023 //
31

Maureen Dowd is a regular columnist for the New York Times. Here she reviews Trump’s ongoing coup. Dowd refers to Trump at the end of the article as an Amadán. Carol Burris, who is of Irish origin, sent the following explanation: “She calls him amadán at the end, which in Irish is a fool. But the full terminology, “amadán dubh,” comes from Irish folklore and refers to the “dark fool” or “dark fairy.” Amadán Dubh is a trickster fairy found in Irish folklore, and is the ‘bringer of madness and oblivion.’ That he is.”

Maureen Dowd wrote:

WASHINGTON — The man who tried to overthrow the government he was running was held Thursday by the government he tried to overthrow, a few blocks from where the attempted overthrow took place and a stone’s throw from the White House he yearns to return to, to protect himself from the government he tried to overthrow.

Donald Trump is in the dock for trying to cheat America out of a fair election and body-snatch the true electors. But the arrest of Trump does not arrest the coup.

The fact is, we’re mid-coup, not post-coup. The former president is still in the midst of his diabolical “Who will rid me of this meddlesome democracy?” plot, hoping his dark knights will gallop off to get the job done.

Trump is tied with President Biden in a New York Times/Siena College poll, and if he gets back in the Oval, there will be an Oppenheimer-size narcissistic explosion, as he once more worms out of consequences and defiles democracy. His father disdained losers and Trump would rather ruin the country than admit he lost.

The Trump lawyer John Lauro made it clear they will use the trial to relitigate the 2020 election and their cockamamie claims. Trump wasn’t trying to shred the Constitution, they will posit; he was trying to save it.

“President Trump wanted to get to the truth,” Lauro told Newmax’s Greg Kelly after the arraignment, adding: “At the end he asked Mr. Pence to pause the voting for 10 days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in, and then they could make a determination to audit or re-audit or recertify.”

In trying to debunk Jack Smith’s obstruction charges, Lauro confirmed them. Trying to halt the congressional certification is the crime.

Smith’s indictment depicts an opéra bouffe scene where “the Defendant” (Trump) and “Co-Conspirator 1” (Rudy Giuliani) spent the evening of Jan. 6 calling lawmakers attempting “to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” by sowing “knowingly false allegations of election fraud.” Trump melodramatically tweeted about his “sacred landslide election victory” being “unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.”

Giuliani left a voice mail message for a Republican senator saying they needed “to object to numerous states and raise issues” to delay until the next day so they could pursue their nefarious plan in the state legislatures.

Two words in Smith’s indictment prove that the putz knew his push for a putsch was dishonest: “too honest.” Bullying and berating his truant sycophant, Mike Pence, in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Trump told his vice president, “You’re too honest.”

The former vice president is selling “Too honest” merchandise, which, honestly, won’t endear him to the brainwashed base. Pence’s contemporaneous notes helped Smith make his case.

It’s strange to see Pence showing some nerve and coming to Smith’s aid, after all his brown-nosing and equivocating. He and Mother, who suppressed her distaste for Trump for years, were the most loyal soldiers; in return, according to an aide, Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows saidTrump felt Pence “deserved” to be hanged by the rioters.

Pence told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers wanted him “essentially to overturn the election.”“It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause,” Pence said, at odds with Lauro. “The president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes.”

Ron DeSantis, another presidential wannabe who enabled Trump for too long, acknowledged on Friday that “all those theories that were put out did not prove to be true.” But Trump and his henchmen were busy ratcheting up the lunacy.

“IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump threatened on Truth Social on Friday.

On the same day and platform, he accused “the corrupt Biden DOJ” of election interference. Exquisite projection. In Trump’s warped view, it’s always the other guy who’s doing what Trump is actually doing.

Kari Lake told House Republicans to stop pursuing a Biden impeachment and just decertify the 2020 election because Biden is not “the true president.” Lake said of Trump: “This is a guy who’s already won. He won in 2016. He won even bigger in 2020. All that Jan. 6 was, was a staged riot to cover up the fact that they certified a fraudulent election.”

Before laughing off this absurdity, consider the finding from CNN’s new poll: Sixty-nine percent of Republicans and those leaning Republican believe Biden is an illegitimate president, with over half saying there is “solid evidence” of that.

While Trump goes for the long con, or the long coup — rap sheet be damned, it’s said that he worries this will hurt his legacy. He shouldn’t. His legacy is safe, as the most democracy-destroying, soul-crushing, self-obsessed amadán ever to occupy the Oval. Amadán, that’s Gaelic for a man who grows more foolish every day.

Categories Accountability, Cheating, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Lies, Pence, Republicans, Trump

Scott Maxwell: Ethics Are a Bad Joke in DeSantis’ Regime

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2023 //
5

Scott Maxwell, a brilliant opinion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, wrote about the latest scandal in DeSantisland. The man in charge of the state ethics office was recently appointed by DeSantis to be head of DeSantis’ board that controls Disney World in Orlando. It’s illegal for a public employee to serve as ethics commissioner. Immediately after Maxwell’s article appeared, the general counsel for the state ethics commission announced that Glen Gilzean could not hold both jobs and had to choose one. What’s interesting is not just the conflict with the law but Gilzean’s former employment with the Urban League, which advocates for diversity, equity and inclusion, all of which DeSantis opposes.

Be it noted that Gilzean responded to the ruling by the ethics commission’s counsel by attacking the release of the ruling:

Instead of resigning, Glen Gilzean is questioning whether Florida’s ethics commission “weaponized” a memo that concluded he was ineligible to serve as both the state’s ethics chairman and administrator of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tourism oversight district.

The opinion released on Thursday concluded that Gilzean couldn’t do both jobs because of a state law that bars ethics commissioners from holding public employment.

Scott Maxwell writes:

Perhaps you read Tuesday’s front-page story about how the head of Florida’s ethics commission appears to be in violation of … wait for it … Florida’s ethics laws.

This might be the most Florida story ever. The only thing that could make it more Floridian would be if an alligator or sinkhole were somehow involved.

The news was definitely a head-shaker. But it also underscores the ugly reality of just how lax the state’s ethics enforcement is. Public officials routinely flout rules without paying much of a price.

The problem with that is that Florida statutes say no public employees are allowed to serve as ethics commissioners. That’s for a pretty obvious reason: Because you don’t want the fox guarding the henhouse — a public official in a position to investigate himself.

The rule isn’t complicated either. Chapter 112.321 of the Florida statutes describes the requirements for ethics commissioners. And in the very first section, there is this simple, seven-word sentence: “No member may hold any public employment…”

On April 21, Gilzean’s ethics commission dismissed an ethics complaint against Gov. Ron DeSantis that had been filed by allies of Donald Trump who’d argued that DeSantis was inappropriately using the governor’s office to boost his national political profile.

Then on May 10, the governor’s appointees at the Disney taxing district announced they wanted to give Gilzean the $400,000-a-year job.

So, to recap: The governor’s Disney appointees appointed the governor’s ethics appointee to a high-paying job less than three weeks after that same ethics appointee dismissed a complaint against the man who’d appointed him to that position.

Hillbilly family reunions look less incestuous…

Two weeks ago, Gilzean announced the Disney taxing district was ending all of its “so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives,” calling them “illegal and simply unAmerican.”

Now, if you heard DeSantis say something like that, it wouldn’t be surprising. But it sounded odd coming from a man who spent the last seven-plus years working for the Urban League — a civil rights group that devoutly espouses the value of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) endeavors. The Urban League not only preaches the value of inclusion, the national nonprofit actually offers services to help otherorganizations implement DEI programs “to make your organization a more equitable workplace.”

Tax records filed last year show Gilzean earned $172,272 while working as CEO of the Central Florida Urban League.

Perhaps not surprisingly, after Gilzean trash-talked the very diversity initiatives his previous employer had touted, his former boss responded with force. National Urban League CEO Marc Morial said Gilzean’s about-face was a “betrayal of the values at the very core of our mission,” telling the Tallahassee Democrat that Gilzean’s “crass political expediency is all the more offensive given his previous vantage point to the harm he knows it will cause.”

Gilzean didn’t respond to questions about that issue either.

If you find this unsavory, you can lodge a complaint with…the state ethics commission.

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Ethics, Florida

Peter Greene: This Teacher Was Fired in Georgia for Reading an Innocuous Book to Her Students

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2023 //
72

Peter Greene writes with outrage about the firing of a teacher in Georgia whose crime was to read a book to her fifth-grade students. One parent objected to the book.

He writes:

The story of  Katherine Rinderle has dragged out over the summer and has now come to a predictable and yet unjustifiable conclusion. This is just wrong.

The short version of the story is that Rinderle read Scott Stuart’s “My Shadow Is Purple” to her fifth graders, after they selected it for their March book. A parent complained. The Cobb County School District suspended her and the superintendent announced a recommendation to terminate her. A tribunal appointed by the board recommended that she not be fired. The board just fired her anyway.  

This is a bullshit decision.

Was this one of those graphic books with blatant displays of sex stuff? No. This is the most bland damn thing you could hand a kid. I would read it to my six year olds without hesitation. 

A child plays with action figures and dolls, likes dancing and sports and ponies and planes and trains and glitter, and, in the climactic event, wants to go to the school dance in an outfit that has a suit-ish top and a skirt-ish bottom. Discouraged by the insistence that they must choose either blue or pink at the dance, the purple-shadowed child decidesd to leave, but then an assortment of friends declare their shadows are a wide variety of colors, and a happy ending ensues. “No color’s stronger and no color’s weak.”

That’s it. That’s the book. (I’ve attached a read-aloud video at the bottom so you can see for yourself.) There’s nothing about sex, barely a mention of gender, and the message is simply that there are other ways to be beyond stereotypical male or female roles. 

That’s the book that this woman lost her job over. 

Georgia has, of course, a “divisive concepts” law with appropriately vague language so that teachers can live in fear that they could lose their jobs over anything that some parent thinks is divisive and disturbing. Meanwhile, the boardwas trying to argue its bullshit decision, by hinting that Rinderle is a big old troublemaker:

Without getting into specifics of the personnel investigation, the District is confident that this action is appropriate considering the entirety of the teacher’s behavior and history. However, as this matter is ongoing, further comment is unavailable. The District remains committed to strictly enforcing all Board policy, and the law.

Sure. So Georgia’s teachers have been sent a clear message about staying in line and not bringing up anything remotel;y controversial ever.

And now the children of Cobb County in particular and Georgia in general have been sent an important message– if you’re different, that’s not okay, and if someone suggests that it’s okay, well, that’s illegal. Shame on Cobb County’s school board. Shame on the state of Georgia. And if you’re so sure that these kind of reading restrictions are only about protecting children from graphic pornography, take a look at this and think again.

Open the link to see the read-aloud video.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, Extremism, Georgia, Students, Stupid, Teachers

Robert Hubbell: Lock Him Up!

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2023 //
31

Blogger Robert Hubbell explains why Trump will force Judge Tanya Chutkan in D.C. to lock him up. With his insults directed at judges, prosecutors, and potential witnesses, he is encouraging political violence.

He wrote:

Trump knows that a jury of his peers will convict him in a fair trial. He has therefore resorted to extra-judicial efforts to intimidate and prejudice the jury pool. His efforts are not only extra-judicial, they are undemocratic, thuggish, and illegal. Like a crime lord with feral instincts, Trump knows how to threaten without threatening and brutalize without leaving fingerprints at the scene of the crime. Instead, he grants permission to his followers to violate laws and norms, encouraging them to do the dirty work necessary to defend the indefensible.


Over the last several days, the breadth and viciousness of Trump’s assault on the legal system became manifest as MAGA extremists attacked the judge and jurors in Trump’s various criminal proceedings. Before reviewing the latest insults to the rule of law, let’s skip to the end to discuss the solution: We must recognize that Trump is engaged in political terrorism designed to frighten good people who are the backbone of democracy. We cannot let that happen. The solution is not to shrink in fear, but to swell in numbers, strengthen our resolve, and dispel the exaggerated fears created by a skulk of cowards who hide in internet shadows.


In America, there is an ever-present risk of violence that cannot be entirely dismissed. Law enforcement and prosecutors should, therefore, vigorously pursue and prosecute the small, frightened, impotent cultists who threaten jurors, judges, and prosecutors. But we must recognize that the business model of political terrorism is for a few individuals to instill outsized and unwarranted fear in the masses. Recognizing that truth should allow us to keep in perspective the fact that a few thousand online pseudo-terrorists vanish to nothingness compared to 335 million Americans.


America is bigger than Trump and his minions. We should not cower in fear but should pursue justice with confidence and righteousness. We are protecting the Constitution and our system of laws. We cannot fail in that task—and there is nothing that cowards with keyboards can do to deter us.


Against that background, let’s look at the events on the ground.


Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, threatened Judge Tanya Chutkan in a voicemail message that began with racial slurs and ended with threats of violence. Shry was quickly questioned, arrested, and charged in federal court. The magistrate ordered that she remain in pretrial detention for at least 30 days pending a determination of her danger to the community. That is type of federal response that will deter future threats….

There have also been threats against members of the Fulton County grand jury that indicted Trump and eighteen other defendants on RICO charges. See NYTimes, Officials Investigate Threats Against Trump Grand Jurors in Georgia (accessible to all). The Fulton County sheriff issued an anodyne statement acknowledging the threats and stating that the sheriff was investigating. (The statement said the sheriff was “aware of online threats against grand jurors and was working with other agencies to track down their origin.”)

A stronger statement from the sheriff and the quick arrest of several perpetrators would go some distance to damping the false bravado of other beer-fueled couch terrorists. A stronger reaction is necessary because the online threats are directed not only against the grand jurors, but future jurors who will preside over Trump’s criminal trials.

But there is more.

Trump released a video in which he attacked special prosecutor Jack Smith as a “deranged lowlife” for obtaining Trump’s Twitter feed. See Forbes, Trump Attacks Jack Smith For Gaining Access To His Old Twitter Account. This is the type of statement that should cause Judge Tanya Chutkan to remand Trump into custody. At the very least, the statement should be added to the list of offenses that will finally cause Trump to be detained pending trial.

Detaining Trump before tria is not only inevitable but also necessary. Trump’s continued attacks are having a corrosive effect that seeps into the nooks and crannies of the justice system everywhere. Many readers have commented on the raid on a Kansas newspaper because of efforts by the newspaper to report on the failure of local police to enforce DUI laws against a local businessman. Based on a questionable search warrant issued by a local magistrate, police seized computers, cell phones, and files—a gross violation of federal protections granted to members of the news media.

The public outcry and obvious illegality of the seizure forced the police to return the seized items and the local prosecutor to withdraw the questionable warrant due to ‘insufficient evidence’. But the question remains, “How could this happen? How is it that local police and magistrate could ignore constitutional and statutory protections for the press?” Some of the sordid answers are detailed in this investigative piece by The Wichita Eagle, Judge Laura Viar, who approved newspaper raid, has DUI arrests.

Apart from the local magistrate’s questionable potential bias due to her own history of DUI troubles, another answer is that the police and magistrate are modeling themselves after a national GOP in which the rule of law is an impediment to power. In short, they thought they could get away with trampling the Constitution. Fortunately, they were wrong—and will likely be charged with crimes and serve time in jail. As should Trump.

If Americans see that Trump is punished for his attacks on the justice system pending trial, others will realize that they, too, must respect the justice system. We owe the Constitution nothing less.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Justice, Trump

Tulsa: Mayor Tells State Board: Hands Off Our Public Schools! Meanwhile, Mike Miles Stages a Musical in Houston

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2023 //
32

The State Secretary of Education in Oklahoma Ryan Walters has been threatening to take control of the Tulsa public schools, replace the elected school board and fire the district superintendent. State takeovers have a long history of failure. Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum wrote a strongly worded letter to the Oklahoma State Board of Education and told its members in no uncertain terms, “hands off our public schools and our elected board!”

It’s a terrific letter. Open the link and read it. If only every city had leadership who stood up for their public schools like Mayor Bynum did!

Of course, Houston’s Mayor opposed the state takeover of HISD but Governor Abbott and his state Commissioner Mike Morath were determined to destroy democracy in Houston because the people there vote Democratic.

Speaking of Houston, the state-imposed Superintendent Mike Miles celebrated his arrival with a splashy musical performance, while teachers sat obediently in their seats at the NRG Arena.

The Texas Observer reported:

Hundreds of Houston’s teachers gathered at the NRG Center early morning Wednesday, where they were directed to wear school colors, wave school banners, and shake sparkly pom poms. Facilitators started the Harlem Shuffle dance in the aisles. And then, as the teachers were motioned back into their seats, the room turned dark and silence fell.

A single spotlight shined on a student performer in an aisle belting the lyrics to West Side Story’s “Something’s Coming”:

Something’s comin’, something good
If I can wait!
Something’s comin’, I don’t know what it is
But it is
Gonna be great!

The stage lit up to reveal a 1950s diner with red and white checkered tablecloth tables and red rubber stools. In walked new district superintendent Mike Miles, playing “Mr. Duke,” owner of the joint who doubles as a counselor who listens to the teachers’ and students’ grievances.

Since March, when the Texas Education Agency seized control of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), citing the failure to meet state standards at one high school, Houston’s teachers and parents have seen the battle with the state-appointed school board and superintendent play out in community meetings and in the press. Now, during a week of district-mandated conferences at the NRG Center, teachers were watching the takeover play out on stage. Miles directed the script—an hour-long musical that took six weeks to prepare, depicting how the new superintendent will rekindle the extinguished spirits of burnt-out teachers, give hope to hopeless students, and bestow a visionary plan to save public education.

“We are lost as a profession,” a teacher said on stage.

“My dreams are getting smaller and smaller,” a student later echoed.

“Well, maybe that new guy—you know, super … super …”

“You mean Superintendent Miles?”

“Maybe Superintendent Miles will make things better for us.”

Maybe.

But teachers who spoke to the Texas Observer said Miles’ performance wasted the district’s time and money and mocked their professional experience and concerns.

“For him to turn our concerns into satire is really insulting,” HISD teacher Melissa Yarborough said. “It reeks of propaganda.”

“He wasted our time when we could be in our classrooms preparing our lesson plans before school starts,” said Chris, an elementary school teacher who asked only to be identified by his first name.

Jessica, who has been teaching for 24 years, told the Observer Miles’ musical “was very condescending. The message was that we don’t know what we’re doing. And he’s coming in to show us how to do it right.”

The Houston Chronicle also reviewed Miles’ musical event.

A few fine arts teachers who spoke to the Chronicle said Miles is hypocritical for spreading his message through a musical theater production even after disrespecting fine arts teachers, who at NES schools will be paid far less than their peers teaching reading, math or science.

“He claims reading and math are the forefront and he wants to get rid of fine arts. Yet he used fine arts to promote his ideologies,” said one fine arts teacher, who called the production a “slap in the face.”

Another fine arts teacher said it was “the very definition of irony.”

“The fact he used HISD fine arts teachers and students in his presentation, the day after saying in his evaluation sessions that we are not as essential … creates a sense of rage and despair I cannot even describe,” said the teacher, who was told they could be fired for making negative public statements about the district.

Only staff from NES campuses attended the live event at NRG, while educators from other schools watched convocation remotely from their own campuses following a last-minute scheduling change.

Funnily enough, Miles also staged a splashy musical with him as the star when he began his tenure in Dallas in 2012. All of the district’s 18,000 teachers were summoned to watch. The video has been removed from the internet. But The Texas Observer ran a great story about the event, with a photo of him dancing with students. At that performance, he laid out his vision for making DISD the best urban district in the nation by 2020 using ideas he learned at the Broad Superintendents Academy. He was, he said, a believer in disruptive change, like Arne Duncan. “Miles epitomizes today’s school reform movement, convinced that anything worth doing in a classroom can be measured.” But three years later, he was gone.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Houston, Oklahoma, State Takeover, Teachers, Texas, Tulsa
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