Florida: Ban Child Beauty Pageants to Protect Children!

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
9

We have heard a lot from Ron DeSantis and his friends about their wish to protect children from “grooming.” They say that sexual predators are trying to “sexualize” children.

Instead of attacking hardworking teachers, the governor should ban child beauty pageants.

Florida is the epicenter of these child-exploitation events.

Look at the children in the photos: they are being groomed to be sex objects! They are being groomed to satisfy the lust of pedophiles!

How can DeSantis rant about grooming and WOKEness while ignoring an industry devoted to the sexualization of little girls?

Hypocrite!

Categories Accountability, Childhood, DeSantis, Florida, For-Profit, Gender, Hypocrisy

The Backstory of the Clinton Socks Drawer Tapes

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
23

The day after Trump was arraigned in federal court in Miami on 37 counts, mostly involving the Espionage Act, he attended a campaign rally in New Jersey. At that rally, he dismissed the charges against him, which were based on his refusal to return documents to the National Archices, including some that were classified and top-secret. Trump ridiculed the case against him, asserting that the Presidential Records Act allowed him to take with him any documents he wanted. The ruling precedent, he claimed, was the “Clinton socks case,” which was dismissed by a judge.

“Under the Presidential Records Act — which is civil, not criminal — I had every right to have these documents,” Trump said, incorrectly describing the law that has no enforcement mechanism, and which is separate from the federal statutes Trump is actually charged under. “The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on this subject, known as the Clinton socks case.”

What was the Clinton socks case? I had never heard of it.

The Washington Post explained it a few days later.

First, the story pointed out, Trump’s reference to the Presidebtial Records Act as exculpatory for his actions was wrong. Did his lawyers tell him to say so or did he misinterpret what they told him?

Even before he pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, Trump and his legal team have argued that the Presidential Records Act gives the president the right to take any record upon leaving office and declare it personal. In reality, the 1981 law requiring White House documents to be preserved as property of the U.S. government was established, in part, so that presidents could not declare every record to be personal.

Second, his insistence on refusing to return classified documents bore no relation to the Clinton socks case.

When Clinton was elected, he reached out to a college classmate and friend who was a respected historian, Taylor Branch, and invited him to come to the White House periodically and tape record Clinton’s reflections on his presidency. Branch visited 79 times over the eight years of the Clinton presidency and taped their conversations as a running record of the Clinton presidency. He recorded their conversations on two cassette recorders. Clinton kept one set of the tapes, which he kept in his sock drawer.

In 2009, Taylor Branch published The Clinton Tapes, and he told the story of the socks drawer. The conservative organization Judicial Watch sued in 2010 to seek access to the tapes and to have them declared presidential records. A federal judge ruled in 2012 that the tapes were personal and were not presidential records.

A senior official at Jusicial Watch argued in an article in the Wall Street Journal that the Clinton tapes and Trump’s retention of government secrets were analogous.

Taylor Branch scoffed at the claim.

“Judicial Watch lost the case, and it was not a close case,” Branch said. Branch said “it’s amazing” that Trump’s team would cite the “failed case as a precedent for excusing Trump and how he handled classified government documents.”

Trump did not have the right to take classified documents home when he left the presidency. He did not have the power to declassify some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets. He did have the right to refuse to return them when asked to do so or when ordered to do so. Nor did he have the right to hide them from his lawyers and the FBI. By taking home those documents, where they were not secure, he put at risk the lives of America’s troops and national security.

It’s quite a stretch to compare the tapes in Clinton’s socks drawer to the nondisclosure of classified documents.

Categories Accountability, Trump

Texas: Why Rural Republicans Oppose Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
7

Joe Holley, a columnist for The Houston Chronicle writes here about why rural Republicans in Texas vote against vouchers. The public schools in their home districts are in deep financial trouble. They can’t pay enough to attract teachers. They lack the funding for physical improvements. The public schools are the heart of their communities. Most rural districts don’t have any private schools. Those that do don’t want to lose their funding to pay for kids to go to private schools.

Holley writes:

MARATHON – One afternoon not long after Laura and I bought The Wee House, our home away from home in this small, unincorporated community west of the Pecos, I decided to go run the bleachers at the high school football field a block up the street. I didn’t know it at the time, but the long-abandoned field, dry grass giving way to patches of hard dirt and scraggly weeds, had been home in years past to arguably the most formidable six-man football dynasty in Texas history.

Between 1967 and 1976, the Mustangs compiled a record of 100-6, including a 42-game winning streak that stretched from October 1968 until November 1971. Fans from all over the trans-Pecos made the long drive to Marathon on Friday nights to watch the mighty Mustangs beat up on both six- and 11-man teams. The Mustangs were twice state champions.

It quickly became obvious that my ambitious exercise regimen was foolhardy. The spindly-looking bleachers were only eight rows high, the rows so far apart I almost had to climb from one to the next. I decided instead to investigate the rusted sheet-metal press box perched on the top row, so small that maybe three Howard Cosell-wannabes, no more, could squeeze in. I thought I might find an old program, a yellowed memento from the Mustangs’ glory days. Opening the squeaky door into the dark interior, I set off a clamorous tumult. Then came a whoosh. Powerful wings grazed the top of my head and almost sent me tumbling backward down the steps. I had disturbed a great horned owl.

Marathon’s Friday-night lights were extinguished in 2007, but as in every small Texas town I know, the school remains the heart of the community. The school is where town kids and ranch kids get to know each other. It’s where the well-off and the not-so-well-off mix and mingle; where Hispanic kids and Black kids and white kids work out their differences and discover their similarities; where members of the Parent Teacher Organization man the concession stand for basketball games in the venerable gym.

Money is a perennial problem. With a total K-12 enrollment of 53 in the school year that just ended, consolidation with nearby Alpine or Fort Stockton is always a possibility. If that happened, though — if the stately rust-colored brick high school and the low-slung elementary school across the street were left to the great horned owls — Marathon would not be Marathon.

That fact of small-town Texas life is something Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and voucher-peddling legislators either don’t understand or refuse to admit. This legislative session, while they toyed like Scrooge McDuck with a mountainous pile of cash — an unprecedented $33 billion budget surplus — they left rural school districts across the state to grapple with ever-increasing operating costs, deteriorating facilities, teacher shortages, and an unfair funding system. New requirements for security upgrades are only partially funded.

HB 100, the Legislature’s primary education bill, would have raised the state’s basic allotment, but even a modest increase — not to mention the $900 needed to match inflation — was held hostage to getting vouchers passed. The governor promises that education will be the focus of another special session later this summer, but so far, rural schools have received next to nothing. Meanwhile, administrators for schools large and small are trying to craft a budget for the coming school year without knowing what the Legislature has in store.

Instead of dipping into that enormous budget surplus to ease the hardships of small-town schools, Abbott, Patrick and friends are distracted by a different mountain of money. They covet an Everest of campaign cash from a trio of West Texas oil and fracking billionaires — people who had just as soon put public schools out of business in favor of private schools funded, at least in part, by taxpayer money.

Because Texas public schools get by on a complicated system of local tax revenue and state dollars — with state money distributed on a per-student basis — private-school vouchers are a threat to already precarious districts such as Marathon’s. If local students take their vouchers and leave, those districts would lose funds. (Some voucher plans would compensate rural districts for these lost students, but only temporarily.) Despite Abbott’s and Patrick’s assurances, one way or another, state funds could be diverted to cover private and home-schooling expenses. That would leave less per-student funding for every district, large or small.

Small-town Texans, most of whom cannot even imagine voting for a Democrat, know that vouchers are a threat. That’s why their lawmakers, even the most conservative, have fought the voucher ambitions of the GOP leadership with the ferocity of yesteryear’s Marathon Mustangs. Marathon, Alpine, Fort Davis and Marfa — the little West Texas towns I know best — need every resource the state can provide, as do their counterparts across Texas. Rural lawmakers beat back Abbott and vouchers yet again during the regular session, but the governor, like a wily old boxer, keeps probing round after round for weak spots….

Alpine is 30 miles west of Marathon. Home to Sul Ross State University, the attractive little town is much larger than Marathon, but not so big that it manages to avoid lawmaker neglect. The Legislature’s inaction during the regular session was “a dereliction of duties,” Michelle Rinehart, superintendent of Alpine ISD, told the Big Bend Sentinel.

This year, Rinehart told me a few days ago, should have been our chance to boost Texas education funding — to move the state from 42nd in per-pupil spending to something like the national average. “We were expecting at least modest pay raises for teachers,” she said.

New teachers in oil-blessed Midland start at $60,500, while her new teachers start at $33,000. But instead of helping Alpine with salaries, maintenance and other basic needs, the state’s arcane and inequitable funding formulas end up taking money away. Rinehart has to finish her budget for the next school year by July 1. Unless the Legislature changes something in the special session, the deficit will grow from $300,000 to $1 million….

Rinehart has ample reason to be frustrated. Public education spending is lower now than when Abbott took office in 2015. Given a $321.3 billion budget, our lawmakers — so far, anyway — are starving one of the basic building blocks of a self-governing nation.

Abbott doesn’t listen to educators or the people in rural districts. He listens to the billionaires who fund him.

Abbott listens to the likes of oilmen Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers, Farris and Dan, who insist that government and education should be guided by fundamentalist Christian principles.

Dunn, a lay preacher at the Midland mega-church he and his family attend, has given more than $18 million to Abbott, Patrick, all 18 GOP state senators, now-suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and assorted ultra-conservative political action committees. He also serves on the board of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a powerful voucher champion.

Farris Wilks, a native of Cisco, near Abilene, has given more than $11 million to GOP candidates and officeholders. He’s also a minister with the Cisco church his father founded, the Assembly of Yahweh 7th Day.

The superintendent of the Marathon public schools is Ivonne Durant. Holley interviewed her. She was upset that the state hasn’t increased teacher pay.

As superintendent of a rural school, Durant is constantly in touch with parents about their children’s well-being, in touch as only a small-school educator can be. They sit together at church, run into each other at the grocery store in Alpine. She teaches the Spanish class and tutors kids on Saturday morning. (One in particular: If that girl fails a class, the five-person junior high basketball team will have to disband.) Durant makes sure her seniors have definite plans — college, the military or a good job — before they graduate.

“I love my children,” she said. “They know, and their parents know, that everybody here cares. They know we’re going to be there for them.”

If only Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature could say the same.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Funding, Injustice, Rural Schools, Texas, Vouchers

Iowa Dismantles Child Labor Laws, with 14 Other States

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
13

Iowa recently enacted legislation that rolls back the clock on child labor laws. The Economic Policy Institute reports on the Republican-led effort to put young children to work in hazardous industries, which conflicts with federal law.

What a disgrace these laws are! Are the red states lowering the age of employment because they don’t have enough immigrants to take these jobs? Are they ready to sacrifice the well-being of their children to keep immigrants out? All of the jobs opening for children under 18 appear to be the kind that are usually filled by minimum-wage adult workers.

EPI writes:

Last Friday, this concerted attack on child labor safeguards further expanded. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed an expansive bill enacting numerous changes to the state’s child labor laws, including:

  • allowing employers to hire teens as young as 14 for previously prohibited hazardous jobs in industrial laundries or as young as 15 in light assembly work;
  • allowing state agencies to waive restrictions on hazardous work for 16–17-year-olds in a long list of dangerous occupations, including demolition, roofing, excavation, and power-driven machine operation;
  • extending hours to allow teens as young as 14 to work six-hour nightly shifts during the school year;
  • allowing restaurants to have teens as young as 16 serve alcohol; and
  • limiting state agencies’ ability to impose penalties for future employer violations.

Multiple provisions in the new state law conflict with federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) prohibitions on “oppressive child labor”involving hazardous conditions or excessive hours that interfere with teens’ schooling or health and well-being.

In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Sanders signed a law in March that eliminated youth work permits. Under the law, 14- and 15-year-olds will no longer need an employment certificate from the state Division of Labor verifying proof of their age and parental consent to work.

At a moment when exploitative child labor is on the rise, such changes are dangerous, removing an important paper trail intended to provide “proof that the companies that hire children at least acknowledge—in writing—that they’re following the law.”

In intervening weeks, the U.S. Department of Labor has cited employers for hundreds more serious child labor violations, while additional state legislatures have advanced proposals to weaken child labor standards…

Iowa’s extreme new child labor law violates federal prohibitions on hazardous occupations and excessive work hours

Iowa labor unions and their allies organized significant opposition to weakening the state’s child labor laws, compelling lawmakers to remove some of the original bill’s most egregious proposals—including language allowing teens to work in some areas of meatpacking plants and granting employers blanket immunity from liability for deaths or injuries caused by negligence while employing teens in “work-based learning programs.”

Yet even after several amendments, the final bill(passed with only Republican support) remains one of the most dangerous rollbacks of child labor protections in decades.

Many aspects of the newly enacted Iowa law contradict federal child labor law. In a May 10 letter to Iowa lawmakers, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda and Wage and Hour Division Principal Deputy Administrator Jessica Looman clarify that “the FLSA establishes federal standards with respect to child labor, and states cannot nullify federal requirements by enacting less protective standards.”

Because most employment situations are covered by the FLSA, employers who follow weaker new state rules in Iowa will be violating federal child labor law. Enforcing federal standards that the state no longer maintains will, however, now be solely up to the federal government.

In their letter, Nanda and Looman report that “the Department currently has over 600 child labor investigations underway nationwide, including in Iowa” and detail the ways in which Iowa’s proposed bill (most of which has now been enacted) contradicts prohibitions on hazardous work or excessive work hours considered “oppressive” forms of child labor under federal law.

Federal law generally prohibits the employment of children in hazardous occupations. The new Iowa law allows several forms of hazardous child labor that are expressly prohibited under DOL regulations on work permitted for 14–15-year-olds or are banned for all youth under 18 under “Hazardous Occupations Orders” (HOs). These are specific types of work the DOL prohibits based on National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health findings that certain jobs have proven particularly dangerous for teens.

The article lists the details of the Iowa law, showing the age at which children as young as 14 are allowed to work in previously forbidden jobs.

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, Economy, Iowa

Arkansas: Federal Judge Overturns State Law Banning Care for Trans Youth

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2023 //
65

A federal judge in Arkansas tossed out a state law prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The judge ruled that medical decisions should be made not by politicians but by patients, their parents, and their physicians. I don’t know anyone who is transgender, but I’m happy for those who are because personal medical decisions should not be controlled by politicians.

A federal judge in Arkansas on Tuesday struck down the state’s law forbidding medical treatments for children and teenagers seeking gender transitions, blocking what had been the first in a wave of such measures championed by conservative lawmakers across the country.

The case had been closely watched as an important test of whether bans on transition care for minors, which have since been enacted by more than a dozen states, could withstand legal challenges being brought by activists and civil liberties groups.

In his 80-page ruling, Judge James M. Moody Jr. of Federal District Court in Little Rock said the law both discriminated against transgender people and violated constitutional rights for doctors. He also said that the state of Arkansas had failed to substantially prove a number of its claims, including that the care was experimental or carelessly prescribed to teenagers.

“Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing,” Judge Moody wrote.

“Further,” he wrote, “the various claims underlying the state’s arguments that the act protects children and safeguards medical ethics do not explain why only gender-affirming medical care — and all gender-affirming medical care — is singled out for prohibition.”

The challenge to the law, which was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas and named several transgender children and a doctor as plaintiffs, argued that the ban violated transgender people’s constitutional right to equal protection, parents’ rights to make appropriate medical decisions for their children and doctors’ right to refer patients for medical treatments.

Transgender people have been around for many years, as has medical treatment for them. Why now the Republican hysteria about allowing trans people to live as they choose? It’s a diversion from the fact that Republicans have no policies to improve the lives of ordinary people. So, they whip up culture war issues like trans youth, gay marriage, critical race theory, drag queens. Why now indeed.

Categories Arkansas, Bigotry, Cruelty, Freedom, Gender, Health

Gavin Newsom: Inconvenient Truths About the Red-Blue Divide

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2023 //
31

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently had a debate with FOX host Sean Hannity, where he schooled him on the issues.

Gavin just sent out this newsletter:

Dear Diane,

Want the truth? Here’s the truth:

Tweet from Gavin Newsom: Red States vs. Blue States by the numbers

But that is not all.

8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates are red and gun deaths are almost 2x as high in red states.

The Supreme Court has stripped women of their liberty and let red states replace it with mandated birth.

They ban books, silence teachers and make it harder to vote in red states.

The reason Republicans like Ron DeSantis are fanning the flames of culture wars is to distract from the fact that Florida has higher murder rates, worse education and worse health care outcomes than states like California.

That’s the truth.

– Gavin

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, California, Democracy, DeSantis, Economy, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Florida

A Russian Dissident Warns Putin, with a History Lesson

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2023 //
11

Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian journalist, author, and dissident who was sentenced to 25 years in jail for speaking out against the war on Ukraine. This article appeared in the Washington Post.

Vladimir Kara-Murza has prepared the following remarks for an upcoming appearance before a Moscow appeals court. In April, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison on treason charges — an accusation based entirely on his public statements about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Throughout this process — first in the Moscow City Court, now here in the Court of Appeal — a very strange feeling has never left me. Judicial procedures, by their nature, must be somehow connected with the law. But everything that has happened to me has nothing to do with the law; if anything, what I have witnessed is precisely the opposite.

“The law — both Russian and international — prohibits the waging of aggressive war. But for more than 15 months, the man who calls himself the president of my country has been waging a brutal, unprovoked, aggressive war against a neighboring country: killing its citizens, bombing its cities, seizing its territories.

“The law — both Russian and international — prohibits attacks on civilians and civilian targets. But during the 15 months of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and wounded, and thousands of hospitals, schools and houses have been destroyed.
The law — both Russian and international — prohibits propaganda for war. But war propaganda is all I hear from morning to night on the television that plays in my prison cell.


“Today in our country, it is not those who are waging this criminal war but those who oppose it who face judgment: Journalists who tell the truth. Artists who put up antiwar stickers. Priests who invoke the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” Teachers who call a spade a spade. Parents whose children draw antiwar pictures. Lawmakers who allow themselves to doubt the appropriateness of children’s competitions when children are being killed in a neighboring country.

“Or, as in my case, politicians who openly speak out against this war and against this regime. I received a sentence of 25 years for five public appearances. As the head of my guards in Moscow City Court sarcastically joked: “Impressive work.”

“All this has happened before in our country. In 1968, participants in a demonstration on Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia were sentenced to camps and internal exile, and in 1980, [Andrei] Sakharov was exiled to the closed city of Gorky for speaking out against the war in Afghanistan.

“But it was only a few years later that a Russian president [Boris Yeltsin], on a visit to Prague, condemned that occupation and laid flowers at the memorial to its victims, and the highest legislative body of our country declared that the war in Afghanistan deserved moral and political condemnation. The same will happen with the current war in Ukraine, and it will happen much sooner than it may seem to those who unleashed it. That is because, in addition to legal laws, there are laws of history, and no one has yet been able to cancel them.

“And then the real criminals will be judged — including those whose arrest warrants have already been issued by the International Criminal Court. As you know, war crimes have no statute of limitations. I have some advice for all of those who organized my and other show trials against opponents of the war by trying to present opponents of the authorities as “traitors to the Motherland,” for all of those who are so nostalgic for the Soviet system: Remember how it ended. All systems based on lies and violence end the same way.”

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, International

Judd Legum: The Pernicious Elite Obsession with RFK

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2023 //
14

Judd Legum writes here on his blog about the dangerous crusade of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. against vaccines and the pernicious support of his campaign by people like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. Kennedy’s claims about anti-vaccines have been debunked repeatedly by scientists, but that doesn’t faze him.

If his name were Robert F. Smith, no one would care what he says. But he’s trading on the family name to spread his crackpot views. Worse, he’s running for the Presidency, based on his famous name, and could be a spoiler. Trump loyalists like Steve Bannon are already talking up a Trump-Kennedy ticket. This would be funny, if it weren’t so dangerous, to public health and the future of our democracy.

Judd Legum wrote:

Every year, vaccines save millions of lives. Polio, which used to cripple and kill thousands of children in the United States, has been eliminated thanks to widespread vaccination. Diphtheria, which used to be the most common cause of childhood death in the United States, is exceedingly rare. Other serious illnesses, including measles, whooping cough, and tetanus, are no longer a pervasive threat. Overall there are more than 25 vaccines that can safely “prevent diseases, protect health throughout the lifespan, and help to prevent and mitigate outbreaks.”

But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent the last two decades of his professional life using discredited, manipulated, and cherry-picked evidence to argue that life-saving vaccines are dangerous. Now Kennedy, part of the most famous family in American politics, is running for president.

Kennedy’s candidacy — and anti-vaccine propaganda — has attracted vocal support from a small but influential group of very wealthy people. Their support may not make Kennedy’s longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination viable. But it could help legitimize Kennedy’s lies about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. And the consequences could be lethal.

Last Thursday, Joe Rogan, the popular podcaster who inked an exclusive deal with Spotify for $200 million, hosted Kennedy for a three-hour conversation. Kennedy told Rogan’s more than 10 million listeners that “vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.” Rogan, a comedian and former host of Fear Factor, spent the entire episode validating Kennedy’s views. Kennedy was presented as a brave truth-teller, standing up to powerful forces. Anyone who doesn’t accept Kennedy’s conspiracy theories, according to Rogan, is unable to think for themselves.

Kennedy spent the better part of an hour rehashing an article he wrote in 2005, which falsely claimed that childhood vaccines are linked to autism. The article was so flawed it was ultimately retracted by the outlet that published it, Salon. “[C]ontinued revelations of the flaws and even fraud tainting the science behind the connection make taking down the story the right thing to do,” Salon’s editor wrote.

In the piece, Kennedy relied extensively on the work of Mark Geier, a doctor whose license to practice medicine was revoked by Maryland in 2011. Geier pushed the vaccine-autism link as a frequent expert witness. He also misrepresented his credentials and developed “a ‘protocol’ for treating autism that involved injecting children with the drug that is used to chemically castrate sex offenders at a cost of upwards of $70,000 per year.”

More broadly, Kennedy alleged a massive, multi-decade coverup by governments, non-profits, and private industry to hide the dangers of “thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative” used in some vaccines. Kennedy quotes Mark Blaxill, a vehement opponent of vaccines, who claims that the harm done by vaccines is “bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you’ve ever seen.”

Kennedy’s “proof” was the Simpsonwood conference, a gathering of experts to discuss the possible links between thimerosal in vaccines and autism. Kennedy “relied on the 286-page transcript of the Simpsonwood meeting to corroborate his allegations—and wherever the transcript diverged from the story he wanted to tell, he simply cut and pasted until things came out right.”

For example, Kennedy quoted developmental biologist and pediatrician Robert Brent as saying: “We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits… This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country.” The implication is Brent was acknowledging the link between thimerosal and autism, and explaining why it should be covered up. But Brent actually said he was concerned that “junk scientist[s]” would misuse data to falsely claim that thimerosal in vaccines is linked to autism at the behest of “plaintiff attorneys.”

The link between thimerosal vaccines and autism has been disproven again and again by scientific studies. But even if Kennedy was right (he’s not), thimerosal has not been used in vaccines (except certain flu vaccines) since 2001. So the alleged dangers of thimerosal are not a reason to avoid vaccines today.

On the Rogan podcast, Kennedy simply waved away this inconvenient fact and continued to argue that life-saving vaccines are dangerous. Kennedy told Rogan that it could be aluminum in vaccines that is causing problems. But an adult typically ingests “7 to 9 milligrams of aluminum per day” through foods, and a typical vaccine has less than half a milligram. Infants will be exposed to far more aluminum through their diet than vaccines. And there is no scientific evidence that aluminum is linked to autism or any of the other health concerns cited by Kennedy. Perhaps that’s why Kennedy hedged. “There’s lots of other toxins in the vaccines that, you know, could be responsible,” he said.

Ivermectin inanity

Kennedy also used his appearance on Rogan’s podcast to falsely claim that COVID-19 vaccines are extremely dangerous and that people who take COVID-19 vaccines are significantly more likely to die. The data shows the opposite is true. A comprehensive study by the Commonwealth Fund “estimates that, through November 2022, COVID-19 vaccines prevented more than 18.5 million US hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths and saved the country $1.15 trillion.”

According to Kennedy, thousands of athletes have died on the playing field as a result of taking the COVID-19 vaccines. There is no evidence to support this, and a large Australian study found “no association between out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and COVID-19 vaccinations.”

Kennedy claimed that ivermectin, which can treat river blindness in humans and is also useful as a horse dewormer, can effectively treat COVID-19. These facts, according to Kennedy, were covered up so that pharmaceutical companies could make money selling vaccines. At one point, Kennedy alleged that Bill Gates purposely funded studies in which people would be given lethal doses of ivermectin to discredit the treatment.

But ivermectin was studied repeatedly as a potential treatment for COVID-19. And it has been found repeatedly to be totally ineffective.

Joe Rogan told Kennedy that he took ivermectin when he contracted COVID-19 and credited it for his quick recovery. But Rogan also received monoclonal antibodies, an FDA-approved treatment for COVID-19 associated with a faster reduction in viral load….

Kennedy is benefiting from a steady stream of elite support to boost his profile and anti-vaccine advocacy. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, has formally endorsed Kennedy. Dorsey has avoided discussing Kennedy’s views on vaccines specifically but praised Kennedy for having an “edge” and “no fear in exploring topics that are a little bit controversial.” David Sacks, an investor and close associate of Elon Musk, and Chamath Palihapitiya, a prominent venture capitalist, hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for Kennedy this month.

Do any of Kennedy’s elite backers believe he has a real chance to be the next president? It’s unclear. But supporting Kennedy has become a trendy way to signal you have a rebellious streak. It’s a very dangerous game.

Categories Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fake, Health, Hoax, Lies, Propaganda, Science

Nancy Bailey: Why Do Corporate Reformers Love “The Science of Reading”?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2023 //
72

I apologize in advance. I am habitually skeptical of fads and movements. When a hot new idea sweeps through education, it’s a safe bet that it will fall flat in the fullness of time. If there is one consistent theme that runs through everything I have written for the past half century, it is this: beware of the latest thing. Be skeptical.

The latest thing is the “Science of Reading.” I have always been a proponent of phonics, so I won’t tolerate being pilloried by the phonics above all crowd. If you read my 2000 book, you will see that I was a critic of Balanced Literacy, which was then the fad du jour.

Yet it turns my stomach to see Educatuon journalist and mainstream dailies beating the drums for SOR. As you know, I reacted with nausea when New York Times’ columnist Nick Kristof said that the SOR was so powerful that it made new spending unnecessary, made desegregation unnecessary, made class size reduction unnecessary. A dream come true for those in search of a cheap miracle!

Veteran teacher Nancy Bailey, like me, is not persuaded by the hype. She wrote a column demonstrating that the corporate reform world—billionaires and politicians—are swooning for the Science of Reading.

She writes:

Many of the same individuals who favor charter schools, private schools, and online instruction, including corporate reformers, use the so-called Science of Reading (SoR) to make public school teachers look like they’ve failed at teaching reading.

Politicians and corporations have had a past and current influence on reading instruction to privatize public schools with online programs. This has been going on for years, so why aren’t reading scores soaring? The SoR involves primarily online programs, but it’s often unclear whether they work.

The Corporate Connection to the SoR

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation fund numerous nonprofits to end public education. The National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ), started by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation backed by Gates and other corporations, an astroturf organization, promotes the SoR.

SoR promoters ignore the failure of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), embedded in most online programs, like iReady and Amplify. CCSS, influenced by the Gates Foundation, has been around for years.

Also, despite its documented failure ($335 million), the Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching, a past reform initiative (See VAMboozled!), irreparably harmed the teaching profession, casting doubt on teachers’ ability.

EdReports, another Gates-funded group, promotes their favored programs, but why trust what they say about reading instruction? They’ve failed at their past education endeavors.

But the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continues to reinvent itself and funds many nonprofits that promote their agenda, including the SoR.

Former Governor Jeb Bush’s Organizations

Former Governor Bush of Florida (1999 to 2007) promoted SoR, but if children have reading problems, states should review past education policies, including those encouraged by former Governors, including Mr. Bush. His policymaking in public education has been around for a long time.

One should question, for example, Mr. Bush’s third-grade retention policy ignoring the abundance of anti-retention research showing its harmful effects, including its high correlation with students dropping out of school.

He rejected the class size amendment and worked to get it repealed. Yet lowering class size, especially in K-3rd grade, could benefit children learning to read.

As far back as 2011, Mr. Bush promoted online learning. He’s not talking about technology supplementing teachers’ lessons. He wants technology to replace teachers!

Here’s a 2017 post written in ExelInEd, Mr. Bush’s organization, A Vision for the Future of K-3 Reading Policy: Personalized Learning for Mastery. They’re promoting online learning to teach reading as proven, but there’s no consistent evidence this will work.

Here’s the ExcelinEd Comprehensive Early Policy Toolkit for 2021 where teachers often must be aligned to the SoR with Foundations of Reading a Pearson Assessment. If the teacher’s role loses its autonomy, technology can easily replace them. 

Laurene Powell Jobs and Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify

How did Rupert Murdoch’s old program Amplify become the Science of Reading?

Rupert Murdoch invested in Amplify, News Corp.’s $1 Billion Plan to Overhaul Education Is Riddled With Failures. Then Laurene Powell Jobs purchased it. Does a change in ownership miraculously mean program improvement?

Teachers from Oklahoma described how student expectations with Amplify were often developmentally inappropriate, so how is this good reading science?

Many SoR supporters who imply teachers fail to teach reading do podcasts for Amplify. Are they compensated for their work? Where’s the independent research to indicate that Amplify works?

Amplify, and other online reading programs, are marketed ferociously to school districts with in-house research relying on testimonials. When schools adopt these programs, teachers have a reduced role in students’ instruction.

Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Their Data Collection

Priscilla Chan pushes Reach Every Reader, including prestigious universities that write SoR reports.

Why must they collect data involving children and their families?

CZI promotes the Age of Learning and ABC Mouse for young children. The reviews of this program appear primarily negative.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Fake, For-Profit, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Literacy, Online Education, Research, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

A 10-Year-Old Boy Stunned City Council in Redmond, Oregon

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2023 //
36

Someone left a dead raccoon and a racist note outside the office of the mayor of Redmond, Oregon. The note was directed at the only Black member of the City Council. Redmond is almost 90% white.

The incident is being investigated as a bias crime. The City Council discussed the matter at its next meeting. A 10-year-old boy, Gavin Alston, asked his parents if he could go with them to the City Council meeting. He wanted to speak and share his experience of racism. He wrote some notes to read.

Gavin Alston, aged 10, accompanied his parents to the meeting and read a speech that he, too, had prepared – explaining how, at a different school in third grade, “I felt like I belonged.”

“Now I’m in fourth,” he continued. “A lot of people have been calling me the n-word or a monkey, even ‘Black Boy.’ One girl said to me, ‘I would hit you, but that’s called animal abuse’. We should not get treated like this. We should get treated equally. This is not fair to us Black people.”

His mother, Heather Alston, warned Gavin that “everybody’s going to be looking at you” and he was “going to be the centre of attention,” she told The Washington Post – but he remained unwavering in his resolve to speak and share his experience.

The Washington Post wrote:

He finished his remarks to applause from meeting attendees. But as he walked back to his parents, his speech in hand, tears started flowing down his face. He was thinking back to what he had felt during the incidents he’d written about.

“I was sad because I know how it feels for that to happen,” Gavin said.

Though he’d felt scared to rehash those moments in front of the council and community members, he hoped it had gotten his message across.

“I want people to change and not judge people just because of their skin color,” Gavin said. “They’ve got to know them for their personality, their kindness and respect.”

Categories Courage, Oregon, Racism
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