Trump Goes Full Bonkers, Attacks the Constitution

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2022 //
70

Trump has fully embraced the rightwing sector of the GOP, first by having dinner with Ye and Fuentes—racists, white nationalists, anti-Semites—then by promising to pardon and release the insurrectionists of January 6. There is no bottom, no low too low for him. (Yes, Ye is a white nationalist, strangely enough.)

Now Trump has renounced the Constitution. He repeats the Big Lie and demands that he be “declared” the rightful president or that a new election be held.

CNN reports:

Former President Donald Trump called for the termination of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and reinstate him to power Saturday in a continuation of his election denialism and pushing of fringe conspiracy theories.

“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Trump’s post came after the release of internal Twitter emails showing deliberation in 2020 over a New York Post story about material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Is he nuts or cunning? Insane or stupid?

Categories Disruption, Insane, Republicans, Stupid, Trump

Mississippi: How Haley Barbour Turned $570 Million for Low-Income Housing into a Port that Benefited Few

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2022 //
11

Ellen Ann Fentress is a Mississippi writer who dug deep into a state tradition of converting federal funds for the poor into a boondoggle for the few. She writes here in an upstart online investigative journal called the Mississippi Free Press. (To learn more about this brave entry into investigative journalism in Mississippi, read this post.) Federal money intended to supply housing for poor and middle-income Mississippians was diverted by politicians to refurbishing a port, which benefitted the casino industry.

She writes:

The plantation-owner model lingers in the Mississippi imagination. It’s manifested, for example, in the local soft spot for white columns on McMansions and even gas stations in suburban communities.

The plantation archetype, however, is not a yokel, but the opposite. To make money off his cash crop—that’s the definition of a plantation over a self-sustaining farm—the plantation owner had to master credit lines and commodity futures in a far-off financial market and put that mastery into play on his home soil. His success rested on being a bifurcated practitioner. His feet in his home dirt, his head attuned elsewhere.

I wrote a version of those words in mid-2008 for the Oxford American magazine about how then-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour had channeled $570 million in Hurricane Katrina housing recovery funds away from rebuilding housing for poor Gulf Coast residents and toward improving the state port at Gulfport.

In words not that different from what we’re hearing now about the arrogant and greedy redirection of federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds, Barbour’s excuse for hubristic diversion was economic development.

Sinking recovery money into the port would bring 6,500 direct jobs, the Yazoo City native declared in 2009. His economic trickle-down policy hit the right note with the national free-market conservative audience. The powerful Washington lobbyist and former head of the party tested the GOP presidential waters for 2008, in fact, stymied in part by his own words about racism in his hometown.

Barbour’s port move, however, was at the expense of low- and middle-income Coast residents cut out of the state’s recovery aid framework that was weighted toward homeowners with insurance policies. The promised high-paying jobs hardly materialized, either.

Amid the outrage around the money grab of $77 million in TANF funds discovered in a state audit of 2016-2020 TANF spending, Haley Barbour’s $570-million port gambit must not be forgotten. And it’s historically instructive. The willingness of Mississippi leaders to arbitrarily hijack federal funds away from specific needy recipients is not a new story.

The TANF scandal is only the latest rendition.

‘Not Asking the Hard Questions’

Reilly Morse was a Mississippi Center for Justice attorney involved in the court fight over the port funding. Morse sees the similarities in Barbour’s handling of Katrina funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the recent TANF revelations that emerged in early 2020 during the administration of Barbour’s successor, Phil Bryant.

Bryant was state auditor during Barbour’s time in office, and current Gov. Tate Reeves was state treasurer.

“They count on people not asking the hard questions,” Morse said in an Oct. 4 telephone interview. “I think that’s another common theme here because all of these folks that lambast Washington adore disaster-response money or other block-grant money, social-services block-grant money, that they think they can just clear out regardless of whether it benefits the people.”

In December 2008, the Mississippi Center for Justice and other community groups sued HUD for allowing the port funding since Congress had appropriated the monies for low- and middle-income home repair. The litigation ended in 2010 when Barbour, HUD and the Mississippi housing advocates negotiated an agreement to provide $133 million to assist low-income Mississippians still in need of Katrina-damaged home repair.

HUD had expected the project to create 1,300 jobs and retain 1,300 more. By 2013, no new permanent jobs had been created, a 2013 PEER committee report found. That number is shocking in the way that learning that the State of Mississippi only qualified 1.5 percent of TANF applicants for cash assistance in the nation’s poorest state in 2016, the first year of the MDHS audit.

But shunting Katrina housing money toward the port wasn’t shocking enough to break through in Mississippi media outlets that tend to give Barbour a pass, nor has it re-emerged now in most outlets as important context for the current TANF scandal.

In 2019, HUD declared the job-creation goals met. Yet reaching the job-count goal required a fuzzy calculation, as journalist Anita Lee reported at the time in the Sun Heraldin Biloxi. During the Trump administration, HUD allowed Mississippi to count jobs that the Island View Casino Resort added at a new casino hotel facility since the resort was on port property. The job total still initially didn’t meet the project requirement until HUD then allowed recalculating part-time hotel jobs into full-time jobs through hours worked.

The State of Mississippi thus counted 1,167 jobs at the casino hotel as jobs creation, although the number of actual higher-paying maritime jobs at the port was only 262. Lee noted in her reporting that the state investment netted one job for every $2.2 million in recovery funds spent….

Barbour has long done his post-Katrina part for his team’s ideology—if not for the Gipper, at least for Milton Friedman. That favorite conservative economist taught that the best time to slip in a political change was in the wake of disaster. “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change,” the Nobel Laureate wrote. “When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas lying around.”

Blanco: ‘He Only Cared What He Got’

The casinos had ideas lying around when Katrina hit.

Ever since their 1992 debut in Mississippi, it was the widely held belief in this Bible Belt state that the industry was just waiting for their then-floating facilities to crumple up in the next hurricane to justify legalizing their expansion onto land. Katrina provided the scenario. The barge on which the Grand Casino sat actually managed to crush the new Frank Gehry-designed Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi.

Barbour’s first—and chief—legislative response was to convene the Mississippi Legislature to legalize the casinos’ move inland. The powerful Southern Baptist lobby howled. But, by December, three casinos had reopened on terra firma, and by 2007, the $1.3 billion in revenue from the 11 Coast casinos topped the old pre-Katrina tally.

The state legislation squared away, Barbour headed up to his Washington stomping grounds, where Mississippi proportionately outscored Democrat-led Louisiana in Congress’ $29-billion recovery appropriation in December 2005. Barbour was the closer, persuading then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert to accept the funding terms, the New York Times reported, calling it “using a lobbyist’s pull from the governor’s seat.”

Mississippi’s take was at Louisiana’s expense, its former governor, Democrat Kathleen Blanco, later said in a July 2008 telephone interview about Barbour: “He didn’t care how much anyone else got. He only cared what he got.”

Please open the link and read more about high-level corruption at the expense of the poor people of Mississippi.

Categories Corruption, Fraud, Mississippi

Jeff Bryant: An Unlikely City in the South Is Leading a Public School Renaissance

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2022 //
21

Jeff Bryant writes here about the surprising emergence of Jackson, Mississippi, as a trailblazer for public school reform. Jackson is right now renowned for the failure of its water supply. Jeff also documents years of the state government underfunding its public schools. Racism can be seen is almost every aspect of the relationship between the state and the city. The public schools of Jackson are 95% Black. Under these circumstances, what is happening in the schools is remarkable.

Before it got national headlines about its severe water crisis, Jackson, Mississippi, was much renowned for its potholes. “The amount [sic] of potholes in the city is crazy,” exclaimsthe narrator of “Jackson, Mississippi: The Second Most Dangerous City in America,” a video posted to a popular travel YouTube channel in December 2021. The vlogger continues, “It’s just amazing to me there is a city in America that looks like this. … It’s hard to believe that this is the United States.”

“It is not uncommon to walk through west Jackson and see water flowing out of pipes for weeks,” observed Yoknyam Dabale, a Nigerian immigrant who moved to Jackson, in an op-ed in the Jackson Free Press. “Roads are overrun with potholes and uncleaned gutters.”

“The city says 90 percent of its roads are in poor shape,” television news outlet WLBT reported in 2021. “A Google search pulls up endless complaints, dangerous accidents, and hazardous barricades,” reporter Sharie Nicole wrote. “Local comedians write songs about the potholes; out-of-towners rant about it.”

The steady decay of Jackson’s public infrastructure goes beyond potholes and the water supply.

In 2018, the Mississippi Clarion Ledger reported that Jackson libraries faced a crisis that included “black mold, leaking buildings,” and “chronic flooding issues at two of its main branches.” Jackson libraries have been “suffering from needed repairs,” and some libraries were even facing temporary closure due to lack of money for repairs, according to an August 2022 report in the Northside Sun.

In 2017, the Clarion Ledger, in reporting on the “deteriorating” conditions in the city’s parks and recreation facilities, found a “$1.2 million hole” in the Department of Parks and Recreation budget.

The lack of government investment in Jackson’s public infrastructure, and across the state in general, extends to public schools as well.

Were Jackson schools funded according to state law, the district would receive $11,447,922 more in state funding for the 2022-2023 school year alone, according to the Parents’ Campaign, a parent advocacy group in the state.

Funding for Mississippi students is even worse if they happen to be Black. “Between 1954 and 1960, the state gave Black students more than $297 million less (in 2017 dollars) than white students,” the Sun Herald reported while referring to government data. “And if that number is extended back to 1890, Black students were shortchanged more than $25 billion.”

Jackson Public Schools (JPS) are 95 percent Black, according to the 2019 Better Together Commission (BTC) Findings Report by the nonprofit One Voice. The Better Together Commission is a public-private partnership that included city and state officials, Jackson citizens, and representatives from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a private foundation based in Michigan.

As I reported for the Progressive magazine in 2018, BTC was formed as an alternative to a takeover of the district by the state after an audit by the Mississippi Department of Education found a significant number of state regulatory violations by the district. Fearing state takeover would lead to schools being handed over to charter school management groups—which is what happened in New Orleans, Newark, and other majority-Black school districts—a coalition called Our JPS quickly formed to oppose the takeover and demand an alternative approach to improving the public school system.

One such alternative was to remake schools into community-based centers for providing student- and family-oriented supports and programs designed to address the high levels of poverty, homelessness, and mental and economic trauma in the district.

“We need schools that serve as hubs of the community,” Pam Shaw, a leading spokesperson for Our JPS at the time of writing the article for the Progressive, told me. “Communities should own that space and use it as a launching pad for everything children need.”

Our JPS has since refined that idea into a campaign for the district to adopt what’s become loosely known as community schools. Our JPS defines community schools as “neighborhood schools that partner with families and community organizations to provide well-rounded educational experiences and supports for students’ school success…”

Meanwhile, the idea of community schools has caught on with progressive think tanks, teachers’ unions, public education advocates, and philanthropic groups across the nation. California has provided $3 billion in new state funding for transitioning schools to the approach in 2022, and Maryland has pledged to convert at least one-third of the state’s public schools to community schools.

One philanthropic group advocating for the community schools approach in Jackson is the NEA Foundation, a Washington, D.C., based nonprofit founded by educators.

“We entered this work in Jackson at the invitation of Mississippi educators,” NEA Foundation president and CEO Sara Sneed told Our Schools. “There is enormous community pressure for positive change but also expectations that any effort to include community voice in the process will come with a fight.”

The NEA Foundation’s effort also targets two other communities in school districts in the South—Little Rock, Arkansas, and East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. But Sneed expects their work in Jackson to lead the initiative for spreading the community schools approach throughout the South.

“We want to make community schools a signature issue in Mississippi and believe the effort in Jackson is an opportunity to transform the education experiences of children in the South,” Sneed said.

Please open the link and read the rest of this hopeful post.

Categories Community Schools, Courage, Education Reform, Funding, Mississippi, Racism, Supporting public schools

Florida Withdraws $2 Billion from Investment Fund Because It Has “Woke” Standards

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
90

The Tampa Bay Business Journal reported that Florida will withdraw $2 billion in investment funds from BlackRock because the firm abides by standards against racism and for environmental awareness. This sort of ethical investing is repulsive to Governor Ron DeSantis and the extremists in his government. Republicans usually represent and celebrate big corporations. But in the past decade, many Republicans have turned against the same corporations for what they call “woke capitalism.” That is, a number of big corporations have sought to placate their Black employees and customers, their LGBT+ employees and customers, and socially aware young people.

When corporations take stands on sensitive issues which make their employees and customers angry, hat’s “woke capitalism.” When they oppose hate laws and work to promote diversity and equity, that’s “woke capitalism.” The more they step up to support minority causes, the more they enrage reactionary Republicans like DeSantis.

Here is an example of Governor Ron DeSantis acting boldly to crush “woke capitalism.”

Florida will pull $2 billion from the largest asset-management firm in the world over ideological differences.

State Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronisannounced Thursday that Florida will immediately freeze about $1.43 billion in long-term securities and about $600 million in short-term overnight investments managed by BlackRock because of the firm’s use of “Environmental, Social, and Governance” standards — known as ESG.

Patronis in a prepared statement said he doesn’t “trust BlackRock’s ability to deliver” and “BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is on a campaign to change the world.”

“Whether stakeholder capitalism, or ESG standards, are being pushed by BlackRock for ideological reasons, or to develop social credit ratings, the effect is to avoid dealing with the messiness of democracy,” Patronis said.

Republican leaders in Florida and across the country have targeted ESG ratings, which can involve considering a wide range of issues in investments, such as companies’ climate-change vulnerabilities; carbon emissions; racial inequality; product safety; supply-chain labor standards; privacy and data security; and executive compensation.

Patronis said the state Department of Financial Services oversees about $60 billion and that the money with BlackRock will be moved “elsewhere.”

“I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use their power to influence societal outcomes,” Patronis said. “If Larry (Fink), or his friends on Wall Street, want to change the world — run for office. Start a non-profit. Donate to the causes you care about. Using our cash, however, to fund BlackRock’s social-engineering project isn’t something Florida ever signed up for.”

Fink is a leading proponent of ESG metrics. In a letter this year to corporate executives, Fink said companies using the standards are “performing better than their peers.”

“Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics,” Fink wrote. “It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper.”

BlackRock manages over $8 trillion in assets. They are unlikely to miss Florida’s $2 billion.

Categories DeSantis, Economy, Environment, Florida, Racism

Florida: DeSantis Administration Refused to Comply with Open Records Law, Fined $376,000

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
7

A Florida judge ordered the DeSantis administration to pay the legal fees of news outlets seeking public records about the death of an abused child.

Child welfare authorities’ refusal, for well over a year, to hand over documents detailing the state’s failed efforts to protect a Miami toddler will cost Florida taxpayers $376,665 — money that otherwise could have been spent on services for at-risk children.

It is one of several public records battles that have played out during the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Barbara Areces, who earlier this year censured the Department of Children & Families for defying the state’s open government laws, awarded attorneys for the Miami Herald and other news organizations the money in an order that closes out a nearly two-year litigation.

In her five-page order, Areces said the legal fees generated by the news outlets seeking to enforce the state’s public records law were “appropriate and reasonable.”

The dispute concerned Rashid Bryant, a 22-month-old boy who died on Nov. 6, 2020 from complications of acute and chronic blunt force injuries. Rashid’s death, the Medical Examiner’s Office wrote, was partly the result of “parental neglect.” Rashid and his nine siblings had been the subject of about 25 reports to Florida’s child abuse hotline, and the children had been in and out of foster care.

The boy’s family had been facing eviction at the time his mother called 911 to report he was in distress; in fact, Rashid had already perished.

Under Florida’s public records law — originally approved by voters in 1909, but later enshrined in the state Constitution following a voter referendum – all documents detailing Rashid’s involvement with the state’s child welfare system should have been open to public inspection upon a finding that his death resulted from abuse or neglect.

But DCF insisted for more than a year that the agency was still investigating the cause of his death, and, therefore, agency records were exempt from public disclosure.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/article269499212.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Florida

Florida: School Boards Endorsed by DeSantis Begin Firing Superintendents

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
8

Governor Ron DeSantis believes he should control everything, not just state government. He has made schools one of his top issues, by promoting a medley of policies.

He ridiculed mask mandates. He got the legislature to pass a bill banning “WOKE” activities and “critical race theory” in schools, colleges, and the workplace. Federal courts have already struck down parts of this law (e.g. demanding that college professors teach only the views approved by DeSantis). He got the legislature to pass a law called “Don’t Say Gay” that prohibits any teaching about gender in K-3 and throws into question the legitimacy of any mention of gender in other grades. He stands in opposition to any workplace training in diversity, equity and inclusion.

Have you ever heard of a state governor endorsing candidates in local school board elections?

At the last election, DeSantis endorsed 73 local school board candidates who share his hard-right views. More than half won. Most of the same candidates were endorsed by the fringe group “Moms for Liberty.” Where the DeSantis candidates won a majority, they wasted no time in firing the superintendent. Teachers in DeSantis-led counties must be very careful in teaching about race, racism, gender, American history or anything likely to offend the ideologues who control the board.

Politico reported on the swift actions taken by DeSantis-endorsed school boards:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis put his weight behind dozens of conservative school board candidates across Florida during the midterms. Now they’re in office — and are purging some educational leaders who enforced Covid-19 mandates.

New board members in two GOP-leaning counties essentially sacked their school superintendents over the span of one week. The ousters were spurred by how the superintendents carried out local policies like efforts to support the rights of parents, an issue inflamed by schools imposing student mask mandates last fall in defiance of DeSantis.

And while not tied to the 2022 election, the school board in Broward County earlier this month fired its superintendent through an effort led by five members appointed by DeSantis. All combined, school boards with ties to DeSantis pushed out three superintendents in November alone — and each of them served over districts that implemented student mask mandates.

“We had a wave in school districts that spit in parents’ faces,” said state Rep. Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay), who earlier this year sought to punish schools with mask mandates. “And now the people who did that are gone.”

In Brevard and Sarasota counties, embattled school leaders have faced immediate pressure from newly-installed board members and offered to leave voluntarily rather than risk a vote on their terminations.

The boards in both counties now have conservative majorities who sought a change in leadership immediately after the midterms. Although school boards are nonpartisan posts, lines between Democratic and Republican candidates were drawn in many counties through endorsements from each party as well as outside groups. The newly-elected board members in these cases support parental rights while opposing critical race theory and teaching gender orientation in schools.

DeSantis in particular used his clout to endorse more than two dozen school board candidates during the 2022 election cycle, a rare move for a Florida governor that came with $1,000 cash contributions from DeSantis and other GOP lawmakers. Most of the candidates DeSantis endorsed won their elections and are now transforming the make-up of school district leadership and will have huge influence over policies affecting hundreds of thousands of students in the state.

Both Sarasota and Brevard’s school boards put the superintendents on the chopping block the same day that new members endorsed by DeSantis and conservative organizations like Moms for Liberty were sworn into office.

A poster helping those who want to run for a school board position is seen in the hallway.
A poster helping those who want to run for a school board position is seen in the hallway during the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit at the Tampa Marriott Water Street on July 15, 2022 in Tampa, Fla. | Octavio Jones/Getty Images

Sarasota board members called Superintendent Brennan Asplen’s job into question at a meeting Tuesday night specially called to discuss his contract. After fielding about four hours of public comment, mostly in support of the superintendent, board members vented criticisms over student performance in reading, how he handled masking students and a perceived lack of transparency from Asplen.

Understanding he may not have a job much longer, Asplen offered up his resignation on Monday night — the day before the board met to weigh his ouster. But the superintendent also fought at the meeting to keep his job by attempting to punch holes in the critiques from board members.

“I have a feeling I’m going to be fired after tonight because I just can’t hold this back,” Asplen told the board from as a preface.

Asplen said that some of the board’s comments were “ridiculous” given that he had been at the school since 2020, a timeframe that included the Covid-19 pandemic. And yet despite the coronavirus uprooting education, Sarasota earned “A” grades from the state both years. The superintendent also claimed he was being shut out by board members since the election and noted that he enacted a mandatory student masking policy for only three weeks, and that was due to Sarasota’s board voting 3-2 in favor of the mandate.

Here is an account of the firing in Sarasota, where the superintendent revealed that he is a “conservative Republican.”

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Censorship, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida

Florida: Why Does Governor DeSantis Appoint Local School Board Members?

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
20

This is a question that I hope someone in Florida will answer.

On several occasions in the past year, Governor DeSantis has appointed his loyalists to fill vacancies on local school boards.

In one county, his appointees fired the district superintendent and school board attorney at their first public meeting.

Just days ago, he appointed a campaign donor to the Miami-Dade school board.

Categories DeSantis, Ethics, Florida

Florida: Why Did Ron DeSantis Fire an Elected Local Prosecutor?

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
9

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has a problem: he cannot tolerate dissent or what he sees as disobedience to his wishes. He seems to think that he can order or legislate complete subservience to his beliefs.

DeSantis fired Hillsborough County’s state attorney, Andrew Warren, who was twice elected to his post by the voters of the county. Warren has sued to have his position restored. The trial began this week.

The firing of Warren, like DeSantis’ firing of elected local school board members, suggests a man with an authoritarian temperament who recognizes no limits on his power.

The Miami Herald reported:

Lawyers will square off this week in a Tallahassee courtroom for a politically charged trial that’s expected to center on one question:

What was Gov. Ron DeSantis’ motive for yanking Andrew Warren from office? In a surprise move in August that made national headlines, Warren, Hillsborough County’s twice-elected state attorney, was suspended from his duties and escorted out of his office by a sheriff’s deputy. It happened as DeSantis held a rally-style news conference at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office at which he and others lamented aspects of Warren’s progressive approach to criminal justice.

Warren is asking a federal judge to reinstate him. He says the suspension was political retaliation against his right to free speech. DeSantis says he did it because Warren refused to enforce state laws.

Warren is asking a federal judge to reinstate him. He says the suspension was political retaliation against his right to free speech. DeSantis says he did it because Warren refused to enforce state laws.

WHO WILL TESTIFY?

Warren’s lawyers in recent weeks have deposed nine witnesses. They include several members of the governor’s staff, among them his former press secretary Christina Pushaw, who famously tweeted the night before the suspension to prepare for the “liberal media meltdown of the year…”

The governor’s lawyers deposed five people. They include two Hillsborough prosecutors who may offer insight into Warren’s policy against prosecuting certain minor offenses — one of the reasons the governor cited in accusing Warren of neglecting his duties.

The actual written policy indicates individual prosecutors should use their discretion in deciding whether to pursue such crimes. Warren contends the policies were not a blanket refusal to enforce laws.

The local sheriff complained that Warren refused to prosecute homeless people who slept in business parking lots for trespassing. Warren said that prosecuting them would not solve the problem of homelessness.

Among a deluge of exhibits to hit the court file: a memo that the governor’s staff prepared before Warren’s suspension, noting that Warren was described in a news story as something close to a “social justice warrior.”

It mentioned his refusal to prosecute 67 protesters who were arrested on unlawful assembly charges during protests over the murder of George Floyd.

The memo seemed to express particular concern over Warren’s stance on abortion, and his having signed a pledge with other elected prosecutors to refrain from prosecuting abortion-related cases. (Warren signed a similar pledge against prosecuting transgender healthcare cases.) The memo included a legal analysis of how the governor could justify suspending him.

What seemed to anger DeSantis most was that Warren made clear that he would not prosecute people who defied the state’s abortion ban. To DeSantis, Warren was “woke” and, as the Governor likes to say, Florida is where “woke” goes to die.

How could Governor DeSantis ignore a state prosecutor who defied him? That’s why he fired him.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article269344527.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Florida

Joel: Why Biden Was Right About The Rail Workers Contract

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
33

Our reader Joel is a retired union worker. He shared his thoughts about the deal that the Biden administration and Congress imposed on the nation’s rail workers’ unions to avert a strike. Biden feared that a rail strike would cripple the economy and lead to widespread layoffs. Critics of the deal complained that rail workers get only one paid sick day a year (members of Congress get unlimited paid sick days). The critics are right to insist that rail workers get more paid sick days, but Joel points out that a national strike now would do incalculable damage to organized labor.

Joel writes:

Union Leadership understands that one has to pick your fights carefully.

The cause of the workers’ grievances focuses on forced overtime and being on call far too often with little input in scheduling . This has been caused by efficiency measures that cut nearly 30 % of the workforce. If the gripe is the forced overtime than the answer is to bring back the workers whose dismissal caused the need for that overtime. Not that the employers would be happier with that than the paid sick time .

The contract negotiated between Biden, the Union Leadership, and the Railroads back in September did provide for sick days. It provided for scheduled doctors’ visits. It provided 1 additional paid holiday. It provided a 24 % wage increase retroactively, graduated from 2020 through 2024. It called for more flexibility in scheduling, and it froze health insurance premiums, I believe, beyond the contract period. Without those PAID sick days it was a damn good contract that the leadership of the 12 unions pushed their members to accept. 8 of the 12 did, Including the IBEW of which I am a retired member as a construction electrician.

But if grueling working conditions caused by forced overtime and standby status is your beef, why would being paid for the day off come into play. The answer is it does not. Most like the overtime or they would insist on bringing staffing levels back up to eliminate it . More workers equals less forced overtime for each and less grueling schedules . That proposal was not put on the table to my knowledge. And I understand why . The leadership would have their heads handed to them by the same members asking for paid sick time to alleviate the grueling schedules.

Been there seen that, in the 1970s in a time of high unemployment in NYC’s construction industry. Overtime was eliminated by my Union. Accomplished by forcing the worker to take a day off if he worked more than 3hrs OT in that week . That forced the contractor to either not work overtime. Creating work for more members by, if anything, forcing projects to take longer or hiring additional workers to be able to man the job during regular hours. The union’s noble object was to put the unemployed members to work. In the 1990s when unemployment returned that was dropped. The leadership decided that it was better to hear 10-15 % gripe about unemployment than the 85% bitch about taking the bread and butter out of their mouths.

So I suspect the dynamic is similar.

That said what are the down side risks for the economy, the Democrats, the workers, the employers and the Unions?

This is not a Cheerios factory closing down .This is not Air travel shutting down as in 1980 . A strike that lasts as little as a week will effect vast portions of the economy. It will cause a huge spike in prices and unemployment. A total no win for Biden and Democrats that will hang around their neck like an albatross. The workers may or may not get what they are getting now if Congress is forced to step in after Economic Armageddon sets in. The Employers: if I were the employer knowing how quickly Americans turn against other workers or any policy that calls for personnel sacrifice, I would stretch this out till Public Sentiment turned massively against the Unions and the Administration. The Republicans were so concerned about the working conditions that only 3 in the House and 6? in the Senate voted for the additional sick days . Both the Employers and the Republicans would salivate at the opportunity to drive Democrats from power, driving a stake in the heart of organized labor. And you can be sure the oligarchy who owns the media would be all over it.

Sitting in front of the Taliban 6 in the SCOTUS is a case that could bankrupt almost every Union that chose to strike. It would allow employers to sue for losses caused by the strike. For example: A supermarket chain could sue for lost produce , dairy ,meats … I don’t hold much hope out for them not supporting the employers in this case. A rail strike not only will give them cover to do so but will have a huge majority of the American Public supporting them.

A wave of strikes in 1947 allowed Republicans and Dixiecrats to gut the NLRA with Taft Hartley . That was when Unions were 31 or 32 % of the workforce.

After Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers, he set an example that led to an orgy of Union busting when Unions were 22% of the workforce. The American people overwhelmingly re-elected Reagan in a race against one of the most pro-labor Senators in the Country. Sending Democrats into the wilderness until they became under Clinton and Obama, Eisenhower Republicans at best. All but abandoning the New Deal and Great Society as well as relegating Labor to lip service, while passing Trade agreements that decimated American Labor worse than anything Reagan did.

A rail strike would make the media frenzy about Inflation, Crime and Afghanistan look like a practice run. Organized Labor would take the hit opening us up to the effective repeal of all union rights in the NLRA.

In a comment yesterday, Joel amplified his argument on behalf of the Biden settlement, pointing out that Biden has no authority to issue an executive order.

Joel wrote:

An executive order to do what (either way)? This is private sector commerce. The President can do little other than ensure Public Dollars are used in certain ways. So he can sign an order calling for Project Labor Agreements in the spending of Federal Dollars, or Buy American provisions with those dollars . We see he can not even mandate life saving vaccines using OSHA .

Article 1 section 8 clause 3. So now envision a strike that lasts 3 weeks into the new Congress. A strike that puts up to 7 million out of work as supply chains snarl and prices soar . Now envision the contract that could be ordered by that Fascist Right Wing House of Congress. A strike would give them a Scott Walker moment they have dreamed of for decades. As the American people spurred on by daily media stories of the pain caused by strikers called for the Guillotines.

The new Congress, under the Commerce Clause the only Branch entitled to regulate private Commerce, would deliver those Guillotines.

If I were the Railroad CEOs and the Oligarchy, I would assure the baskets were in place to catch the heads .

Categories Accountability, Biden, Elections, Republicans, Unions

NY Times: Hate Speech Soars on Twitter Since Musk Purchase

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2022 //
59

The New York Times reported an unprecedented increase in hate speech on Twitter since Elon Musk bought the social media platform. Musk fired everyone in the department responsible for moderating the content of tweets and seems now to be making personal decisions about who should be allowed to return to Twitter and who should be removed. In the past day, he suspended Kanye West (Ye) for posting Star of David with a swastika in its center. West was recently interviewed by Alex Jones, where he said that Hitler was “good” and should be remembered for the many positive things he did.

The Times wrote:

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day.

Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day.

And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Mr. Musk acquired the site.

These findings — from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups that study online platforms — provide the most comprehensive picture to date of how conversations on Twitter have changed since Mr. Musk completed his $44 billion deal for the company in late October. While the numbers are relatively small, researchers said the increases were atypically high.

The shift in speech is just the tip of a set of changes on the service under Mr. Musk. Accounts that Twitter used to regularly remove — such as those that identify as part of the Islamic State, which were banned after the U.S. government classified ISIS as a terror group — have come roaring back. Accounts associated with QAnon, a vast far-right conspiracy theory, have paid for and received verified status on Twitter, giving them a sheen of legitimacy.

These changes are alarming, researchers said, adding that they had never seen such a sharp increase in hate speech, problematic content and formerly banned accounts in such a short period on a mainstream social media platform….

Last week, Mr. Musk proposed a widespread amnesty for accounts that Twitter’s previous leadership had suspended. And on Tuesday, he ended enforcement of a policy against Covid misinformation.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Bigotry, Media, Racism
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