Illinois: Supreme Court Accepts Appeal in Major School Funding Case

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2020 //
34

A well-educated citizenry is essential to democracy. The Education Law Center reports good news for the schools and students of Illinois:

On September 30, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in Cahokia Unit School District No. 187 v. Pritzker, a case challenging inadequate and inequitable school funding that could potentially alter the landscape of school funding jurisprudence in the state.

The plaintiffs in the Cahokia lawsuit are twenty-two, low-wealth school districts across the state. They filed their lawsuit in 2018, charging that the State of Illinois has persistently underfunded their schools, depriving their students of their right to a high quality education under the Education Clause of the Illinois constitution.

The plaintiffs are represented by Thomas Geoghegan of the law firm Despres, Schwartz & Geoghegan, Ltd. in Chicago.

In 1996, in Committee for Educational Rights v. Edgar, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the Education Clause was a non-justiciable political question because the “quality of education” was not “capable of or properly subject to measurement by the courts.” The Court held that defining the quality of education was a matter for the State Legislature.

In the ensuing years, the Legislature took up that mantle, adopting the Illinois Learning Standards, which detail the specific educational experience to which all students in Illinois are entitled. The State also adopted tests to measure students’ progress on the Learning Standards.

In 2017, in response to intense political pressure, the Legislature enacted the Funding Act of 2017, designed to provide the resources essential for all students to achieve the State’s Learning Standards. In 2018, the State Board of Education determined, pursuant to the Funding Act’s criteria, that an additional $7.2 billion was required to provide adequate and equitable resources for all students. The Funding Act established a deadline of 2027 for full funding of the adequacy amount.

However, even in the first year of the Act’s decade-long phase-in to full funding, the state failed to provide the requisite installment of state school aid. This failure lies as the heart of the Cahokia lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs contend that the State is already so far behind on funding the new formula that full funding will not be achieved even by 2047.

The Cahokia plaintiffs presented data establishing a correlation between inadequate State and local per-pupil funding and failure rates on state assessments. The plaintiffs also demonstrated a wide disparity in passing rates on state assessments between students in low-wealth districts, which are inadequately funded, and in affluent districts.

In July 2018, the State defendants moved to dismiss the lawsuit, contending that the case was beyond the reach of the courts, or “not justiciable,” based on the Supreme Court’s 1996 Edgar ruling. The trial court agreed and dismissed the complaint. In April 2020, in a split decision, the Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed the dismissal, noting that the Legislature’s enactment of the Illinois Learning Standards did call into question the holding in Edgar. However, the appeals court also ruled that overturning this precedent is the exclusive province of the Illinois Supreme Court.

Appellate Court Justice Milton S. Wharton filed a vigorous dissent, asserting that the court has a duty to address the issues in the case “instead of ignoring or postponing this critical issue of utmost urgency and importance to our citizens and our State with an overly broad application of Edgar ‘s holding.” Justice Wharton concluded that since Edgar, the Legislature has “determined the education students must receive” and, as a result, “courts no longer need to make that determination in order to resolve claims that students in under-resourced districts are not receiving the high quality education mandated by our State constitution.”

The Cahokia plaintiffs filed a petition for leave to appeal in the Illinois Supreme Court in July. The Supreme Court’s decision to accept the case provides the opportunity to revisit its decision in Edgar in light of the Legislature’s actions since 1996 that have defined the substantive contours of a quality education for Illinois public school students.

In 2017, in a case very similar to Cahokia, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reconsidered its previous ruling that constitutional education adequacy claims were non justiciable. In William Penn School District, et al., v. Pennsylvania Department of Education, et al., the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs (a coalition of school districts, parents, children and advocacy groups) were entitled to proceed to trial on their school funding claims. The Court declined to follow its earlier decision, now holding that it was possible to devise a judicially enforceable standard of educational adequacy. The Court further held that failure to adjudicate school funding claims would make a “hollow mockery of judicial review.”

A similar decision by the Illinois Supreme Court would allow the plaintiffs to proceed to trial to prove their case and would finally provide, as Justice Wharton declared, “an avenue [for] under-resourced school districts like the plaintiffs to insist on funding that is adequate to serve their students” in the manner to which they are entitled under the Illinois constitution.

Education Law Center is providing assistance to the Cahokia plaintiffs’ attorneys and working with the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on an amicus brief before the Illinois Supreme Court.

Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
Education Law Center
60 Park Place, Suite 300
Newark, NJ 07102
973-624-1815, ext. 24
skrengel@edlawcenter.org

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Equity, Funding, Illinois

Oklahoma: State Audit Reveals Financial Issues at Epic Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2020 //
5

The Oklahoma State Auditor released a partial audit of Epic Charter Schools that reveals irregular expenditures.

A partial investigative audit of Epic Charter Schools has revealed millions of dollars in questionable expenditures that will be referred to the FBI, state attorney general and other authorities for further action, state Auditor Cindy Byrd announced Thursday.

“I have seen a lot of fraud in my 23 years, and this situation is deeply concerning,” Byrd said at a news conference. “Our audit is around 120 pages long — so it would take hours to explain all the violations we discovered.”

Epic spent $203,000 from Oklahoma Learning funds to expand its brand into California, Byrd said.

“Worse yet, Epic founders used Oklahoma school employees to run the California school,” Byrd said. “They used $210,000 of the Oklahoma resources to develop their project in California. And they only paid the money back after our office discovered what had happened.”

Epic Charter Schools also spent nearly $3 million advertising for new students over a three-month period, she said.

“To put that in perspective, the $3 million Epic spent on advertising in just three months was enough money to buy 1.2 million school lunches for low-income students, buy 15,000 new Chromebooks, or buy a half-million new textbooks.”

The story offers more details.

Here is a link to the audit.

Categories Education Reform

Jan Resseger: Why I Love Derek Black’s New Book, Part 2

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2020 //
8

If you are looking for a book that explains why public schools are foundational to democracy, Jan Resseger writes, read Derek Black’s Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy.

Resseger writes:

On Monday, this blog examined Derek Black’s important new book, Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy. Black, a professor of constitutional law at the University of South Carolina, threads together the history of an idea first articulated in the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, threatened again and again throughout our nation’s history, but persistently revived: that our system of public schools, where all children are welcome and where their fundamental right to education is protected by law, is the one institution most essential for preserving our democratic society…

Derek Black names several problems at the heart of today’s threat to public education: the expansion of school privatization via charters and vouchers, massive fortunes invested by far-right libertarians to attack so-called ‘government schools,’ attacks on school teachers and their unions, and persistent tax cutting by state legislatures and the consequent ratcheting down of state funding for public education: “Before the recession of 2008, the trend in public school funding remained generally positive… Then the recession hit. Nearly every state in the country made large cuts to public education. Annual cuts of more than $1,000 per student were routine.” But the recession wasn’t the only cause of money troubles for public schools: “(I)n retrospect…. the recession offered a convenient excuse for states to redefine their commitment to public education… By 2012, state revenues rebounded to pre-recession levels, and a few years later, the economy was in the midst of its longest winning streak in history. Yet during this period of rising wealth, states refused to give back what they took from education. In 2014, for instance, more than thirty states still funded education at a lower level than they did before the recession—some funded education 20 percent to 30 percent below pre-recession levels.” (Schoolhouse Burning, pp. 31-33) Black cites research demonstrating that states have reneged on their public education promise particularly in areas where the public schools serve poor children: “(W)hen it comes to districts serving primarily middle-income students, most states provide those districts with the resources they need to achieve average outcomes… But only a couple states provide districts serving predominantly poor students what they need. The average state provides districts serving predominantly poor students $6,239 less per pupil than they need.” (Schoolhouse Burning, p. 241)..

All during the recent decade, the federal government’s education policy has also promoted school privatization. During the Trump administration, Betsy DeVos’s efforts to promote vouchers, her lifelong cause, have been well known. But the effort has been bipartisan: “Obama… tapped Arne Duncan… someone whose track record in Chicago involved substantially expanding charters… For the next several years, the federal government promoted and sometimes forced charter school expansion… The Obama administration basically condoned everything states were doing with school funding and made it a little worse. Federal funding for public schools remained flat while the federal budget for charter schools increased by nearly 20 percent between 2008 and 2013. President Obama called for another 50 percent increase for charters on top of that in 2016 (though he didn’t get it). The real surprise, though, is how much Duncan managed to accomplish through administrative action… His biggest coup was the process he set up for doling out innovation funds during the recession. As part of the economic recovery legislation, Congress had set aside a substantial chunk of money for education innovation but didn’t specify exactly what schools could spend it on. Duncan, however, told states that if they wanted access to the money, charter schools had to be part of the mix. States that ‘put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools,’ he said, ‘will jeopardize their grant applications.’… The overall result of these state and federal actions was stark—nearly 40 percent growth in the number of charter schools and 200 percent growth in their enrollment.” (Schoolhouse Burning, pp. 36-37)

Black reminds us that an attack on public schools is an attack on democracy.

Categories Citizenship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Equity, Supporting public schools

Tennessee: Instead of Wasting Millions on Privatization, Invest in Community Schools

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2020 //
17

The leaders of Pastors for Tennessee Children wrote an excellent appeal to the state’s leaders, based on common sense, experience, and research. William Terry Ladd and Amy Frogge, a former member of the Metro Nashville school board, point out that the state has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on privatization schemes that have failed. It’s time now to invest in community schools that address the genuine needs of children, they write.

None of these options has made a sustainable difference. In fact, vouchers and charter schools have made it worse, serving to exacerbate existing inequities in school systems by draining desperately needed funding from the neighborhood schools that serve around 90% of Tennessee’s students...

The reason these “solutions” haven’t made any real impact is simple: None address the root of the problem, namely the challenges faced by increasing numbers of Tennessee children who come to school without necessary resources and support at home.

The impact of poverty on learning coupled with the chronic lack of adequate funding for public education in Tennessee is a recipe for disaster.  Many of Tennessee’s children, most often those in poverty, have experienced trauma and adverse childhood experiences- some due to the opioid crisis that has ravaged rural communities and others due to the challenges of growing up in low-income urban environments...

First, we must agree to invest in Tennessee’s schools and children. Statewide, Tennessee schools are underfunded by about a billion dollars per year, and our state ranks 45th in the nation in school funding.

So many of our educational inequities are caused by lack of proper school funding, and principals and teachers continuously struggle with unfunded state mandates, often providing classroom funds from their own poorly-paid pockets.

Second, widening the reach of Tennessee’s community school model is a proven solution that truly helps children, because it addresses the root cause of low student achievement: the issues that students face outside of school on a daily basis that impact their ability to focus in the classroom...

Community schools are open to all students within a community and have been shown to improve student learning, strengthen families, and create healthier communities. Because community schools provide a wide range of activities for students and their families, such as community gardens, arts programs, and sometimes even evening meals for families in need, they often become the hub of the community.

Will anyone in Tennessee’s state government listen or will they insist on pouring hundreds of millions of dollars more into failed strategies?


Categories Education Reform

James Hohmann: Post-Debate Fallout

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2020 //
51

James Hohmann of the Washington Post gathered interesting post-debate happenings.

Joe Biden left Cleveland on a chartered Amtrak train and made a six-city whistlestop trip through areas of Ohio and a Pennsylvania that Trump won in 2016.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to face negative responses and from Republican leaders, silence, due to his inability to denounce white supremacists, and his dog whistle that inspired the violent rightwing “Proud Boys,” which the Anti-Defamation League calls a hate group.

Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes make it one of the most critical battlegrounds, and Biden predicted that over the next month he will be able to win over more Trump 2016 voters in rural counties like the ones he visited on Wednesday. “Even if we just cut the margin, it makes a gigantic difference,” Biden said at the airport named for Murtha. “A lot of White working-class Democrats thought we forgot them and didn’t pay attention. I want them to know – I mean sincerely – that I’m going to be your president. I hear them. I listen to them. I get it. I get their sense of being left behind…”

Trump promised in 2016 to fight for “the forgotten man,” reviving a term that President Franklin Roosevelt had used during the New Deal. “But once he got into office, he forgot about them,” Biden said everywhere he went on Wednesday.

During his speech in Johnstown, Biden spoke directly to former Democrats who have perhaps grown disillusioned. He said that the debate showed that Trump is “a self-entitled, self-serving president who thinks everything is about him.”

“The truth is he never respected us,” Biden said. “Behind closed doors, it’s been reported he calls his own supporters disgusting. He looks down his nose at working families just trying to do the right thing. And it’s been confirmed by multiple sources that he thinks that those of you who sign up to put their lives on the line for our country — our veterans and service members — are just a bunch of ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’ It’s despicable. It’s not how I was raised, and I bet it’s not how any of you were raised either.”
Biden recounted how his mom used to always say to him, “Joey, nobody’s better than you, but everyone is your equal.”

“Donald Trump may think there ought to be a different set of rules for him and his rich buddies: rules that let him get out of his taxes, get out of his responsibilities and get out of the consequences for every one of his mistakes,” Biden said. “I don’t. I think it’s about time we start rewarding work in this country, not wealth. I think it’s time working families get a break and the super wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share. They’re still going to be doing just fine.”

The Democratic nominee framed the race as a choice between Park Avenue and Scranton, Pa., where he grew up. “Look, I’ve dealt with guys like Trump my whole life,” Biden told the crowd. “Guys who look down on you because they’ve got a lot of money. Guys who think they’re better than you. Guys who might let you park their car at the country club – but would never let you in. Guys who inherited everything they ever got in life – then squandered it.”

Biden said he will never raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year. “Maybe you didn’t believe me that we could do it without raising taxes on the middle class, but I bet that was before you found out Donald Trump paid just $750 in income tax,” Biden said. “If Donald Trump and his Park Avenue pals start paying their fair share, we’ll have more than enough to finally build an economy that works for everyone…”

Biden accused Trump of caring more about the strength of the Dow Jones Industrial Average than the numbers of jobless claims. “He doesn’t have a plan to help you get back on your feet or deliver relief to the people who most need the help,” Biden said in Johnstown. “He’s too busy planning his next big tax give away to the 100 richest folks in the country.”

During the debate, Trump said everyone tries to pay as little in federal tax as possible “unless they are stupid.” He even tried to blame Biden for creating the tax credits not closing the loopholes in the tax code that allowed him to reduce how much he paid. “I don’t want to pay tax,” Trump said. “Like every other private person, unless they’re stupid, they go through the laws, and that’s what it is.”

Hohmann points out that Trump got his deductions due to claims of massive losses, which undercuts his claim to be a business genius.

Meanwhile, extremists took Trump’s advice to “stand by” as encouragement for election day trouble.

The president’s “stand by” remark has already become a galvanizing movement for the reactionary right. “By Wednesday morning, the hashtag #WhiteSupremacy was trending on Twitter in the United States,” Derek Hawkins, Cleve Wootson Jr. and Craig Timberg report. “Trump’s comments were enshrined in memes, including one depicting Trump in one of the Proud Boys’ signature Fred Perry polo shirts.

Another meme showed Trump’s ‘stand by’ quote alongside an image of bearded men carrying American flags and appearing to prepare for a fight. … One prominent Proud Boys supporter on Parler said Trump appeared to give permission for attacks on protesters, adding that ‘this makes me so happy.’ … For many members, the president’s remark was the validation they craved, quickly turning into a fundraising and recruitment drive while, experts worried, legitimizing the group’s violent tactics.”

“Trump’s debate-stage call for volunteers to stand watch at voting locations has prompted an enthusiastic response from known neo-Nazis and right-wing activists, leading many state election and law enforcement officials to prepare for voter intimidation, arrests and even violence on Election Day,” Amy Gardner, Joshua Partlow, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Josh Dawsey report.

“The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee for months have promised to recruit as many as 50,000 poll watchers to monitor voting locations on Election Day. The campaign’s ‘Army for Trump’ website has contributed to that effort. … But more-extremist supporters appeared to be joining that effort Wednesday, raising the prospect for confrontation and intimidation at polling locations. ‘I got shivers,’ Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, wrote in a post Wednesday. ‘I still have shivers. He is telling the people to stand by. As in: Get ready for war.’ …The Oath Keepers, a militia group that formed more than a decade ago that comprises current and former law enforcement and military members, also has pledged to have ‘volunteer security teams’ at Trump rallies and out on Election Day. …

And Hohmann added this bit of good news:

Former RNC chairman and Montana governor Marc Racicot announced he will vote for Biden. In an interview with Yellowstone Public Radio, Racicot spoke of the need for a president to have patience, decency and openness to contrary opinion, “qualities Racicot suggested are absent in the Trump administration,” the Missoulian reports.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Bigotry, Elections, Racism, Trump

New Book: Trump Wanted Ivanka as His Running Mate in 2016

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2020 //
19

As Donald Trump’s top campaign aides began a discussion in June 2016 about who the presumptive Republican presidential nominee should select as his running mate, the candidate piped up with an idea.
“I think it should be Ivanka. What about Ivanka as my VP?”
Trump asked the assembled group, according to a new book by his former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates set to be published Oct. 13.


Trump added: “She’s bright, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, and the people would love her!”
In Gates’s telling, Trump’s suggestion of naming to the ticket his then-34-year-old daughter — a fashion and real estate executive who had never held elected office — was no passing fancy.


Instead, he brought up the idea repeatedly over the following weeks, trying to sell his campaign staff on the idea, insisting she would be embraced by the Republican base, Gates writes.


Trump was so taken with the concept of his eldest daughter as his vice president — and so cool to other options, including his eventual selection, then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence — that his team polled the idea twice, according to Gates.




It was Ivanka Trump who finally ended the conversation, Gates writes, going to her father to tell him it wasn’t a good idea. Trump eventually came around and selected Pence, after the governor won him over by delivering a “vicious and extended monologue” about Bill and Hillary Clinton at a get-to-know-you breakfast later that summer, according to Gates’s account.
“

This is not true and there was never any such poll,” Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said Monday.




In an interview last week, Gates said he is not certain Trump would actually have gone through with making his daughter his running mate.
But he said he included the anecdote in his new book, first reported by Bloomberg News, as a prime example of the kind of unconventional thinking he believes made Trump an appealing candidate.


While others might see the episode as a distasteful symbol of Trump’s nepotism, Gates said it shows Trump’s commitment to family, loyalty and ensuring those around him support his agenda and not their own — “the values and assets that Trump cared most about,” he said.


The account in Gates’s book — “Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost” — is one of several that he cites in praise of his former boss as he describes working on the campaign and ultimately becoming ensnared in the special counsel investigation that consumed much of Trump’s presidency.

Unlike a number of other memoirs by former Trump staffers, Gates’s book serves not as a tell-all, but rather a defense of the president and how he and others helped elect him.
In an interview, Gates said he believes Trump has been a good president — “the most decisive president we’ve had probably since Eisenhower” — and says he supports his reelection.
After working on the 2016 campaign and helping organize the inauguration, Gates pleaded guilty in February 2018 to conspiracy against the United States and lying to federal investigators in relation to lobbying work he and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort had done in Ukraine before joining Trump’s team.


Categories Elections, Trump

Frank G. Splitt: Existential Threats to American Democracy

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2020 //
24

Frank G. Splitt is author of the book An Odyssey of Reform Initiatives: 1986-2015 and its sequel Reflections: 2016-2019. He is a former McCormick Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and a Vice President Emeritus of Nortel Networks. He is the recipient of The Drake Group’s 2006 Robert Maynard Hutchin’s Award and an International Society for Optics and Photonics Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. His books and other writings can be accessed at http://www.futurevectors.com
FutureVectors Inc. Mount Prospect, IL

Trumpism and Its Factions

Existential Threats to America’s Democracy

The experience is shattering. How much stupidity! What delusion among such cultured and
actually clever people! Just unconditional belief in the Führer, delight that ‘finally our weapons speak’.
——Erich Ebermayer, September 3, 1939 (1)

ABSTRACT — This commentary deals with factions that are now dividing America just as was feared by our founding fathers. Here the focus is on Trumpism and its related factions, composed of a number of elements foremost of which is the Trump loyalist faction. It argues that it is the combination of President Trump’s polarizing rhetoric and the Trumpist faction that divides America, a serious threat to America’s democracy. It concludes by saying moderates from both political parties must work to find common ground to reunite America. A divided America cannot stand.

BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION – In a previous paper, I discussed factional forces that could lead to a political crackup in America. (2) As if on cue, a related column (3) by Ms. Ayaan Hersi Ali focused on two ideological factions with a view towards illuminating what these quite different factions have in common.

The factions considered by Ali in her analysis were rooted in the ideologies of Islamism and Wokeism, a term she coined to include things like cancel culture, social justice, critical race theory, and intersectionality that were considered in the previous paper.

IDEOLOGICAL FACTIONS – Ali found that both ideologies “aim to tear down the existing system and replace it with utopias that always turn out to be hellish anarchies” and that both “are collectivist: Group identity trumps the individual. Both tolerate—and often glorify—violence carried out by zealots.” She also found that members of these factions share the following salient attributes:

1) Relentless pursuit of ideological purity

2) Certainty in the belief of the absolute rightfulness of their cause

In view of the above, it was of interest to inquire as to the existence of what might be called the opposite of Wokeism—an overarching set of right-wing ideological factions that matches these attributes. There is no need to look any further than Trumpism for the answer.

TRUMPISM – For the record, Trumpism, as defined in Wikipedia, “is a political ideology and style of government which was specifically developed by President Donald Trump. It resembles the philosophy of recent right-wing conservative – neonationalist or national-populist movements in western democracies.”(4)

However, a more reality-based definition was given by Ron Christie, a Republican analyst, who worked in the White House of President George W. Bush. Christie said Trumpism is “what the president believes on any particular moment on any particular day about any particular subject.”(5) By virtue of this definition, Trumpism will necessarily include a wide variety of divisive elemental factions—often with overlapping grievances and objectives. Taken together, these elemental factions form the so-called Trump base of mostly working-class white voters.

THE TRUMP LOYALISTS – Foremost among these elemental factions are the Trump-loyalists. Members of this faction have cult-like, unconditional belief in Trump, their leader. For insight to the phenomenon of unconditional belief, see the epigraph and Note 1. For example, this would include belief in his only partially true claim that “Unlike so many who came before me, I keep my promises.”(6)

Trump loyalists are chagrined by the fact that President Trump has likely had more invective and hatred strewn on him by the FBI, the Justice Department, the media, the Democrats, the never-Trump Republicans, trusted aides, federal district-court judges and ex-military brass than any president in modern history. His loyal followers cannot accept the countering fact that the president’s well publicized erratic, wrathful, and shameful personal behavior, before and after his election, has consequences such as evoking “the invective and hatred strewn upon him.” These Trump loyalists are precisely the people he must have had in mind when he claimed that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters.”

Trump’s polarizing, anything-goes style of leadership, no matter how bizarre or unbecoming of the presidency, is accepted by his loyal followers as is his deviation from presidential norms and traditions. So too is lying, denying, and blaming others to avoid taking responsibility for his action or inaction. This can only happen if otherwise intelligent people willfully suspend any moral judgement and succumb to their self-interests. Some loyalists rationalize this behavior by focusing on what they call substance rather than style and character—separating his policies that are to their liking from his personality traits that they may detest as bad and deplorable.

Mental separation leaves Trump loyalists free to vote against the opposition that their leader paints as radical-left, anti-police, socialist baby-killers. Some loyalists claim that they are not really voting for Trump but rather for other things. In an email message I received from a Trump supporter titled “I’m not voting for Trump,” these other things were: the Second Amendment, the next Supreme Court Justice, secure borders, every unborn soul, the Electoral College, the police, law and order, freedom of speech and religion, the American flag, the American Dream, good and against evil, the future of my country.

THE TRUMPIST FACTION – In light of the above, members of the Trump-loyalist faction can be found in one or more of other elemental Trumpist factions in the following representative listing:

*Law-and-order – Members believe America is in dire peril—plagued by lawlessness, poverty, and violence, constantly under threat, and at great risk of being driven into Socialism by the radical left.

*Anti-Immigration – Members advocate for Trump’s border wall with some even opposing legal immigration.

*Anti-Public School – Members are pro-choice, advocate for charter schools, and bash teachers unions.

*Anti-globalism – Members believe America is suffering from economic angst. Americanism, not globalism, is their credo.

*Pro-gun – Members fiercely defend 2nd Amendment rights.

Anti-abortion – Members are primarily composed of Evangelical Christians and far-right, anti-Pope Francis Catholics who claim godless Dems will go to hell. (7)

*Climate-denier – Members reject the proposition that climate change is occurring and is a global threat caused by human activity. They believe it’s a hoax.

*Racist – Members reject the idea that systemic racism exists in America. They include open and closeted white supremacists.

*Monetary – Members believe Trump will do everything he can to increase their wealth including the elimination of as many as possible of existing rules and regulations.

*Pro-Israel – Members are single-issue Trump voters.

*Judicial – Members advocate for conservative judges.

*Health-care – Members aim to repeal, defund, or weaken the Affordable Care Act.

*Hoax & Conspirator – Members believe something is a hoax, fake news, and/or a conspiracy if Trump says it is, no matter how many times he has been proven wrong.

*Tax – Members believe they and/or their businesses are over taxed.

There is only one thing in the lives of men, nations and countries that is without price. That thing is honor.—Józef Beck, Polish foreign minister, 1939

A DEVELOPING THREAT – Noteworthy is the fact that there are no things in the above listing that are related to national honor. Driven by President Trump and Trumpist factions, the Republican Party appears to be in the process of transforming itself into an authoritarian institution, an existential threat to America’s democracy. This transformative process is aided and abetted by Trump’s powerful allies: Attorney General William Barr in the U.S. Department of Justice and Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the U.S. Senate.

Barr, a far-right Catholic and proponent of the theory of the unitary executive, not only believes the president has the power to control the entire executive branch of the U.S. government, but is also using the Department of Justice to support his 2020 Reelection Campaign’s “law-and-order” strategic initiative. McConnell, on the other hand was a harsh critic of Trump prior to his 2016 election. After the election, Trump promptly appointed McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as U.S. Secretary of Transportation. It should come as no surprise that McConnell is now an all-in Trump loyalist who provides unwavering support for the president’s agenda, particularly with regard to appointments to the federal judiciary.

Apparently, the Trump Republican Party seeks not to preserve American democracy but to undermine it, if not destroy it, by such tactics as spreading disinformation, gerrymandering congressional districts, and hindering the voting process by crippling the operation of the U.S. Postal Service.

OBSERVATIONS – The president’s polarizing political rhetoric draws both Wokeist and Trumpist extremists stimulating protests and creating disturbing headlines for the media. Wokeist motivations and grievances are ideological, not merely economic. Therefore, they won’t be satisfied with more entitlements. The Trumpist faction will only be satisfied with gaining and maintaining more power via the president’s reelection.
President Trump, a faithful student of Roy Cohn, his disgraced attorney and teacher, will likely continue to employ Cohn’s modus operandi of lying, denying, and blaming that has proven to be so successful during his first term.

He has recently praised Marjorie Taylor Green, the Republican candidate nominated for Georgia’s 14th congressional district and promoter of QAnon, a right-wing domestic terror group. Trump has also named politically conservative senators and judges as potential appointees to the Supreme Court and will certainly amplify his anti-abortion rhetoric so as to keep evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics in his fold.
Trump’s enthusiastic loyalist supporters will likely continue to ignore the following facts: the U.S. is currently the world leader in COVID-19 disease deaths that can be attributed to the administration’s bungled response—the president’s lack of leadership and politicalized obsessive focus on his reelection; a large number of true American patriots resigned or were fired; promised manufacturing jobs in the Midwest decreased rather than increased; tax cuts benefited the wealthy and corporations; climate change is not a hoax, nevertheless the administration continues to roll back more than 90 EPA rules and regulations to favor industry at the expense of human health and the environment; and America is more deeply polarized than it was before the 2016 presidential election.

It would seem that it matters not a whit to Trump’s loyal supporters that America has not only lost its
position as the world leader, but has also lost its national honor. To explore what America has already 89
lost, and what it still may lose, see The American Crisis (8) and Creating Our Common Future. (9)

CONCLUDING REMARKS – Reflection on all of above, leads to the following question: Has Trumpism made America great again or has it made it less so? The question should be answered by each and every voting American come November 3, 2020. Thus, the American electorate finds itself at a defining, if not perilous, moment in our nation’s history.

Like Ayaan Hersi Ali, I cling to the hope that most Americans are still willing as a nation to fight and, if necessary, to die to preserve our freedoms, our rights, our customs, and our history as imperfect as it happens to be.

Hope for a viable future of America’s democracy will depend on the outcome of the 2020 election that will, in turn, rely on a well-informed electorate that can help place experienced as well as competent and trustworthy men and women at all levels of government no matter their political affiliation.

Trumpism and its related factions have deepened the divide in America. Moderates from both political parties must work to find common ground to reunite America. A divided America cannot stand.

NOTES

1. Ebermayer, a German liberal intellectual, made these remarks after an encounter with aristocratic neighbors who, as Hitler-loyalists, expressed boundless uncritical faith in their leader. The encounter was on the day Britain and France went to war with Germany after it invaded Poland. See pages 368-69 of Frederick Taylor’s book 1939: A People’s History of the Coming of the Second World War (Norton, 2020).
2. Splitt, Frank G., “Factions Are Dividing America: A Divided America Cannot Stand,” FutureVectors, August 17, 2020, http://www.futurevectors.com/Odyssey/Splitt%20-%20Factions.pdf
This essay was based on a previous commentary “A Divided America Cannot Stand” that was published by the Daily Herald on August 24, 2020 with the headline “The lessons of the past need remembering today,” and posted online at https://www.dailyherald.com/amp-article/20200824/discuss/200829798/
3 Ali, Ayaan Hersi, “What Islamists and ‘Wokeists’ Have in Common,” The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, September 11, 2020, page A17.
4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpism
5. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42738881
6. Kristof, Nicholas, “‘I Keep My Promises,’ Trump Said, Let’s Check,” The New York Times, Sept.6, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/05/opinion/sunday/trump-promises-check.html
7. Smietana, Bob, “Video from priest says Catholics who vote for Democrats will go to hell. One bishop approves this message,” Religious News Service, Sept.6, 2020, https://religionnews.com/2020/09/06/catholic-vote-democrats-go-to-hell-priest-james-altman-video- warns-bishop-stirckland/
8. Goldberg, Jeffrey, Applebaum, Anne, et al, The American Crisis, Simon & Schuster, 2020. 9. Splitt, Frank G., Creating Our Common Future, THE BENT of Tau Beta Pi, Spring 1993,
http://www.futurevectors.com/Odyssey/Splitt%20-%20Common%20Future.pdf

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, Trump

Jersey Jazzman: Trump Gets Debate Help from Chris Christie

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2020 //
17

Trump, we all know, has an aggressive personality and explodes with invective at any setback or slight. So, who helped prepare him for his disastrous debate performance? Chris Christie, who left office in New Jersey as the nation’s least popular Governor. Christie was short-tempered, angry, and domineering. Like Trump. He had hoped that Trump would give him a big job, but Jared Kushner nixed that because prosecutor Christie put his father Charles Kilushner in prison.

Jersey Jazzman watched Christie’s tenure in office with horror. He writes here about Christie and Trump and about Trump as a negative role model:

As an educator, I want to make sure we acknowledge that the massive damage Trump has done to our country includes his corrupting influence on American children. Every day, teachers go into our schools and try to instill important values in our students: respect, honesty, integrity, civility, modesty, empathy. Donald Trump’s whole life, however, has been a wholesale rejection of every personal characteristic a citizen in a democracy should strive to embody.

Donald Trump can’t even lift himself to the level of behavior expected in an elementary school. His preening, whining, blustering foolishness would never be tolerated in a second grader. His inability to accept responsibility for his actions would earn him a conference in the principal’s office with his parents. His casual disregard for the truth would result in a string of Ns (“Needs Improvement”) on his report card.

We’ve had many bad presidents in my lifetime; not one, however, has been so craven, so boorish, so full of contempt for others that they didn’t have some positive attribute that a teacher could point to. But not this man — there isn’t a single quality in the leader of our nation that an American student should emulate.

The fact that a man of such low character holds high office makes it that much more difficult for teachers to convince their students that the hard work of making yourself into a better person is worth the effort. Kids need role models; foremost among those role models should be the president. Yet every time he opens his mouth, he demonstrates to our children how not to behave.

Second: for eight long, exhausting years, I watched as Chris Christie drove my beloved state into the ground. He was nearly as repulsive as Trump: he mocked women, denigrated teachers, pushed policies that were demonstrably harmful, indulged himself while others suffered, and just generally acted like a horse’s ass.

Christie was the most unpopular governor in American when he finally left office. Amazingly, someone thought that was the perfect guy to put on TV. And, true to form, last night he came to Donald Trump’s defense

As an educator, I want to make sure we acknowledge that the massive damage Trump has done to our country includes his corrupting influence on American children. Every day, teachers go into our schools and try to instill important values in our students: respect, honesty, integrity, civility, modesty, empathy. Donald Trump’s whole life, however, has been a wholesale rejection of every personal characteristic a citizen in a democracy should strive to embody.

Donald Trump can’t even lift himself to the level of behavior expected in an elementary school. His preening, whining, blustering foolishness would never be tolerated in a second grader. His inability to accept responsibility for his actions would earn him a conference in the principal’s office with his parents. His casual disregard for the truth would result in a string of Ns (“Needs Improvement”) on his report card.

We’ve had many bad presidents in my lifetime; not one, however, has been so craven, so boorish, so full of contempt for others that they didn’t have some positive attribute that a teacher could point to. But not this man — there isn’t a single quality in the leader of our nation that an American student should emulate.

The fact that a man of such low character holds high office makes it that much more difficult for teachers to convince their students that the hard work of making yourself into a better person is worth the effort. Kids need role models; foremost among those role models should be the president. Yet every time he opens his mouth, he demonstrates to our children how not to behave.

Second: for eight long, exhausting years, I watched as Chris Christie drove my beloved state into the ground. He was nearly as repulsive as Trump: he mocked women, denigrated teachers, pushed policies that were demonstrably harmful, indulged himself while others suffered, and just generally acted like a horse’s ass.

Christie was the most unpopular governor in American when he finally left office. Amazingly, someone thought that was the perfect guy to put on TV. And, true to form, last night he came to Donald Trump’s defense.

Categories New Jersey, Trump

An Appeal to Romney to Reconsider

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2020 //
11

Robert Kagan, a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, calls on Mitt Romney to reconsider his decision to vote on Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Two Republican senators—Connibs and Murkowski—have said that they would not do so. One more Republican vote is needed for a total of four. Kagan explains that Trump plans to use the Supreme Court to overturn the election. Democracy hangs in the balance.

Kagan writes:

In announcing on Tuesday he would support voting for a new Supreme Court justice during an election year, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said he didn’t want “to look at all the hypotheticals that might occur.” But here’s the hypothetical Romney needs to think about: If the United States slides from democracy to authoritarianism next year, history will record that his vote, along with those of other Republicans, made it possible.

President Trump and his allies have now made it clear how they intend to hold on to power if Trump loses the election, as seems likely. Republicans will challenge the vote tabulation in several key states, charging fraud, miscounts, foreign influence and every other conceivable form of electoral malfeasance. The charges will be designed to create a contested election, taking the choice out of voters’ hands.

In this scenario, the ultimate decision will fall to the Supreme Court, as it did in the 2000 election. At eight justices, with five Republican and three Democratic appointees, the court might back Trump, but he can’t be certain. Neither he nor we can know the mind of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Perhaps Roberts would not want the court to go down in history as putting the final nail in the coffin of American democracy by upholding the Republicans’ specious challenges. The court might then split, 4 to 4, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling.

But if the Republicans can ram through their appointee before the election, a court with a 6-to-3 composition is all but certain to rule in Trump’s favor. Even if Roberts chose to side with American democracy, the vote would still be 5 to 4 for Trump.

Trump has been explicit that this is exactly what he is thinking. The “scam that the Democrats are pulling,” he said Wednesday, not specifying what the “scam” is, “will be before the United States Supreme Court.” And “I think having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation.” Why? Because if the decision is “more political than it should be, I think it’s very important to have a ninth judge.”

This is why congressional Republicans, unlike the president, have had no difficulty declaring that there will be a peaceful transfer of power, while insisting on pushing their nominee for the court through before the election: There will be no transfer of power, peaceful or otherwise, because the new court will certify the president’s power grab.

And let’s not kid ourselves about what will happen to the country if Trump pulls this off. It will not just be another four years of head-shaking at the president’s tweets. Trump will have taken us to a new place, one we know only from watching the course of authoritarian regimes elsewhere. He will control not only the power ministries — the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the intelligence services — as he does now, and, probably, the Senate, which will continue to back his every move. But he will also have eliminated the Supreme Court as a check against his actions. There will be nothing left to stand in his way.

What should we expect then? We have already seen abuses of power by the federal government: against protesters in the streets and against the president’s political opponents. Think about what the world will look like after mass protests against Trump’s court-blessed seizure of power.

The attorney general and other senior government officials already rail against the “radical left” and the “anarchists.” It is a short step to labeling protesters and other political opponents as “terrorists” and prosecuting them under laws meant for terrorists, using methods meant to stop terrorism. We will see government employees hounded out of careers or brought up on charges for “deep state” plots against the president, and on an ever-wider scale. We will see newspaper and other media owners increasingly harassed by federal agencies, or forced to self-censor.

What this means for Romney is that the decision that may well determine America’s fate is not somewhere down the road in a land of hypotheticals. It is before him, right now. No speeches in the coming authoritarian era, no matter how courageous, will make up for the failure to act when something could still be done. Romney’s vote alone cannot stop Trump, of course, but his announcement this week shut down all talk of getting more Republicans to join Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in opposition to a pre-election confirmation. If Romney changes his mind, other senators, such as Ben Sasse (Neb.), might also discover some as-yet-hidden reservoir of courage.

We have learned, perhaps too late, that America’s system of government is not as strong as we once believed. It requires leaders not only to show courage, which is rare enough, but also to show courage at critical moments — and to be wise enough to know when those moments have arrived.

Sen. Romney’s moment has arrived, whether he chooses to see it or not. History will record where he stood when American democracy hung in the balance.

Categories Education Reform

Tennessee: Why the Courts Rejected Vouchers

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2020 //
4

This is an excellent and comprehensive explanation of why Governor Bill Lee’s voucher plan has been rejected by two levels of the state judiciary. Lee is closely tied to Betsy DeVos, and he really wants vouchers but they are stalled. The legislature decided to put them only in Memphis and Nashville, against the will of the local governments. It seems there are some constitutional principles that matter more than the Governor’s wishes.

“We hold that the ESA Act is local in effect and applicable to Davidson and Shelby counties in their governmental capacity,” the court wrote in its opinion.

As a result, the court found that the Legislature violated the Constitution by not allowing required referendums or votes of the county commissions when it approved the ESA program in 2019.

The court also found Metro Nashville and Shelby County had standing to file the lawsuit because county commissions are charged with funding local school systems.

The Legislature approved $25 million in this year’s budget for the program even though the governor decided to put it on hold after the Chancery Court found ESAs unconstitutional.

State Rep. Antonio Parkinson, a Memphis Democrat, said the Legislature needs to refund taxpayers for the voucher program and the Achievement School District, which has cost about $1 billion to run mostly charter schools in Memphis.

The state is likely to take the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court, but Parkinson said it is time to stop “wasting” money on the program.

The Attorney General’s Office said it is reviewing the ruling and consulting with the governor on its next steps.

“I think they should put this one to rest, go ahead and bury it and then bury the ASD right beside it and put up on the headstone: ‘We tried,’” Parkinson said.

The attorney for Nashville said the program not only violated home rule but would cost the district $111 million by year five.

Remember when Republicans supported local control?

Categories Tennessee, Vouchers
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