L.A. Times Continues Hammering Trump-- They Used The "L" Word-- But Still Not The "F" Word

Monday the L.A. Times just flat-out admitted the president is a liar. Today, when they discussed his authoritarianism, they still could;'t bring themselves to say "fascist." I'm sure that will come sooner or later.

You've probably seen the release on the new Quinnipiac Poll from yesterday. It's so encouraging that every day more and more people are seeing through Trump's lies and rejecting his Regime. Even white voters (48-43%) and male voters (51-39%) have now turned on him. His approval is now 35%, down from 37% on March 22. Disapproval is up from 56% to 57%. We have a long way to go to get to the 75% disapproval that will be needed for the congressional Republicans to work up the fortitude to put country first and impeach him. Most Americans disapprove with the way he's handling every part of his job:

• Disapprove 61-29% of the way he is handling the environment
• Disapprove 48-41% of the way he is handling the economy
• Disapprove 58-33% of the way he is handling foreign policy
• Disapprove 49-42% of the way he is handling terrorism
• Disapprove 57-39% of the way he is handling immigration issues.

Worse yet, most Americans are revolted by his personal traits. Most voters see him in a negative light. That's going to keep going down as they see more and more of him and refuse to see him as "entertaining" in any way.

• 61-34%-- he is not honest;
• 55-40%-- he does not have good leadership skills;
• 57-39%-- he does not care about average Americans;
• 66-29%-- he is not level-headed;
• 64-33%-- he is a strong person;
• 60-35%-- he is intelligent;
• 61-34%-- he does not share their values.

Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll noted that "As President Trump's approval tanks, Congress, especially Republicans, follow right behind him. Speaker Paul Ryan is less popular than Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, a long-time target of the Right. Over on the Senate side, it's no party either. Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer both have terrible numbers." McConnell has a negative 14-47% favorability rating, compared to Schumer's negative 25-36%. Looks like the whole country is catching up with DWT! Overall, voters disapprove 70-21%t of the job Republicans in Congress are doing, compared to a 64-29% disapproval March 22. Compared to the 70% disapproval of congressional Republicans, the Democrats' 57% looks almost decent. Ryan has a negative 28-52% favorability rating, compared to Pelosi's negative 30-47%. And that brings us right to the 3rd installment of the multi-day L.A. Times mega-editorial on Trump, this one, Trump's Authoritarian Vision. Remember what we just saw in the polling above-- among all the negativity, two-thirds of voters say they still see Trump as "a strong person," unable to recognize his bluster, bullying and projection as the marks of a weakling. His dumb-ass campaign bullshit-- "Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it"-- is both dangerous and authoritarian.



"Trump," the Times' editors granted, "has no experience in politics; he’s never previously run for office or held a government position. So perhaps he was unaware that one of the hallmarks of the American system of government is that the president’s power to 'fix' things unilaterally is constrained by an array of strong institutions-- including the courts, the media, the permanent federal bureaucracy and Congress. Combined, they provide an essential defense against an imperial presidency. Yet in his first weeks at the White House, President Trump has already sought to undermine many of those institutions. Those that have displayed the temerity to throw some hurdle in the way of a Trump objective have quickly felt the heat."

In a way, Trump represents a culmination of trends that have been years in the making.

Conservative talk radio hosts have long blasted federal judges as “activists” and regulators as meddlers in the economy, while advancing the myth of rampant election fraud. And gridlock in Washington has led previous presidents to try new ways to circumvent the checks on their power-- witness President George W. Bush’s use of signing statements to invalidate parts of bills Congress passed, and President Obama’s aggressive use of executive orders when lawmakers balked at his proposals.

What’s uniquely threatening about Trump’s approach, though, is how many fronts he’s opened in this struggle for power and the vehemence with which he seeks to undermine the institutions that don’t go along.

It’s one thing to complain about a judicial decision or to argue for less regulation, but to the extent that Trump weakens public trust in essential institutions like the courts and the media, he undermines faith in democracy and in the system and processes that make it work.

Trump betrays no sense for the president’s place among the myriad of institutions in the continuum of governance. He seems willing to violate long-established political norms without a second thought, and he cavalierly rejects the civility and deference that allow the system to run smoothly. He sees himself as not merely a force for change, but as a wrecking ball.

Will Congress act as a check on Trump’s worst impulses as he moves forward? One test is the House and Senate intelligence committees’ investigation into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election; lawmakers need to muster the courage to follow the trail wherever it leads. Can the courts stand up to Trump? Already, several federal judges have issued rulings against the president’s travel ban. And although Trump has railed against the decisions, he has obeyed them.

None of these institutions are eager to cede authority to the White House and they won’t do so without a fight. It would be unrealistic to suggest that America’s most basic democratic institutions are in imminent jeopardy.

But we should not view them as invulnerable either. Remember that Trump’s verbal assaults are directed at the public, and are designed to chip away at people’s confidence in these institutions and deprive them of their validity. When a dispute arises, whose actions are you going to consider legitimate? Whom are you going to trust? That’s why the public has to be wary of Trump’s attacks on the courts, the “deep state,” the “swamp.” We can’t afford to be talked into losing our faith in the forces that protect us from an imperial presidency.

People Have Questions About Señor Trumpanzee-- What's Wrong With This Guy And Why Is He Failing Already?

We were moved to note the excellent editorial on the Trump train wreck by the L.A. Times Sunday. The followed up on it yesterday with their take on why Trump lies. "Our civilization," they began, "is premised on the conviction that such a thing as truth exists, that it is knowable, that it is verifiable, that it exists independently of authority or popularity and that at some point-- and preferably sooner rather than later-- it will prevail... The insult that Donald Trump brings to the equation is an apparent disregard for fact so profound as to suggest that he may not see much practical distinction between lies, if he believes they serve him, and the truth."

In the most recent PPP survey, they asked voters if they think Trump is truthful. It's a shame they have no way of lining up responses to IQs, but only 39% of Americans think Trump is honest. It's virtually impossible to have a 3-digit IQ and hold that view. But... suckers are born everyday.

The Times' editors made no bones of using the "L" word describe the president and compared his bullshit to "the self-serving blathering of a 6-year-old... His approach succeeds because of his preternaturally deft grasp of his audience. Though he is neither terribly articulate nor a seasoned politician, he has a remarkable instinct for discerning which conspiracy theories in which quasi-news source, or which of his own inner musings, will turn into ratings gold. He targets the darkness, anger and insecurity that hide in each of us and harnesses them for his own purposes. If one of his lies doesn’t work-- well, then he lies about that."

[H]e is not merely amusing. He is dangerous. His choice of falsehoods and his method of spewing them-- often in tweets, as if he spent his days and nights glued to his bedside radio and was periodically set off by some drivel uttered by a talk show host who repeated something he’d read on some fringe blog-- are a clue to Trump’s thought processes and perhaps his lack of agency. He gives every indication that he is as much the gullible tool of liars as he is the liar in chief.

He has made himself the stooge, the mark, for every crazy blogger, political quack, racial theorist, foreign leader or nutcase peddling a story that he might repackage to his benefit as a tweet, an appointment, an executive order or a policy. He is a stranger to the concept of verification, the insistence on evidence and the standards of proof that apply in a courtroom or a medical lab-- and that ought to prevail in the White House.

There have always been those who accept the intellectually bankrupt notion that people are entitled to invent their own facts-- consider the “9/11 was an inside job” trope-- but Trump’s ascent marks the first time that the culture of alternative reality has made its home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

If Americans are unsure which Trump they have-- the Machiavellian negotiator who lies to manipulate simpler minds, or one of those simpler minds himself-- does it really matter? In either case he puts the nation in danger by undermining the role of truth in public discourse and policymaking, as well as the notion of truth being verifiable and mutually intelligible.

In the months ahead, Trump will bring his embrace of alternative facts on the nation’s behalf into talks with China, North Korea or any number of powers with interests counter to ours and that constitute an existential threat. At home, Trump now becomes the embodiment of the populist notion (with roots planted at least as deeply in the Left as the Right) that verifiable truth is merely a concept invented by fusty intellectuals, and that popular leaders can provide some equally valid substitute. We’ve seen people like that before, and we have a name for them: demagogues.

Our civilization is defined in part by the disciplines-- science, law, journalism-- that have developed systematic methods to arrive at the truth. Citizenship brings with it the obligation to engage in a similar process. Good citizens test assumptions, question leaders, argue details, research claims.

Investigate. Read. Write. Listen. Speak. Think. Be wary of those who disparage the investigators, the readers, the writers, the listeners, the speakers and the thinkers. Be suspicious of those who confuse reality with reality TV, and those who repeat falsehoods while insisting, against all evidence, that they are true. To defend freedom, demand fact.

But the L.A. Times isn't the only one with questions. Over at the Washington Post Greg Sargent was asking-- and trying to answer-- a question many political observers have been grappling with: Why is Trump flailing? He also focused right in on the compulsive lying. Trump's legislative and policy agenda, Sargent, pointed out, is dead in the water because lies is what it's based on. He acknowledges that "Trump’s penchant for disruption and chaos actually works against him" as does his "failure to forge relationships on Capitol Hill" but Sargent's premise is that there's an "overarching reason for Trump’s travails: As his campaign promises are getting translated into concrete policies, Americans are recoiling from the results. What’s more, this process is unmasking the disconcerting levels of dishonesty, bad faith, and lack of concern for detail and procedure that are rotting away at the core of his policies, all of which is plainly working against him."

Sargent, like so many people, pin Trump's already failed presidency on his unpopular agenda-- like a "health care" bill meant to financially devastate millions of families while delivering hefty tax cut to multimillionaires and billionaires and that only 17% of the public supported.

Trump alone is not to blame for this. Trump didn’t care about the details-- he only wanted a “win”-- and thus embraced Paul Ryan’s plan. It is Ryanism, which includes repeal-and-replace as part of the broader goal of shredding the safety net, that helped create this disaster. Ryan was supposed to craft a policy that would prove ideologically satisfactory to congressional Republicans and could also be sold through shrewd rhetorical subterfuge as a fulfillment of Trump’s promise of better health care for everybody at lower costs. The CBO blew all that up by unmasking its truly regressive nature and, in the process, the big policy lie at the core of Trump’s repeal-and-replace promise. The details ended up mattering.

...Why is Trump tanking? The bottom line is that the ongoing translation of Trump’s agenda into policy specifics is showing that major elements of it are unpopular, or unworkable because they are premised on lies, or both.

The Conservative L.A. Times Hits The Bullseye With Today's Trump Editorial

L.A. County is not a Republican-free zone, even though areas of L.A. are. Hillary won the county 1,893,770 (71.4%) to just 620,285 (23.4%) for Trump. Steve Knight (CA-25) is the only Republican member of Congress with a substantial piece of L.A. County in his district-- and he's only still in Congress because of massive and repeated DCCC incompetence. Kevin McCarthy (CA-23) and Ed Royce (CA-39) each has a small slice of L.A. in their districts too. But there are congressional districts in L.A. where the Republicans have ceased even running candidates-- CA-29 (Tony Cardenas), CA-32 (Grace Napolitano), CA-34 (Becerra's open seat), CA-37 (Karen Bass), CA-40 (Lucile Roybal-Allard), and CA-44 (Nanette Barragan)-- and in half a dozen L.A. districts Trump took less than 20% of the vote-- less than 10% in Karen Bass' district.

That's the population base the L.A. Times is selling newspapers to. But the L.A. Times is nowhere near as left-leaning as are the people who live in Los Angeles. The paper is published by Tronc (formerly Tribune Publishing of Chicago, a largely conservative outfit with some pretty right-wing papers in its portfolio, including the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and 3 in Orange County). It's neoliberal/neoconservative editorial stance has been hostile to progressive politics since before columnist Bob Scheer was fired over a decade ago. Today, though, the editorial, Our Dishonest President, is the most talked about piece in the paper in years. Their indictment of Trump was meant to be sobering and chilling. For anyone who hasn't followed Trump as closely as we do, it is both. Right from the outset, no words are minced: "It was," they began, "no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a 'catastrophe.' Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. Like millions of other Americans, we clung to a slim hope that the new president would turn out to be all noise and bluster, or that the people around him in the White House would act as a check on his worst instincts, or that he would be sobered and transformed by the awesome responsibilities of office." As we all know, quite the opposite is how this mess has been playing out.

Instead, seventy-some days in-- and with about 1,400 to go before his term is completed-- it is increasingly clear that those hopes were misplaced.

In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.

His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government’s regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.

These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country’s moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.

What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation-- these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Although his policies are, for the most part, variations on classic Republican positions (many of which would have been undertaken by a President Ted Cruz or a President Marco Rubio), they become far more dangerous in the hands of this imprudent and erratic man. Many Republicans, for instance, support tighter border security and a tougher response to illegal immigration, but Trump’s cockamamie border wall, his impracticable campaign promise to deport all 11 million people living in the country illegally and his blithe disregard for the effect of such proposals on the U.S. relationship with Mexico turn a very bad policy into an appalling one.

In the days ahead, The Times editorial board will look more closely at the new president, with a special attention to three troubling traits:

1- Trump’s shocking lack of respect for those fundamental rules and institutions on which our government is based. Since Jan. 20, he has repeatedly disparaged and challenged those entities that have threatened his agenda, stoking public distrust of essential institutions in a way that undermines faith in American democracy. He has questioned the qualifications of judges and the integrity of their decisions, rather than acknowledging that even the president must submit to the rule of law. He has clashed with his own intelligence agencies, demeaned government workers and questioned the credibility of the electoral system and the Federal Reserve. He has lashed out at journalists, declaring them “enemies of the people,” rather than defending the importance of a critical, independent free press. His contempt for the rule of law and the norms of government are palpable.

2- His utter lack of regard for truth. Whether it is the easily disprovable boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd or his unsubstantiated assertion that Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower, the new president regularly muddies the waters of fact and fiction. It’s difficult to know whether he actually can’t distinguish the real from the unreal-- or whether he intentionally conflates the two to befuddle voters, deflect criticism and undermine the very idea of objective truth. Whatever the explanation, he is encouraging Americans to reject facts, to disrespect science, documents, nonpartisanship and the mainstream media-- and instead to simply take positions on the basis of ideology and preconceived notions. This is a recipe for a divided country in which differences grow deeper and rational compromise becomes impossible.

3- His scary willingness to repeat alt-right conspiracy theories, racist memes and crackpot, out-of-the-mainstream ideas. Again, it is not clear whether he believes them or merely uses them. But to cling to disproven “alternative” facts; to retweet racists; to make unverifiable or false statements about rigged elections and fraudulent voters; to buy into discredited conspiracy theories first floated on fringe websites and in supermarket tabloids-- these are all of a piece with the Barack Obama birther claptrap that Trump was peddling years ago and which brought him to political prominence. It is deeply alarming that a president would lend the credibility of his office to ideas that have been rightly rejected by politicians from both major political parties.

Where will this end? Will Trump moderate his crazier campaign positions as time passes? Or will he provoke confrontation with Iran, North Korea or China, or disobey a judge’s order or order a soldier to violate the Constitution? Or, alternately, will the system itself-- the Constitution, the courts, the permanent bureaucracy, the Congress, the Democrats, the marchers in the streets-- protect us from him as he alienates more and more allies at home and abroad, steps on his own message and creates chaos at the expense of his ability to accomplish his goals? Already, Trump’s job approval rating has been hovering in the mid-30s, according to Gallup, a shockingly low level of support for a new president. And that was before his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, offered to cooperate last week with congressional investigators looking into the connection between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

On Inauguration Day, we wrote on this page that it was not yet time to declare a state of “wholesale panic” or to call for blanket “non-cooperation” with the Trump administration. Despite plenty of dispiriting signals, that is still our view. The role of the rational opposition is to stand up for the rule of law, the electoral process, the peaceful transfer of power and the role of institutions; we should not underestimate the resiliency of a system in which laws are greater than individuals and voters are as powerful as presidents. This nation survived Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon. It survived slavery. It survived devastating wars. Most likely, it will survive again.

But if it is to do so, those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard. Protesters must raise their banners. Voters must turn out for elections. Members of Congress-- including and especially Republicans-- must find the political courage to stand up to Trump. Courts must safeguard the Constitution. State legislators must pass laws to protect their citizens and their policies from federal meddling. All of us who are in the business of holding leaders accountable must redouble our efforts to defend the truth from his cynical assaults.

The United States is not a perfect country, and it has a great distance to go before it fully achieves its goals of liberty and equality. But preserving what works and defending the rules and values on which democracy depends are a shared responsibility. Everybody has a role to play in this drama.

This is the first in a series.

The page included a blown up pull-out quote-- "Those who oppose the new president’s reckless and heartless agenda must make their voices heard"-- which is a powerful endorsement of the voices of principled resistance inside Congress, resistance an L.A. area congressman, Ted Lieu, has been in the forefront of. It is a resistance Ted has asked voters in CA-34, who will go to the polls Tuesday, to help him with by sending Jimmy Gomez to Congress. "During these extraordinarily dangerous times," he told voters in Highland Park, Boyle Heights, Chinatown, Eagle Rock, El Sereno, Downtown and Koreatown, we need fighters like Jimmy Gomez in Congress. I served with Jimmy in the California Legislature and I know he will always and relentlessly fight for progressive values. More importantly, I need Jimmy with me as soon as possible so that we can keep punching back against the failing Donald Trump." True to form, the L.A. Times endorsed some also-ran who's unlikely to appeal to even 5% of the voters Tuesday. But CA-34 voters looking for more smart, principled and unflinching resistance to Trumpism would do well to listen to what Ted Lieu asked them to do and vote for Gomez. The thermometer on the right, by the way, isn't for contributions to Gomez-- you can do that here if you want to; there will be a runoff in June-- but for Ted Lieu and the other loudest, strongest and most strategic voices of congressional resistance. We have to support them as part of our own resistance to tyranny and kakistocracy.

One more thing about CA-34. Los Angeles was Clinton country in the general, obviously, but, less obviously, it was in the primary as well. Los Angeles County voted for Hillary over Bernie 590,502 (57.0%) to 434,656 (42.0%). She swept every congressional district in the county except one-- the fightin' 34th. That's right, my friends, Bernie took that district in the primary... all the more reason the voters there should elect the most Bernie-like of all the candidates running for Congress there in 2 days: Jimmy Gomez, the only candidate with a record of accomplishment very much like Bernie's. (Polls show that the second place is held by Robert Lee Ahn, a big-spending, very conservative and very wealthy Republican who recently switched to the Democratic Party and whose only appeal is based on ethnic solidarity.)

The L.A. Times, The Greed-Obsessed Billionaires And The Evisceration Of Public Education

-by Ellen Lubic

Why does the L.A. Times hate and deride real teachers and public schools, but love and support Eli Broad and his billionaire partners in their privatizing takeover?

In the last few days, the L.A. Times has published misleading information on the California Appeals Court decision this week denying the lower court ruling in the Vergara lawsuit, wherein a few carefully chosen students were urged to press a lawsuit to terminate teachers without due process and to change the law pertaining to what they call tenure. Also this lawsuit would serve to weaken teachers unions.

This lawsuit was contrived by billionaires David Welch, under the aegis if the non profit called Students Matter, and with the input of Eli Broad and of the Walton Family and others of the billionaire anti-public school contingent. These uber wealthy non-educators tried to prove that bad and uncaring teachers were assigned to inner city schools so as to diminish the civil rights of inner city students to a fair and equal education in public schools, and that laws should be changed to be able to fire them with no due process.

However, these same billionaires have been working toward privatizing most of Americas' public schools and turning them into "Wall Street investment opportunities" as openly expressed by Rupert Murdoch in his NY Times oped a few years ago, and also by hedge fund managers such as Whitney Tilson, who sell their clients products of investments in charter schools and other allied corporations, and hold classes for these clients on how to invest in "public" education for large profits.

This is the greatest scam in the universe and outshines Teapot Dome as a robber baron scheme. They call the schools "public" but the only thing public about them is that they are paid for by the American taxpayer public. Other than that, these charter schools have no oversight by real educators and education administrators, nor a Board of Education, but they are run on business models devised by Eli Broad and his Broad Academy, to make vast sums of money for their leaders and investors, none of whom are generally educators.

These vulture business managers fire real trained teachers with degrees in education, and replace them with low paid Teach for America recent college graduates who only get 5 weeks of minimalist training before they are dumped into classrooms in inner cities for only a short period of time, with often 50 children in a room that was built to hold 30. Many disasters occur, and students suffer.

This week one of these ersatz public charter schools was awarded $7.2 million dollars by an LA court for not having LAUSD provide them with a free site for their marginal school.  We also see Fetullah Gulen, the Turkish Imam who lives in guarded seclusion in the Poconos, running over 146 of these questionable charters all over the US, with 11 in L.A. These Magnolia Schools in L.A. are headed by the infamous charter school queen, Caprice Young, who has made a fortune in her career off these schools that use taxpayer funds with no taxpayer oversight.

As to the L.A. Times... this information is always soft pedaled by the Times reporters, and we have been told they are under the thumbs of their bosses, the editorial board, who carefully monitor and edit their reports. Focusing on Saturday, April,16, 2016, we find the reporters front page story starting off with their own Broad-directed take on this week's decision by the Appeals Court to throw out this highly flawed case. The Times, and LASR, all week kept calling this a "landmark case," which it is not.  It is a failed case of bad law based on unproven allegations and bias against teachers and their unions, but the Broadies will again file similar lawsuits for they have endless deep pockets.

Howard Blume and his writer pals follow the Broad line imposed by their Times bosses, even though they do not have the usual disclaimer on today’s front page manipulated article. Ryan Smith and Ben Austin are quoted by the L.A. Times today. They chose once again to interview and quote Ryan Smith, past hatchet man for United Way and now the darling of Marion Edelman fame and fortune, and Parent Revolution/parent trigger shady lawyer, Ben Austin, former and still hatchet man for Eli Broad and now of Broad/Welch fame and fortune, to be their voices on education issues. These two men are in the lead in the deception to steal public education in the name of their manufactured view of civil rights. These are the two who led the infamous street charade of Oct. 29, 2013 to get the equally infamous John Deasy’s (who now works for Broad fulltime) contract renewed… and wherein the pathetic LAUSD BoE danced to Eli Broad’s tune by allowing the spectacle takeover of Beaudry Street and Board Room... and then signing and extending the disasterous contract, after the multiple fiascos caused by Broad's Supt. Deasy which cost the District around $780 million in losses and payoffs for lawsuits. Deasy almost forced the District into bankruptcy.

The supportive 'reformer' language these reporters use in the their introductory paragraphs, "the nation's most generous teacher employment protections...and, the (reformers) centerpiece effort to remake schools... and, teachers' unions have flexed their muscle locally and nationally"  is egregious. These biases set the scene for the rest of the manipulation of the story.

The 'reformer players' and the Times use the important claim of civil rights to elevate the privatizing of public schools, and the firing (and teacher jailing) of teachers without due process, and with the goal to kill off unions, but they want the exclusive use of public funds in running their charter schools, all paid for on the backs of the taxpayers. Deasy testified against teachers at the Vergara trail, and at the Treu decision for the plaintiffs, he stated that he was delighted and would rush home to fire more teachers...and he did.

Today's article mentions the recent Friedrichs case which SCOTUS dropped in a 4 to 4 tie after Justice Scalia's death as a case "which could have prevented unions from collecting dues from employees who didn't agree to become members." This is not actually what the case shows...as with Harris v. Quinn (" Holding: The First Amendment prohibits the collection of an agency fee from the plaintiffs in this case, home health care providers who do not wish to join or support a union.Judgment: Reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded, 5-4, in an opinion by Justice Alito on June 30, 2014. Justice Kagan filed a dissenting opinion in which Justice Ginsburg, Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor joined."), teachers who do not join the union are generally required to pay a small fee since they benefit from union negotiations in their behalf as well as paid members.

But how easy it is to blame it all of public educations problems on the teachers.

However, do these reporters interview some of the skid row (see San Pedro St. in L.A.) crack mothers of the thousands of LAUSD students who sleep on the hard streets every night? Rarely do these ace reporters do any in-depth investigation of how these inner city kids live lives of desperate poverty, with little food or rest, and virtually no parental supervision. There are also many poverty level parents working three jobs to try to exist, but there are thousands of others who have NO business parenting children. These students are sent to school and teachers are supposed to fill all the spaces of their wretched lives and make them math and language successes, and college-ready, too. These same expectations extend to the lives of all those of LAUSD students living at or below the poverty level which is close to 80% of LAUSD. Could Eli make this work? Could the Kochs, or the Waltons with their endless billions as the two richest families in the world? Why don't they focus on curing poverty?  Can it be because there are no fortunes to be made by curing poverty?

As to their education articles, the Times reporters seem never to interview highly respected academics like Professor Rogers at UCLA or Emeritus Professor Kashen from USC, but rather, they feature on the mendacious warriors for privatization from Eli Broad’s selected non-profits, United Way, Parent Revolution, and California Endowment. So what the public reads is deeply slanted.

This story is filled with dichotomies…it is a continuum of despair of inner city life vs. the grandest displays of wealth in L.A. The 40,000 foot mansions which could house a hundred people, but are vacation homes for the billionaires who seek to run the world are what the tour buses show off…not the tents from 1st and San Pedro stretching for miles and miles, showing the degradation and filth of the poverty stricken, a twenty minute drive from Rodeo.

When we lose a free press, unbiased media, we lose democracy. Judging by Campbell’s new gig at LASR, and by the venomous L.A. Times (plus the biased NY Times), all is lost.

Ellen Lubic
Public Policy Educator
Director, Joining Forces for Education

Why The L.A. Times Endorsed Lee Rogers Instead Of One Of The Two Right-Wing Republicans

The L.A. Times is a Republican-owned newspaper and-- in a heavily Democratic city-- they tend to bend editorially towards as conservative a direction as they can get away with. In CA-33, for instance, they backed the more plausible of the two conservative Democrats-- Matt Miller over the discredited, sleazy and thoroughly disliked Wendy Greuel-- while ignoring the progressives in the race, Ted Lieu and Marianne Williamson.

So far, the only other congressional race they endorsed in is for the CA-25 seat being abandoned by arch-reactionary bigot Buck McKeon. The jungle primary boils down to a progressive Democrat, Lee Rogers, and ftwo very hard right Sacramento politicians, carpetbagger Tony Strickland, the Republican Party Establishment pick who has been endorsed by McKeon, and Steve Knight, more of a Tea Party-brand extremist endorsed by local Republicans who are disenchanted with McKeon's grotesquely corrupt machine (of which Strickland is a willing cog).

The Times' endorsement of Rogers, emphasized the unsuitable nature of the two right-wing ideologues the GOP is running in the moderate suburban area. Either would be more appropriate for some rule district in Mississippi or Texas than for the Santa Clarita, Antelope Valley area.

"But both Strickland and Knight," the Times editors wrote, "espouse Republican positions that this page has long opposed: They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, don't want to raise the federal minimum wage and want undocumented immigrants to leave the country.

"That's why we prefer Lee Rogers, a doctor and moderate Democrat from Simi Valley."

Rogers' strategy for his session with the Times editorial board was smart-- and it paid off big time. He brought the Times' own editorials with him of all their positions that corresponded to the issues being discussed in the campaign-- like the Affordable Care Act and immigration. He then showed them-- in writing-- his positions and the positions of his two lunatic fringe opponents. It seems to have done the trick.

I find it appropriate that the Times editors referred to Rogers as a "moderate Democrat." The word "moderate" in DC is used as a synonym for conservative, the opposite of progressive, but that's because Washington media types are lazy and stupid. "Moderate" is the opposite of "extreme," not the opposite of "progressive." Rogers' positions on issues and his vision for America are progressive. He wants to prevent his constituents from getting emphysema from the CEMEX mine McKeon ignored. That's progressive. His approach to the broken immigration system is comprehensive. That's progressive. He has vowed to help pass a minimum wage increase. That's progressive. He is committed to universal background checks for gun-buyers so that only law-abiding citizens have them, not criminals. That's progressive. His doctorly manner of speaking and his commitment to the facts… that of course is moderate.

And there was one other line in the L.A. Times editorial that was crucial: "His experience as a doctor and in dealing with health insurance companies has given him practical ideas on how to fix problems with the law and the healthcare system in general." That's right, he knows very well the parasitic scam that the insurance companies have become. He'll fight to right that wrong-- and you can call that progressive or conservative or moderate or extremist or whatever you want.

“These career Sacramento politicians don’t care about middle class families and bringing jobs to the district. They only care about one job-- their own,” said Rogers. “Former state Senator Tony Strickland is a political opportunist, jumping from race to race and district to district, whether he lives there or not. Senator Steve Knight was recently elected to the Senate, jumping from the Assembly, and now he’s already scouting another job-- with taxpayers on the hook for a special election should he leave the Senate before his term is up.”

“Sending career Sacramento politicians to Washington won’t solve anything. In contrast, I’m a doctor who solves real problems for a living. I will fight for hard working middle class families by concentrating on economic initiatives that help them most, like raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and opposing the GOP budget that gives millionaires a huge tax break, while charging middle class families about $2,000 more per year.”

If you'd like to help us make sure Rogers is elected instead of one of the two crackpots he's running against, you can contribute to his campaign here on the Blue America ActBlue page.

Can The Koch Brothers Turn The L.A. Times Into The Volkischer Beobachter?

Whenever I go shopping for paper products I bring this handy list along:

Angel Soft® toilet paper
Brawny® paper towels
Quilted Northern® toilet paper
Soft n' Gentle® toilet paper
Dixie® plates, bowls, napkins, & cups
Mardi Gras® napkins and towels
Sparkle® napkins
Vanity Fair® napkins
Zee® Napkins
Georgia-Pacific® paper products, lumber and building products
INVISTA® products
Lycra® products
Stainmaster® Carpet

I stopped buying Quilted Northern and Brawny brands. They're part of the fascist Koch Bros Empire, which has been seeking to overturn democracy in America and spends hundreds of millions of dollars to do so. Now the Koch brothers are trying to buy up a media empire as well, since they claim the right-wing voice in this country isn't loud enough. The NY Times refers to them as "supporters of libertarian causes," rather than as fascists or even just John Birchers, which are much more accurate descriptions. And on Saturday, Amy Chozick at the Times reported on their plans to buy the Tribune Company's eight very influential regional newspapers, including the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant to help propagate their hateful ideology and recruit their puppet candidates.

By early May, the Tribune Company is expected to send financial data to serious suitors in what will be among the largest sales of newspapers by circulation in the country. Koch Industries is among those interested, said several people with direct knowledge of the sale who spoke on the condition they not be named. Tribune emerged from bankruptcy on Dec. 31 and has hired JPMorgan Chase and Evercore Partners to sell its print properties.

The papers, valued at roughly $623 million, would be a financially diminutive deal for Koch Industries, the energy and manufacturing conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., with annual revenue of about $115 billion.

Politically, however, the papers could serve as a broader platform for the Kochs’ laissez-faire ideas. The Los Angeles Times is the fourth-largest paper in the country, and The Tribune is No. 9, and others are in several battleground states, including two of the largest newspapers in Florida, the Orlando Sentinel and the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. A deal could include Hoy, the second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper, which speaks to the pivotal Hispanic demographic.

Like Quilted Northern and all Koch products, all those papers should be completely boycotted if they're taken over to serve the cause of fascism.

Does Al Gore really have to run for president to get us to pay attention to the harsh truths he has to tell about political (and other) realities?

"What [Gore] is telling us today--with the moral authority of a man who many believe was wrongly barred from the presidency--is that American democracy and indeed American society are in danger from the authoritarians of the right. Without much polite varnish, he warns that self-serving plutocrats and self-righteous theocrats have nearly banished reason from the public square; their machinations disable us as we try to confront the enormous problems that threaten our future. According to Gore, Americans cannot adequately protect the nation from terrorism because our ideas about national security have been distorted by fear and falsehoods. Nor can we address what he calls 'the carbon crisis,' potentially 'the worst catastrophe in the history of human civilization,' because the truth about global warming has been obscured by industrial and government propaganda."
--Joe Conason, in his L.A. Times review of Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason

Kudos to the L.A. Times. Normally you would expect a book as explosive as the former vice president's appears to be to be assigned for review to a neocon hack, or at the farthest left to a neolib one like the New Republic-ans. It's hard to think of anyone further from that mold than Joe Conason, who is the plainest-speaking of plain-speakers.

It's not surprising, in fact, that Joe begins by addressing this age-old question of politicians unwillingness or inability to say straight-out what they mean:

Why do our leaders feel that they can speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth only after they have left politics? After spending nearly half his life in public office, from which he was separated involuntarily in the 2000 election, Al Gore knows the answer. As he explains in his new book, the American political system has degenerated into a rigged game that suppresses honesty and rewards deception.

Gore, of course, was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. The fact is, if on the campaign trail he paid more attention than we wished to the handlers who counseled blandness, as Democratic political handlers usually do, he spoke a lot of plain truth in his years in government. But Gore the truth-teller got little credit--and Joe tells us that in the book that he "employ[s] the same didactic method that used to provoke irritation or even ridicule during his hotly contested presidential campaign."

Yet Gore's professorial style, with its touches of sarcasm, omniscient tone, erudite asides, and yes, its occasional exasperated sighs, elicits a different response today than it did seven years ago. Many of the same publications that once poured scorn on him now offer up paragraph after paragraph of admiring prose.

It doesn't hurt to have been proved right, as Gore has been, most notably on the issue of global climate change, with the suggestion that "those who mocked him were fools in the first place and that we can continue to ignore him only at our own peril."
But Gore himself has changed, Joe stresses:

Always unusually smart and farsighted, he nevertheless spent most of his public career emphasizing the expedient and conventional rather than the critical and visionary as nearly every ambitious politician must. Liberated from those constraints by defeat, he kept silent until fall 2002, when he spoke out forthrightly against the invasion of Iraq.

The tentative, calculating, painfully moderate approach of the past was gone, along with all of the baggage of the Democratic Leadership Council that he had helped to found.

We all know that Al Gore is never going to be Mr. Charisma. There's a suggestion in Joe's review that he doesn't in fact place great stock in charisma, and has a frustratingly keen awareness of the difficulty of dealing with substance in American political life:

His insistence on detail and thoroughness, which may seem like a personal tic in an era of sound bites, is rooted in his conviction that most Americans have little understanding of the world in which they live. He worries that mass alienation from politics and immersion in the entertainment culture along with poor civic education have created a population that is woefully uninformed.

Joe notes that Gore "remains remarkably optimistic that the emerging technologies will enable democracy's advocates to triumph":

At a time when we are learning that political responses tend to be more emotional than rational, as he surely understands, his stubborn faith that we will someday return to reason is touching. That faith inflected his political career, for better and for worse. It does not explain why this most qualified and courageous Democratic candidate has--so far--decided not to run for president again.

I don't know how successful a candidate even now Gore would make, or how effectively, if elected, he would be able to deal with the 24/7 Right-Wing Noise Machine. But it does sound as if he has some important things to say about our political system, and I'm putting the book on my reading list.