Bernie Calls For Banning For-Profit Charter Schools-- Strengthening Public Schools

Lara Trump isn't supposed to be the brightest of the Trump menagerie and she's certainly always welcome at Fox. Yesterday she was babbling some incoherent nonsense about how sad it is that Democrats want to beat her father-in-law, almost universally recognized as the worst"president"-- if history will even remember him as a president-- on history. "Shouldn’t you want someone that you think can run the country well, that’s gonna do the best job at being president, not just beat Donald Trump? But I think it actually speaks to the fact that there are still a lot of people who out there that are very upset that Hillary Clinton did not win in 2016." There may be, but the only people I know who pine for Hillary are people who recognize how much better she would have been than Trump. Anyone-- even Status Quo Joe, the worst of the Democratic alternatives, would be better than Trump.

Author and Princeton history professor Julian Zelizer reported how Trump is trying to be king. He singled out 4 precedents:

• Delegitimating oversight
• Using the bully pulpit for disinformation
• Legitimating conflict of interest
• Using national emergency power to replace legislating

The Worst. Ever. So... according to Newton's third law of physics, "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." That suggests that following Trump-- the worst-- the U.S. is ready for-- not some mediocrity like Status Quo Joe Biden-- for someone as good as Trump is bad-- a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or-- better yet-- the two of them on a unity ticket.

Today, Bernie, basically ignoring the ugly and demeaning Trumpism that almost defines everything in our world, delivered an important education policy speech in Orangeburg, South Carolina-- as if Trump didn't exist. He called for a ban on all for-profit charter schools-- pretty much the opposite of what both corporate Democrats and the Republican Party have been working for-- and a moratorium on the funding of all public charter school expansion until after a national audit, a policy suggestion that comes from the NAACP.

California already has a new ban on for-profit charter schools. This will immediately put Bernie at odds with more corporate Democrats-- particularly Beto, Cory Booker, Tim Ryan and McKinsey Pete all of whom have admitted to being for charter schools, No other Democratic candidate has called for a ban on for-profit charter schools yet, but probably will now that Bernie has. These are the positions he laid out today:

• Mandating that charter schools comply with the same oversight requirements as public schools
• Mandating that at least half of all charter school boards are teachers and parents
• Disclosing student attrition rates, non-public funding sources, financial interests and other relevant data
• Matching employment practices at charters with neighboring district schools, including standards set by collective bargaining agreements and restrictions on exorbitant CEO pay
• Supporting the efforts of charter school teachers to unionize and bringing charter schools to the negotiating table

Watch who lauds Bernie's position and who unmasks themselves as the corporate whores being paid off to go on the warpath against him. I wonder how long Biden can keep quiet on the subject and not take a stand one way or the other. See if you can identify the corporate whore below (hint: she's completely in sync with both Betsy DeVos and that wretched Trumpanzee daughter-in-law).

Sanders will concede that the initial goal of charter schools-- to help kids with unique learning needs-- was admirable. But he will argue the system has been corrupted by wealthy activists who spent millions to privatize these schools, leaving them unaccountable and draining funds from the public school system.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, lauded the Sanders plan. In a statement to CNN, she called the proposal "vitally important" and said that it would provide real checks and balances for the charter school system.

"For the last several decades, the unregulated growth of private charter schools has siphoned off money from public schools, with little protection against fraud, and little attention paid to equity or quality when it comes to educating kids," Weingarten said. "The senator's plan takes tangible steps toward making the charter school industry accountable to parents and the public."

Those who operate these schools feel differently. Amy Wilkins, senior vice president of advocacy at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, points out that three California branches of the NAACP broke with the national organization's call for a moratorium on funding. She noted that there was evidence that charter schools have helped thousands of children in at-risk situations.

"Sanders' call is out of touch-- as usual-- with what African Americans want," Wilkins said in a statement to CNN. "More disturbing, the senator-- for personal political gain-- would literally lock African American students into schools that have failed them for generations."

Really? Out of touch? Here's Bernie's plan; please read it and decide if he's out of touch, the way the charter school shills-- like Jonathan Chait-- are saying he is. "Our nation," he wrote, "used to lead the world in the percentage of young Americans with college degrees. We were number one. Today, we are number 11, behind countries like South Korea, Japan, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Australia-- and that is not acceptable. And here is the simple truth: 40 or 50 years ago, in California and Vermont, virtually any place in America, if you received a high school degree, the odds were pretty good that you would be able to get a decent paying job, raise a family, buy a house, buy a car, all on one income. That was the world 40 or 50 years ago. But that is not the world we live in today. The world has changed, the global economy has changed, technology has changed, and education has changed. Over the past decade, states all over America have made savage cuts to education, while, at the same time, providing massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people and largest corporations in America. Our kids and our students are too important to cut back on education, especially when those cuts reduce educational opportunities for underserved students, students of color, low income students, LGBTQ students and students with disabilities."

In the twenty-first century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. If we are to succeed as a nation, public colleges and universities must be tuition free. Higher education should be a right for all, not a privilege for the few. That means we have got to make public colleges and universities tuition free and we must substantially reduce student debt. Each and every year, hundreds of thousands of bright and qualified young people do not get a higher education for one reason and one reason alone: their family lacks the income. That is unfair to those families; and it is it is unfair to the future of this country.

Instead of pursuing their dreams of being an environmentalist, a teacher, a social worker, or an artist, too many Americans end up taking higher-paying jobs on Wall Street or as accountants or as corporate managers simply to pay back their student loans. We need environmentalists. We need people to take care of the poor. We need health care providers to choose to work in community health centers. We need good teachers. Each and every American must be able to get the education they need to match their skills and fulfill their dreams.

In fulfilling those dreams, we must make teaching a highly attractive profession again. Teachers have one of the toughest and most demanding jobs in America. Teachers have been the leaders in the fight to improve public schools, reduce class sizes, and provide every student with books, computers and safe, high quality schools. What encourages me and gives me so much hope about the future is that teachers across the country are standing up and saying enough is enough! The wealthiest people in America cannot have it all, while public schools all over America are falling apart.

Over the past year, tens of thousands of teachers across the country have gone on strike to demand greater investment in public education. The wave of teacher strikes throughout the country provides an historic opportunity to make the investments we desperately need to make our public education system the best in the industrialized world, not one of the poorest.

Bernie’s education plan addresses the serious crisis in our education system by reducing racial and economic segregation in our public school system, attracting the best and the brightest educational professionals to teach in our classrooms, and reestablishing a positive learning environment for students in our K-12 schools. This plan calls for a transformative investment in our children, our teachers and our schools and a fundamental re-thinking of the unjust and inequitable funding of our public education system.

Universal school lunches and a $60,000 floor on teachers salaries, which Bernie proposed in his South Carolina speech today-- seem like a pretty good straight-forward idea too. Right? Where do you think the opposition to those two proposals will come from? Come on, take a guess. It's not a trick question. On a macro-level, it hasn't changed since the debate in the colonies on whether or not we should declare our independence. A third of the population opposed that. Many fought on the side of the colonial occupiers. Don't remember? Starts with con...

Your Sunday Night Biden-- You Really Want Four Years Of This?

Friday evening, Bill Maher did what you would expect Bill Maher to do-- excused Joe Biden's behavior, with some cute jokes ("his hands have been part of an exploratory committee for decades"). Although he considers the whole #MeToo thing "a little nitpicky," he did acknowledge that "of course, no one likes to be touched unwantingly and women get a lot more of that than men but..." Yes, but. One of the best-- and most productive-- members of my senior management team at one of the companies I ran would go a little further than Biden did. He's gay and he would, in a very friendly way, grab men's crotches as a way of accessing if their penis was large enough for him to bother with; he's a size queen. Men didn't like that. Gay men didn't like it; straight men didn't like it. How do you think Bill Maher would feel about it? Especially if it was done by someone in a position of authority over him? Someone who could determine how much his bonus would be, for example? A little nitpicky?



A second Trump term make me feel gross and uneasy too, Bill. That's what Bernie's there for. Watch this. I agree with this guy on every call but two. The Omaha, Nebraska has one electoral vote and Bernie's going to get it in 2020. And Florida... I'm not as sure as he is that Florida is going to Trump. But that's a little nitpicky because it doesn't matter since Bernie will have already crushed Trump in the electoral college before all Florida's votes are counted.



Enough of Bill Maher's Biden-isn't-so-bad jokes? "it's getting ridiculous." Is it? How about talking about Biden's actual record as a corporate whore and Wall Street shill? Or about his grotesque racism instead of the touchy-feely stuff? Still, later in the show, Maher brought on Julián Castro to say he likes that Biden finally found something he's not willing to apologize over. "I like that," Maher said to Castro, about Biden saying he's not sorry for feeling up women for 60 or 70 or 80 years or for however long he's been acting like a creep. And he ten launched into a disgusting attack on Castro for a statement he had made on Maddow's show about taking Biden's attitude towards women serious ("with great gravitas"). "I think he should joke about; I don't think it's that big a deal," said Maher, who has been making a career for himself as Mister-Anti-Politically-Correct.

Castro killed him. Maher played the part of pig. Castro played the part of ethics teacher-- and Maher's audience agreed with Castro... loudly. Maher didn't like it when Castro used the word "bullshit-- twice-- to describe Maher's intention of laughing it off. Watch the exchange at the link above.

New York Magazine got a groups of their regular writers together for a chat about the Biden thing, Is The Biden Appeal About To Fade?. I sure hope so, but many people-- mostly people over 70 who have lost their memories or who are very conservative Democrats-- disagree with me. The panel consisted of Benjamin Hart, Jonathan Chait, Margaret Hartmann, Ed Kilgore, Ezekiel Kweku, Eric Levitz, David Wallace-Wells, and Ben Williams. Kweku made the salient point right off that bat that he may not be the best candidate to beat Trump-- Biden's pitch, his calling card-- because "his high ratings are pure Obama nostalgia, and I have my doubts that they would carry him through both a primary and a general election. Chait and Williams seem to agree: "I likewise suspect his campaign performance would bring him back to Earth," said Chait. "People forget all the gaffes. He has run before and lost very badly!" and Williams added that he feels "it’s better to nominate someone without a decades-long record to attack. Anti-Trump sentiment is going to rally behind any candidate."

Ezekiel: Biden has to appeal to a different set of voters than Trump does.

Ed: Biden is pretty slowly morphing into a 2020 version of Hillary Clinton, without her particular gender issue-- beginning as a unity candidate but becoming more controversial every day. Eventually, that will affect both his primary and his general-election numbers. Or maybe I just don’t get his avuncular, “Uncle Joe” appeal.

Ben H: I just wonder if that appeal, which, yes, is strongly tied to Obama nostalgia, is a little deeper and harder to uproot than we understand.

Margaret: I think a lot of people feel the statute of limitations has run out on stuff Biden did decades ago, and they’re really attached to him as an Obama administration figure.

Ben H: I also think there’s a strong sense out there among older white Democrats that nominating a woman and/or a person of color would be a risky move.

Ezekiel: Plenty of white guys to choose from.

Margaret: Are there, though? Guys who have that combo of experienced, “electable,” and centrist? And aren’t 37? If I’m a voter looking for that, I’ve eliminated Beto, Sanders, Buttigieg … who’s left?  (I’m seriously asking-- I can’t remember everyone in the field anymore.)

Ed: There’s Tim Ryan, as of today. If Biden doesn’t run, Terry McAuliffe and Bloomberg probably will.

Ezekiel: Why do you need “electable” and “centrist”? Isn’t the appeal of centrism, in this context, electability?

Ed: I’m not sure how to define “electability” anymore. Biden has led Trump pretty consistently in polls, in a way that no one else has. But I’m guessing that won’t last.

Ezekiel: I very much don’t understand the profile of a voter who (1) thinks a woman or person of color is a risky move and (2) likes Biden because he was in Obama’s administration. I’m not saying that these people don’t exist, I just don’t understand what exactly they’re thinking.

Ed: I’ll say this about his personal appeal: Everyone talks about the terrible legacy of the 1994 crime bill, and I agree with much of the criticism. But I also remember watching CSPAN, transfixed for hours (something I never did), as Biden made the case for it. There was a point at which he alluded to NRA president Charlton Heston’s claim that the bill wouldn’t actually provide as many cops as sponsors claimed, and Biden commented: “I went home last night and my wife said, ‘Joe, you said the bill had 100,000 cops, but MOSES said it didn’t!,’” and went on in that vein for a while. It was great theater. So he’s capable of that sort of thing.

Eric: I think giving Trump another opportunity to attack his opponent as one of the out-of-touch elites who supported the Iraq War and is in bed with the finance industry isn’t ideal. But they all have liabilities.

Ben H: It’s true that the big-business coziness hasn’t stuck to him yet, and will likely be a potent line of attack.

Ed: I’ve heard no rumors of Obama vocally coming to his defense. Has anyone else?

Ben H: No, and I seriously doubt he will. I don’t think he wants Biden to win... he never seemed enthusiastic about Biden’s potential candidacy in 2016. He easily could have boosted him, but he didn’t.

Who Will Stand Up To Hatred And Bigotry-- Trump? Bernie?

We've covered her quite a bit before but in case you've forgotten, Brandy X. Lee is a forensic psychiatrist at Yale, best known for the bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. Friday she penned an OpEd for the New York Daily News, Trump’s mental condition seems to be getting worse: He should subject himself to a rigorous assessment now. She wrote that in the two years since she organized the conference at Yale "about how mental health professionals could warn the public ethically and effectively" about what Trump is, their "predictions have borne out to be true: Donald Trump in the office of the presidency has proven more dangerous than people suspected, has grown more dangerous by the day, and, without proper treatment, is becoming increasingly uncontainable."

She points to many easy to recognize symptoms of his increasing mental impairment-- the more frequent and more vitriolic tweets, the vicious and violent rallies, the crackpot conspiracy theories that show him unable to tolerate reality but "most markedly," she wrote, "he has of late been growing less and less coherent. His two-hour Conservative Political Action Conference speech revealed many rambling sentences, tangential thoughts, repetitions and word-finding difficulties. There was also the 'Tim Apple' episode a few weeks ago, and then his calling Venezuela a company, confusing his grandfather’s birthplace with his father’s, mispronouncing 'oranges' for 'origins,' and stating, out of the blue, 'I’m very normal.' These are signs of cognitive decline, the source of which we cannot know without examining him, but there is no question he needs an evaluation... If an employee showed the kind of impulsivity, erratic thinking and belligerent behavior that the president does, the employer would likely have demanded testing right away before the employee could resume work. In the United States, the people are the president’s employers. An unprecedented Washington conference on fit leadership revealed that even non-mental health professionals agree that the president needs urgent mental health intervention. So the choice now seems clear: the president needs to submit to a proper, independent evaluation of fitness, or if not, he can always resign."



Yesterday I watched him at Sheldon Adelson's Kapo Convention in Las Vegas (video up top). Right after he introduced a slew of far right Republicans from Georgia, South Carolina, Bakersfield, North Dakota-- not exactly Jewish-friendly places but very Israel-friendly (see the difference and why here), he launched into a typical cheap shot, slandering Ilhan Omar (D-MN), soon after Patrick Carlineo, one of his supporters, was arrested by the FBI and charged with threatening to kill Congresswoman Omar. The Trumpist told authorities that he's a patriot who loves Trump, and "that he hates radical Muslims in our government." Trump always refers to Rep. Omar as a "radical Muslim," which isn't true. Carlineo told them that he had told Omar's office that "If our forefathers were still alive, they'd put a bullet in her head." [You can contribute to Ilhan's reelection campaign here.]

Trump spreads hatred and rancor whenever he goes and whenever he speaks. Bernie, an American Jew from Brooklyn-- we grew up a few blocks from each other and went to the same elementary school (PS 197) and high school (James Madison)-- has a different way of approaching people. Please, please, please watch this video. "Love Will Conquer Hate: Bernie Visits Islamic Center in California." That's the likely choice we'll be making in 2020. I can't tell you strongly enough how important this short video is: