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My website is dianeravitch.com. I write about two interconnected topics: education and democracy. I am a historian of education.

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  2. Now Trump is going to build a “golden fleet” of “Trump class” battleships for the Navy, the first of which will be called ‘The Defiant’. He’s flexing his big bully muscles and seems to be itching to go to war –as long as he can stay safely at home to nurse his (fake) bone spurs.

    But who does he plan to go to war against? Battle ships would be overkill for fighting “drug lords” in fishing boats from Venezuela. And it sounds very expensive –especially for something that’s for show and not really needed –except to feed his ego. I fear there is a bigger war plan that he’s not mentioning yet –like the way Hitler simultaneously built up his military and signed peace pacts with the UK and Russia before he started World War II… OMG https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/u-field-trump-class-warships-224701178.html

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      • That naming stuff is the terrible 2 year old in him who wants everything he sees, says “mine” repeatedly and grabs it all, taking ownership without regard to anyone else or how they feel.

        That explains his internal drive for expansionism, like his claim yesterday that the “US ‘has to have’ Greenland” (See: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgmd132ge4o) It sounds like he plans to attack the native people who live in Greenland, as well as Denmark, in order to get it. Does he know that Greenland is the country which is vastly covered with snow and ice and that it’s Iceland which is the country that’s green? So why does he want it –to give it as a gift to Putin? Doesn’t he realize that Putin only wants it so that he can have easy access to us and then he can take over our country –because he’s got expansionist goals as well? Yes, “stupid” is right on target!

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      • It’s true that there are rare earth minerals, as well as the possibility of opening a previously frozen ocean transit route as climate change melts the tundra. But don’t lose sight of the ambitions of the techbros to establish one of their Network States, free from governmental interference. Seems impossible, but the billionaires backing Trump don’t inhabit the same reality as the rest of us.

        So Donald Trump is threatening to steal Greenland from Denmark. And a group funded by Silicon Valley billionaires plans to build a new tech city there.

        It sounds utterly bizarre — but it’s even weirder and scarier than you think. Greenland’s tech driven takeover isn’t about one frozen island. It’s about Silicon Valley billionaires taking over the entire world. 

        Because the plot to build a new city in Greenland is part of an extremist tech ideology called the Network State. 

        Here’s a quick Network State refresher:

        A cultish group of tech billionaires has decided that democracy no longer matters. They want to establish new territories — tiny corporate countries — under their control. 

        https://www.thenerdreich.com/tech-billionaires-want-to-build-a-network-state-in-greenland/

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      • Yes, it was Honduras, where techbros established the city of Próspera, on the island of Roatan, under the corrupt president Juan Orlando Hernández. The current government of Honduras is trying to oust the billionaires. Trump’s flagrant pardon of drug lord Hernández is thought to be tied to those billionaire interests.

        https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-honduras-crypto.html?unlocked_article_code=1.408.berh.DF1EFaX4tj0c&smid=url-share

        Sadly, it was under Hilary Clinton’s watch as Secretary of State that the Hernández coup of Manuel Zelaya occured.

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      • Denmark is a member of both NATO (since 1949) and the European Union (since 1973), playing an active role in both security and economic integration, making it a key Nordic nation in Western alliances. It is a founding member of NATO and is involved in many international efforts through these organizations, focusing on peace, security, and global challenges. 

        If Trump and his fascist MAGA KKK regime stays in power long enough to attempt grabbing Greenland by force using the US military, that means the US may end up in a war with NATO and the EU, which includes Canada.

        Also, if that happens, I think many if not all of the blue states might break away from Trump and the red states he controls and join Canada, NATO and the EU to fight Trump’s regime.

        WWIII

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      • He said it’s not about natural resources, and that it’s due to the need for national security –as protection from RUSSIA and China! As if we are all as dumb as he is and would fall for that nonsense!!! It sounds like a bad joke… (“Stupid is as stupid does.”

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      • Turmp revealed his goals when he let us know he wants Canada and Greenland, which are both NATO nations. If he starts a war to take them, he will be going to war against NATO and the EU because Greenland is a Denmark territory and Denmark is a member of both NATIO and the EU.

        I think Trump and his extreme right billionaire allies do not want NATO and the EU military alliance to be able to use Canada and Greenland for military staging areas once they start the next World War.

        What’s happening in Venezuela, the $40 billion to Argentina, the prison in San Salvadore deal, and Trump’s threats to take back Panama and attack Mexico fit into that plan. Trump and his regime are planning to go to war if needed to dominate all of the Americas and build an empire for the Trump Dynasty to rule over.

        “President Trump’s administration has formally articulated a goal to reassert U.S. “preeminence” and “dominance” within the Western Hemisphere, a strategy framed as a modern interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine.

        “A primary objective is to counter the influence of “adversarial powers” like China and Russia that have increased their trade, investment, and military presence in the region.

        “The administration emphasizes that a secure Western Hemisphere is essential for securing the U.S. homeland.

        “The strategy calls for a larger U.S. military presence, including “targeted deployments” and the potential use of lethal force, to combat migration, drug trafficking, and criminal organizations (such as cartels).

        “The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine specifically highlights the importance of guaranteeing U.S. access to key hemispheric locations like the Panama Canal and Greenland for national security and economic reasons.

        “The overall approach is driven by an “America First” foreign policy that aims to ensure every action makes America “safer, stronger, and more prosperous,” which has led to critiques from allies and foreign policy analysts.”

        All while destroying the US alliances with the other NATIO nations and moving closer to Putin’s Russisa.

        If the Toxic T stays in power as he plans for the rest of his life long past 2028, I expect the United States will get a name change to TRUMP.

        England

        France

        Poland

        Germany

        Canada

        TRUMP

        Russia

        Ukraine

        Sweden

        Finland

        Iceland

        Mexico

        Brazil

        et al.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Important points, Lloyd! We are being led to believe that both Russia and China are our enemies though, and yet our countries have many of the same goals and we are even working towards achieving some of them together. Weird stuff!

        Maybe it’s a matter of “Keep your friends close and keep your enemies even closer”? That can be rather confusing though, and those involved are so self-centered that I highly doubt what they are doing is to the world’s advantage…

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      • I do not believe for one second that Trump and Putin are adversaries. I think whatever Putin wants, he will get from Trump and vise versa, probably because Putin’s got something on Trump (Why else would their relationship look so much like a bro-mance?) See: “Putin nods to Trump plans to seize Greenland” “https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7432451el7o“

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      • Lloyd, Wow, there are so many ways we need to shore up our Constitution, as suggested by all that has been noted here, because the Founding Fathers never envisioned the two party system, let alone where one of them goes rogue and is led by a greedy billionaire class that can never satisfy their desire for more money, land, natural resources and power.

        “I think many if not all of the blue states might break away from Trump and the red states he controls and join Canada, NATO and the EU to fight Trump’s regime.”

        I live in a blue state and I’d hate to see another Civil War, let alone WWIII, but I would vote to secede from the union and join Canada/the UK in a New York minute if it was possible to do. So I think we need to consider how we can add a legal way for individual states to secede, without having to go to war and physically fight against our own country.

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      • I researched this and there may be no legal way to leave the union.

        Still, without a working US Constitution, I don’t think there would be anything to stop states from leaving. After all, it is the US Constitution many (like me) swore an oath to defend against enemies like Putin and Trump and Trump’s loyalist MAGA KKK hate cult.

        If it takes leaving the union, Turmp controls as a dictator, to save the US Constitution from Trump’s autocratic, greed and hate based Project 2025, I think the states that leave would be justified in leaving, taking the US Constitution with them. Then adding amendments to get rid of the Electoral College and strengthen voting rights, the first amendment and correcting the 2nd amendment.

        “The U.S. Constitution doesn’t explicitly mention secession, but it implies a perpetual union, forbidding actions necessary for separation (treaties, alliances, etc.) and the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White (1869) that states can’t unilaterally leave, calling the Union “indissoluble” except through revolution or consent.

        “While the Declaration of Independence speaks of a people’s right to alter government, the Constitution established a more permanent federal structure where secession is generally considered unlawful, with the Civil War settling the matter militarily and legally.” 

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      • From what I have researched, the states that might leave hold about half the population of the current United States.

        About one hundred and seventy million people.

        If that US stays in NATO, then they’d still led by the US Constitution and would be more than able to defend itself because of Canada with another almost 42 million people. Most of those states also share borders with Canada or are connected to states that do.

        Who knows, Mexico might join that United States. Especially after Trump renames the United States he controls as TRUMP.

        The following pull quote comes from Gregory Waleed Kavalec on Quora.

        • Blue states combined would have the largest economy in the world, just ahead of China. Their economy would be worth about $15 trillion—bigger than Japan, Germany, or India.
        • Red states combined would have the 3rd largest economy in the world, just behind China and Blue states. Their economy would be worth about $10 trillion—bigger than Japan and Germany but smaller than China.

        In the end, the blue states combined like that would still be able call themselves the United States vs TRUMP, after he renames the red states after himself.

        Trump would probably try to start a war over that split, but I don’t think he’d be able to get it off the ground. His billionaire supporters would lose too much wealth if the blue and red states split and ended in a bloody Civil War.

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      • Lloyd, you wrote: “the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White (1869) that states can’t unilaterally leave, calling the Union “indissoluble” except through revolution or consent.”

        I looked but couldn’t find the answer to this: Who may provide “consent” for a state to leave the union? SCOTUS or Congress??

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      • I lost my first reply. WordPress does that all the time. I type very fast and often lose what I type without knowing why it’s happening, which is why I can’t stand WordPress anymore. Before the Block Editor the site was much easier to use.

        Anyway, I think the states will decide what that means when the time comes. The Constitutional oath my play a significant role in those decisions.

        Just happened to me again. Lost another paragraph.

        Trump is dismantling the US Constitution while getting rid of the separation of powers between the three branches. I don’t think the states will need the permission to leave when the separation of powers doesn’t exist anymore and Trump rules through Executive orders for every branch.

        The US is already moving in that direction. Recently I read that Trump has ignored about a third of the lower court rulings against him and nothing seems to happen to his regime. If they have to pay a fine, they don’t pay. The taxpayers do. The DOJ, which is not Trump’s Department of Revenge is supported by taxpayers. ICE agents acting like they are working for Hitler are also support by taxpayers.

        How that money is supposed to be spent, should be up to Congress, which Trump is also ignoring.

        I think the states that keep the US Constitution and support it be breaking up with Trump’s regime will have the support of a vast majority of their citizens.

        Trump on the other hand, keeps losing support as he continued to erode the division of powers and implement Project 2025.

        If it comes to a violent Civil War to break up with Trump, I think Trump’s loyalist MAGA KKK fascist army will get slaughtered since they will be outnumbered, outspent, and outfought on all fronts.

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    • Virtually everything pointed out in this thread by people blogging here and by Diane is very possible and, I think, cuts into the meat and the very heart of what’s going on in the world right now!

      Of course Trump et al would deny current billionaire and national interests in exploiting natural resources, as well as opportunities to colonize and profit from that without government interference –regardless of how they try to obscure their intentions and actions. Great job everyone! Stay alert because it doesn’t end in Antarctica.

      https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/china-condemned-trump-venezuela-blockade-101142469.html

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  3. As Llyod mentioned, the people running our government, in this Administration as well as other government workers such as the military, took an oath and swore to uphold the Constitution. The president swore to “preserve, protect and defend” it, however, as a dictator-wannabe. he and his posse have been allowed to ride roughshod over the separation of powers and other important aspects of our Constitution –and it’s those very things that distinguish our nation as a democratic republic. But that is being torn asunder now, so it sounds like if states want to secede from the union, not having a Constitution in force anymore might be a justifiable reason for doing so, but then again, maybe not.

    Probably most Americans don’t want to see blood shed and lives lost over this, so I think there has got to be a better way than revolution to resolve this issue, such as the 2026 vote. If Trump does not let it occur, that will be because he does not want to lose control of either house in Congress, as typically occurs after the election of a president, especially since he currently controls both houses. Then that will be another matter, so I think we should wait to see how this plays out.

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  4. See this: https://substack.com/@borowitzreport/note/c-192037004

    Rendition of a renamed battleship consistent with the current zeitgeist, but including a fitting twist from Andy Borowitz.

    So who is going to pay for all the self-flattering glitz, when taxes for the poor billionaires (who just can’t get enough money) are being cut? YOU are, my friends!

    And meanwhile, people like me, who get poverty level Social Security Retirement Income, just got a cut in SNAP benefits because of the annual Cost of Living Adjustment that comes each January. This has happened to me every year, but makes absolutely no sense, especially in this economy when the cost of groceries remain high. Gotta hope voters remember it all come November…

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    • “Donald Trump‘s proposed “Trump-class” battleships would be large surface combatants, displacing 30,000 to 40,000 tons, up to 880 feet long, making them bigger than current U.S. destroyers but smaller than historical Iowa-class battleships, yet equipped with advanced weapons like hypersonic missiles, railguns, and lasers. While described as the largest surface combatants since WWII, they’re smaller than older battleships but aim to be far more powerful, featuring nuclear-armed cruise missiles, and potentially 20-25 ships built, according to recent announcements in late 2025.” 

      Considering how long it takes to build ships like these, they may never be completed or even launched during what’s left of Trump’s life, and even if they are completed, I suspect there will be a name change, with Trump’s name deleted just like it will vanish from the Kennedy Center.

      Construction on the new “Trump-class” battleships is projected to begin in the early 2030s, with estimates suggesting the first ship could be commissioned in the early to mid-2030s, taking around a decade from design to completion due to the novelty, scale, and complexity, despite promises of faster timelines (around 2.5 years) made by President Trump. The lengthy process involves years of design, systems engineering, and then several years for construction, far exceeding the 30-month figure mentioned, as even smaller destroyers take years to build. 

      If Trump rushes the launch dates to get them built before 2028, they will not function and will probably sink the same day they are launched.

      It think it is guaranteed that the cost overruns and fraud will be enormous, all with Trump’s blessing.

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      • Lloyd,

        I look forward to the day when Trump’s name is deleted from every place he has attached it. Maybe his grand gilded ballroom will be torn down and the East Wing will be restored.

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    • BTW, my monthly SNAP benefit now amounts to $4.74 per day for food. Do the billionaires who believe that people like me (retired indigent seniors) shouldn’t be getting SNAP (at all) think THEY could ever live on that? People can’t even buy a sandwich for that in my neck of the woods!

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      • I don’t want to bash all billionaires, but for sure, those that support the Toxic T. don’t think about the working class in terms of being human, or care if they have a place to live, medical care, or food.

        They see the other 99% as tools (as numbers without names) to father their power and wealth.

        Those billionaires, like the Toxic T, only care about themselves, their mansions, private jets and yachts, their power to control the lives of the working class, and that their wealth keeps growing no matter what happens to the middle class and people living in poverty.

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      • Well, a lot of those billionaires, like Jeff Bezos, can thank people like me for a huge amount of their online food sales. That’s because when the Pandemic was raging and we were all stuck at home, NO companies had permission to sell food to SNAP recipients online, so a very large number of us had no way to buy groceries! I immediately contacted both federal and state representatives and begged them to approve online SNAP sales –and they did do it! Amazon was the first to be given permission and gradually other places were approved as well, such as grocers I buy from through Instacart.

        So: “You’re welcome, billionaires! I bet you didn’t think there were any highly educated, intelligent problem-solvers who depend on SNAP!” (I signed my notes to all the government representatives I contacted with my professor title and real name so they would take me seriously and get right on it –which they did do and they let me know it in their replies to me!)

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      • It never occurred to me before that someone had to be uneducated to apply to SNAP, so curious I just asked Google and here’s the reply.

        “While exact recent figures vary, around 1.1 million college students relied on SNAP (food stamps) nationally as of late 2025, with data suggesting millions more are eligible but don’t receive it, showing a significant portion of higher-ed students facing food insecurity, despite many having some college education or degrees. Recent data from 2020 found 3.8 million college students experienced food insecurity, with significant percentages of those with higher education levels (like some college or even Bachelor’s degrees) also participating in the program.”

        A college education doesn’t come with a guarantee that when they retire or have to stop working due to health issues, they will automatically have a living retirement wage.

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      • Lloyd, Your last paragraph is exactly right!!!

        I didn’t just have a bachelor’s degree though, I earned an associates, masters and doctorate, too, and I spent the last 25 years of my career training people to get all of those degrees at several different colleges.

        Also, eligibility for SNAP is based on income, not educational level, but I don’t think a lot of people know how underpaid teachers are when they’ve never had an opportunity to belong to a union (like me –for all 52 years of my teaching career!)

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      • I should warn people what happens when I’m triggered. What follows is the result.

        For sure, “a lot of people (do not) know how underpaid teachers are when they’ve never had an opportunity to belong to a union (like me –for all 52 years of my teaching career!)”

        Labor unions make a big difference when they have teeth, but they are dying.

        The psychopaths who happen to be billionaires, just like Trump, hate anyone, who dares to challenge their power and threaten the unlimited, never ending growth of their bloated wealth, which explains why Jesus Christ said this about the wealthy:

        Matthew 19:23-26 American Standard Version (ASV) And Jesus said unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

        The Bible has a lot to say about the super greedy like Trump and his billionaire allies.

        “The Bible presents a nuanced view of rich people, acknowledging that wealth isn’t inherently evil and God blesses some, like Abraham and Job, but warns sternly that riches often lead to pride, idolatry (loving money over God), and spiritual danger, making it difficult for the wealthy to enter heaven (Matthew 19:23-24). Key themes include using wealth for good, being generous, avoiding arrogance, trusting God instead of riches, and serving God rather than money, with scriptures emphasizing stewardship and warning the rich to care for the poor.” 

        What about the Quran?

        “The Quran teaches that wealth is a trial from God, a blessing to be used for good, not a sign of His favor; the wealthy are expected to be grateful by spending in His path (charity, helping relatives/poor) and avoiding greed, extravagance, and hoarding, as it can lead to arrogance and distraction from faith, with true richness being contentment in the heart and good deeds.”

        Buddhism?

        “Buddhism views wealth neutrally, seeing it as a tool that can either foster suffering through greed or bring happiness when used wisely and ethically, emphasizing that true wealth lies in spiritual qualities like faith, virtue, generosity, and wisdom. Wealthy individuals are encouraged to acquire it honorably, use it to support themselves, their families, and the less fortunate (monks, the poor), and avoid attachment, greed, or misuse, understanding its limitations and focusing on spiritual growth.” 

        Confucius?

        “Confucius taught that wealth and honor are desirable only if obtained through virtuous means; gaining them in an unjust or corrupt society is a disgrace, as true honor comes from integrity, not riches. He believed wealth gained improperly is fleeting, like “floating clouds,” and true fulfillment comes from living according to the Dao (the Way), even in poverty, like his devoted disciple Yan Hui. For Confucius, moral character and right conduct were paramount, not material gain.”

        Daoism?

        Daoism views great wealth with caution, not inherently evil, but warns against the attachment, greed, and ego it fosters, which lead away from the natural flow of the Tao (the Way) and true inner richness found in contentment, simplicity, and generosity. The focus shifts from possessing things to possessing peace of heart; the wealthy should use their resources to benefit others without attachment, acting with humility and moderation to avoid corruption and societal imbalance, seeing true wealth as inner well-being, not accumulation. 

        Since Christianity didn’t exist as an organized religion until a few centuries after Jesus Christ’s death, and the fact that Jesus was a Jew from birth to death, what he said reflects the Old Testament.

        Jesus explicitly stated in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them,” indicating his teaching was meant to complete, not contradict, Old Testament law, though he often deepened its meaning and revealed its true spiritual intent, even while upholding its authority until “heaven and earth pass away”. 

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      • Thanks, Lloyd, for all the detailed info about different religious perspectives on greed etc. –a lot of which I did not know! Jews are supposed to give a tithe of their income (among other things) as mercy, especially to those who are unfortunate.

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      • When I entered the workforce in the late 60s and early 70s, I saw how lots of union jobs with pensions were disappearing in America. I went to Europe a few times then and was amazed that they had flourished over there so much that, in England, seniors were called “pensioners.” They are still called that there, but the number of union jobs have since declined over there as well.

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  5. Lloyd, FYI, I just asked the Search Assistant (AI) in Duck Duck Go, “What are the educational levels of people on SNAP?” and it gave the following reply:

    Many participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have varying educational backgrounds, with a significant number being adults without education beyond high school. However, data shows that about 1 in 7 recipients are college graduates, indicating that individuals with some form of post secondary education also rely on SNAP benefits.

    nasfaa.org Wikipedia Educational Levels of SNAP Participants

    The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) serves a diverse group of individuals with varying educational backgrounds. Here’s a breakdown of the educational levels among SNAP participants:

    General Educational Attainment

    Educational Level Percentage of Participants

    High School Graduates Majority of participants

    Some College Experience Significant portion

    College Graduates About 1 in 7 recipients

    Less than High School Not specified

    Key Insights

    • Most SNAP participants have education levels primarily at or below high school.
    • A notable number of participants have some college experience but have not graduated.
    • Approximately 14% of SNAP recipients are college graduates, indicating that individuals with higher education also rely on SNAP.

    This data highlights the broad socioeconomic range of individuals who depend on SNAP, reflecting the program’s role in supporting those facing food insecurity, regardless of their educational background.

    Wikipedia nasfaa.org

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    • Sorry, Lloyd, I see now that the formatting in my above post got lost after I clicked the Reply button here, but two key points are that:

      1 in 7 (or 14% of) people who get SNAP completed their bachelor’s degree. (It didn’t say anything about people who have earned graduate degrees –either masters or doctorates.)

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      • Still, it proves that SNAP is meant for everyone who qualifies, regardless of education level.

        “The average SNAP participant receives around $188-$192 in monthly food assistance, though this varies by household size, income, and location, with higher amounts for families and seniors; benefits are calculated to supplement, not replace, income, meaning higher earnings generally lead to lower SNAP amounts, but deductions for expenses like rent or medical costs can increase benefits.”

        So, Trump and his billionaire butt buddies, who are all psychopaths, like Trump, resent even this small sum, which isn’t enough to eat all month, going to someone who needs it if that money could help increase their wealth and power.

        “The average cost to feed one person for a month in the U.S. varies, but generally falls between $300 and $500+, depending heavily on budget (Thrifty to Liberal), location, and eating habits, with USDA data suggesting around $392-$465 for moderate home-cooked diets and broader figures including dining out reaching $572 or more. For a thrifty approach (mostly cooking at home), expect closer to $300-$375, while a moderate plan might be $400-$500, and liberal/dining out can push costs much higher, notes Instacart, Ramsey Solutions, and the USDA, via {Link: PocketGuard, SoFi, and Move.org, respectively.” I’m still using Google. I want to try Duck Duck Go.

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      • I get $147 per month in Snap –which does not go very far (and even though my income is considered to be below the poverty level.)

        Also, in Reform Judaism, as I was raised, we believe very strongly that we are responsible for Tikum Olam –which means healing the world, including ameliorating the human condition.

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  6. I tend to agree with Bernie Sanders’s view that good actions by Trump should be acknowledged, while bad ones should be firmly opposed. Trump’s proposal to stop corporations from buying single-family homes addresses a real problem and is worth supporting in principle. That said, as always, the devil is in the details.

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  9. I just watched a video of an interview with Jake Lang — the guy who gave the Nazi salute in Minneapolis. In the video, Lang tells Nick Shirley that his mother is Jewish and confirms that photos of him in Jerusalem, wearing a yarmulke and kissing the Wailing Wall with his family, are real.

    Very strange!

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  10. The following info should be spread widely amongst working class MAGATS and any independents who are living under the delusion that the GOP and their leader want to help regular people who are struggling in this economy, since they plan to slash taxes even more on the richest 1%: “Top 15 US Billionaires Gained Nearly $1 Trillion in Wealth in Trump’s First Year”

    https://truthout.org/articles/top-15-us-billionaires-gained-nearly-1-trillion-in-wealth-in-trumps-first-year/

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  11. Lloyd, I have been losing paragraphs on this blog a lot, too, which I know is incredibly frustrating. So, I wanted to let you know that the work-around I’ve found for that issue is to always copy what I’ve written before I submit my posts. Then, if it gets lost again, I can just paste it and try again. I wanted to suggest that to you just in case that problem is the reason why I haven’t been seeing posts from you lately. (You are missed!)

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  12. 2025 was a really “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad” year economically for a lot of Americans. Here’s the info: “State-by-State Cost Data: Families Spent Over $1600 More in 2025 Due to Inflation Under Trump.” https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c5ca6804-f0a0-427d-b163-567a42484942/jec-state-inflation-costs-fact-sheet.pdf

    It was even worse for some of us. For example, My rent increased $70 per month, which comes to $840 per year, but I don’t see even one state listed which comes anywhere near that high as the average increase for housing (and my rent does not include heat or central AC –both of which I pay separately myself and are each hundreds of dollars!) This month, I got a Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) on my Social Security Retirement Income, which was only $35 per month, but because of that increase, they cut my SNAP benefits! And the cost of groceries are very high around here…

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    • BTW, I have dyscalculia and numbers don’t usually stick in my head, but I’m 73, have been paying rent for all my adult life and I recall when, if I got a rent increase, (which didn’t happen every year) it was like just $5 or $10 per month –and $25 was considered to be high. I’ve lived in this place for 6 years and I think a $70 rent increase is outrageous –and unsustainable in this economy– thanks to DJT and his fellow price gouging landlords!!!

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      • And I think that making a lord of the land President was bound to come back and smack tenants in the face, so thanks a lot thoughtless MAGAT voters for promoting him to king –TWICE!!

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  14. I just posted this in LinkedIn…

    A Case for the Public Schools

    Why Are We Doing This?

    I have been writing posts advocating for the public schools on LinkedIn for years now.  I not only believe in the institution but have good evidence that our country will not survive without well-funded community schools. 

    As bad as the conditions are in Minnesota today, this is a culmination of an economic, media driven, and ideological enterprise that has brought us here. The reality in our communities over the past four decades have left many in our electorate grasping for something to make their circumstances better while those with power and wealth have acted in self-interest.  

    Yes, there are forces in this country that want to end the public schools.  They take this position for many reasons. In the guise of libertarianism or conservatism they seem to believe that everyone gets what they deserve through their action or inaction.  Therefore, it should be up to “good and industrious” citizens to educate and prepare their progeny for adulthood. Tough luck to those who do not.  The existence of generational poverty is a direct challenge to this perspective.  

    The Founders coming out of the Enlightenment, which was a good thing by the way, knew that the success of our revolutionary republic required an educated populous that could form “a more perfect union, provide for the common defence, and promote the GENERAL welfare.” They believed that we could not reach our potential as a nation if we did not invest in common schools.

    In my lifetime we have experienced Vietnam, Watergate, neoliberalism, drug fueled crime in the eighties and nineties, high stakes testing,(Yes, it has been that significant), Nine/ eleven, forever wars, a Great Recession, the Tea Party, Occupy Wallstreet, social media run amok, January 6th, and now our government shooting boats out of the water and citizens on the streets.  

    Meanwhile, we have gradually defunded public education, funded private schools through vouchers, and given money carte Blanche to charter interests. We have misrepresented reading proficiency and math for academic rigor and declared public schools a failure because we refuse to put appropriate funding in underprivileged communities believing they get what they deserve.

    Public education is a necessary adhesion to keep varied interests pursuing happiness. Such a goal cannot be attained without an understanding that we are dependent on one another to achieve such ends.  

    Yes, our government is terribly inefficient and misguided now. We will struggle to regain any form of equilibrium, thus a threat to our country, if we do not invest in our children by funding their education from the womb.  The reality that we continue to educate the few at the expense of the many puts our future in doubt.  

    Anyone that thinks we benefit from killing one another shows little regard for the good of all.

    ©Paul Bonner

    Paulabonnerwrites.com

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      • I consider myself a progressive and, with no options, a Democrat. I guess the “we” is that I have to find a more effective and forceful way to engage. I refuse to be run over.

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      • There is nor shortage of registered Democrat who are “raptors.”

        Joining the military and being sent to fight in a war is not exclusive to Republicans.

        “Studies, including data from Pew Research Center, indicate that 63% of veteran voters lean Republican, compared to 35% for Democrats.”

        Still, The Military Times annual polls during Trump 1.0. showed that the Toxic T. never had a majority of active duty troops support him, and 70% of officers didn’t.

        The Marines had the highest ratio of troops who supported Trump, which still didn’t break 50% (not counting the officers who, even in the Marines, were 70% against.

        The Air Force had the smallest level of support.

        The Military Times conducts an annual poll.

        I can’t find that poll for 2025. Maybe the Toxic T’s regime blocked it.

        But I did find this from another site, not the Military Times, which may be a controlled puff piece. I didn’t do a close reading but a scan made me suspicious.

        https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/12/27/praise-and-concern-military-veterans-get-candid-trump-pentagon.html

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      • I wonder if the momentum shifts from Trump since he declares and insurrection. There may be military who are appalled by all of this, but Republicans seem unwilling to challenge Trump. The Dems need to get unified and aggressive.

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      • Here’s what I suspect is happening in the military.

        The Toxic T’s stooge running the DOD is creating (hidden from the media and public) MAGA military units loyal to the mastermind behind the failed violent bloody coup attempt on January 6, 2021, with handpicked troops and officers who will also murder innocent people like some ICE agents are doing for the fascist MAGA KKK hate cult and regime.

        Those are the active duty militia units the convicted rapist, fraud and felon’s regime will send when (not if) he invokes the Insurrection Act and invade a blue state or city.

        Even if Congress acts to stop those MAGA thugs in uniform from spreading chaos, wreck and ruin in blue states and cities, it takes time and with the courts it takes even longer.

        By then the damage will be done.

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      • Well, I may be right and wrong. I changed the question and got this from earlier this month. Maybe the Military Times was blocked from the active duty annual military poll but published one about what all American’s think.

        https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/01/14/what-americans-think-about-trumps-military-intervention-abroad-poll/

        “Military Times has maintained dedicated, full-time correspondents at the Pentagon to cover defense policies and leadership. Recent and past Pentagon bureau chiefs and correspondents for Military Times include Meghann Myers and Andrew Tilghman. Other reporters, such as Tara Copp, previously served as the Pentagon Bureau Chief for the publication.” 

        The Military Times correspondents may have walked out with the rest, which means they may not have anyone covering the pentagon on site anymore.

        “On October 15, 2025, approximately 40 to 50 journalists, representing major outlets like The Associated Press, The New York Times, and Fox News, walked out of the Pentagon after refusing to accept new, restrictive media policies imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. This collective walkout was a protest against requirements that restricted reporting to only approved information. “

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  15. Recently (in mid December) the GOP Congress and their self-appointed (soon to be) King of the World (via his supposed “Board of Peace”) gave $1776 checks to US Veterans, ostensibly in honor of our country’s upcoming 250 year anniversary. That was a bit premature though, so really, I think, it was done to buy their ratings (and future votes), since he keeps up with the polls daily and he’s been behind but can’t stand it when he’s losing…

    So did all Vets get that check, including those here? And what do people think are the chances of him doing the same thing for ALL US citizens this summer, to honor July 4th 1776 at a more appropriate time, in 2026 –much like he did during COVID?

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    • Weren’t those $1,776 checks only for active duty military, not inactive veterans? I read a piece about that meager bribe and what that amount could buy.

      Most of the active duty troops are not that stupid. The Toxic T increases his fortune by more than a billion in 2025 and the orange diarrhea of the mouth sends them that paltry sum which might feed an average family for half a month or pay the winter heating bill for a month or two.

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      • IDK, but I thought the checks were for VETS and that VET means your were in the service previously, not currently. But I can see him honoring just people who are serving now for his own purposes, such as to tap into them for his killing machine…

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    • The mastermind behind the January 6, 2021, failed violent bloody coop attempt doesn’t think ahead. He lives in the moment and lets his malignant emotions decide just about everything for him, which is why he handpicks people who support him without question in his regime to do the long range planning, which most of them are not good at either.

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  16. In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day today, January 27, 2026, I want to wish peace and love to all here who highly value having a heart and empathy, and who truly care about not repeating the horrific antisemitism, hatred and murder of 6 million Jews, as well as others who experienced such atrocities, such as the Roma, Slavs, homosexuals, the disabled, etc.

    This means my hat is off to those who value people that are different from them, including folks with black and brown skin, Muslims, Catholics, Asians etc., because All human beings who honestly have compassion for others and aim to do the right thing deserve to be honored –as opposed to the haters and killers who love only themselves, power and money that the fascist administration promotes and supports…

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    • “To soften the blow of his insults” at Davos, the malignant narcissist “reminded his audience: “I am derived from Scotland and Germany – 100% Scotland, my mother, 100% German, my father – and we believe deeply in the bonds we share with Europe and I want to see it do great.” See: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-launches-fresh-attack-on-european-losers_uk_6970dbb7e4b084d7018307d8

      Funny he didn’t mention that 2 of his 3 wives were Slavs and 4 of his 5 children are 1/2 Slav –which Hitler saw as being “subhuman” and targeted during World War II…

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      • Look under the Toxic T’s hood, everything in there is built on lies and cheating. Don’t believe anything the convicted rapist, fraud and felon says. It’s all BS!

        The grandfather on his father’s side built the family fortune on prostitution and gambling during the Alaskan gold rush. He owned a saloon that made money off all the prospectors flooding into Alaska. With that money, he started buying property in New York, which his father inherited and grew larger.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Thanks for all the info, Lloyd! I never heard anything about that before now!! Wow! So the shady family dealings go a long way back… We should not be surprised!!!

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      • After the orange constipation of the brain came down that escalator, I decide to find who he was by focusing on his life before 2015. Before the 2016 election, I knew if he won, the US was in serious trouble and nothing he’s does surprises me. I think he’s more t he capable of starting WWIII and not losing sleep if he killed of most of the human race and live on earth as we know it.

        If the devil walks among us, it’s him.

        What baffled me was how he kept getting away with all the unconstitutional, illegal BS he’s pulled off and keeps getting away with. It’s no secret.

        The convicted rapist, fraud and felon is a walking talking crime Tsunami.

        He should be in prison. Not in the White House.

        Liked by 1 person

      • And, tragically for the rest of us, as long as “no one cares” enough to hold him accountable, he’ll just keep ignoring the Constitution at every turn, and he will continue to personally profit from doing so Big Time, since he adheres to the creed, “give me an inch and I will take a mile”…

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      • It isn’t as if no one cares.

        If the Republicans didn’t hold the majority of seats in both houses of congress and six conservative votes in the U.S. Supreme Court, the convicted rapist, fraud and felon wouldn’t be where he is now. He would have fled the country to live out his life in Russia or be in prison.

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      • You’re right, Lloyd. It’s that no with power cares, because they are MAGATs who prefer to personally have all power themselves –and a lot more than they want to maintain a Constitutional Democractic Republic that serves and protects every citizen.

        Its just so sad to have to be celebrating our nation’s upcoming 250 year anniversary when it’s demise is actually impending, because of those self-centered people and their leaders who don’t give a hoot about about anyone else…

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      • There is a possibility, the US will survive with fewer states. We started with 13. I have no complaints dropping back to about 25.

        About half the states will be renamed TRUMP and the rest may stay United States with a similar Constitution, which also stays in NATO; hopefully without the Electrical College and immunity for thugs like the Toxic T.

        The convicted rapist, fraud and felon will move his capital to Florida, and maybe what’s left of the United States will keep DC.

        The country of Trump will soon become a shit-hole country.

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      • Lloyd,

        Either prospect sounds good. Instead, he will be rolling in dough, enjoying his mob boss tactics.

        Do you think Scott Bessent will deny his demand for $10 billion?

        How could he suffer reputational damage when he has such a bad reputation?

        D

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      • His MAGA KKK hate cult loyalists know about his reputation and don’t care. I read that they like his lies. From what I read in Quora, there are a lot more people who can’t stand the toxic turd.

        Do you mean the $10 billion the convicted rapist, fraud, and felon is suing the BBC for?

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      • Lloyd,

        I was referring to the $10 billion he is suing the IRS and Treasury Dept for, because a contractor had released the fact that he paid almost no taxes in 2026 and 2017.

        Will Scott Bessent fight him in court?

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      • The alleged pedophile, convicted rapist, fraud, felon, and the mastermind behind the failed, violent, bloody coup attempt in Washington DC on January 6,2021, Donald (the porn star’s) John Trump appointed Scott Bassent to lead the Treasury Department and temporarily oversea the IRS.

        That’s why I do not think Bassent will fight the lifelong cheater and Gish Gallop master of lies.

        The dictator lover and family crime lord also filed in a Florida federal court in late January 2026, this suit is being brought by Trump as a private citizen. I have no doubts, that the toxic orange turd handpicked the judge.

        Still, the suit may face hurdles, including the two-year statute of limitations for such disclosures, although the plaintiffs claim they only learned of the specific breach later. 

        I failed to find out if someone else can fight Trump in court of that $10 billinop claiml.

        The good new is that the BBC is going to fight leader of the MAGA KKK hate cult’s $10 billion dollar suit against them.

        https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/bbc-seeks-to-have-trumps-10-billion-lawsuit-dismissed/articleshow/126501814.cms?from=mdr

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  18. Border issues could be a nightmare though. I don’t know that much about the Parliamentary system, but maybe joining Canada and the UK would work best.

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    • I wouldn’t mind becoming The Blue States of America (or Canada) but I don’t know how it could be done without having another Civil War…

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      • Dissolving the union is a very compelling notion, as is letting each state choose the country they want to join. (If we are thinking broadly, then I like Finland as well!) But unfortunately, I can’t imagine the self-appointed King of the World giving up any states without a huge fight.

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      • You’d think a guy so hell-bent on winning the Nobel Peace Prize would realize that the way national leaders treat their own citizens and what they do to unite people from diverse groups within their countries are just as important as settling wars between other countries –if not more so (“charity begins at home”).

        No nation’s divisive dictator has ever won the Peace prize and none ever will. That’s because model leaders who’ve deserved to win the award were able to show compassion and respect for the rights of all kinds of people, not just for those who are in groups that happen to be their personal favorites (like the super rich, those in red states, just people who voted for him, etc.)

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      • There may be a way to avoid Trump using force to keep those states under his control.

        The states that leave claim they represent the real United States and are leaving the union to preserve the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. alliance with NATO and continue to honor the agreements the (real) United States made to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

        Trump will claim he leads the United States.

        The states that split from Trump’s leaders claim the are the real United States.

        I think Canada and the EU will recognize the states that split from Trump, meaning the smaller United States ends up with militarily allies on day one.

        Will Trump and his MAGA KKK hate cult regime start a nuclear world war III with Europe to hold on to the states the want to leave?

        China may also join the EU and Canada in recognizing the smaller US. China is already making moves to fill the void the US created under Trump in Europe.

        That would cement China’s place as a growing world leader.

        While it will take time for the smaller United States to build up it’s military, Canada is next door and as a NATO member, too, would be able to help faster than the EU would if it came to a fight.

        Liked by 1 person

  19. During the 12 years that I was a Kindergarten teacher, I developed a program where I taught the young children in my class to be Peacekeepers, so that they could learn how to get along well with others at our diverse school, help their peers verbally to resolve social disputes, and so they wouldn’t become bullies who easily resorted to fighting. They engaged in it both in our classroom and on the playground, where they helped children in Preschool classes as well. It was a very successful program and I did not have to give anyone a prize for participating in it, because it was inherently rewarding, so kids really enjoyed doing it. I regularly recognized their efforts, but tangible rewards were unnecessary.

    I don’t think our current president will ever get the Peace prize because he wants the award but makes no effort to get along with diverse people in his own country, many of whom have been the least advantaged historically, and whose life circumstances have differed greatly from his own. Those are the people who are in need of compassion, empathy and support the most, but he does nothing to help them and instead denies the significance of their struggles. He should know that the peace prize is not for someone who prides himself in being a bully and a fighter –as my 4, 5 and 6 year old students were able to learn…

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      • Lloyd, For those of us who have been bullied, fighting with words can be awful, too, especially when there’s a group of bullies –not just fighting like gangbusters with fists. But you are right –he usually uses words and then backs off when confronted…

        Also, I had forgotten about the EU and you are right about them as well! (Thank goodness our European allies are smart, have good sense and they did not join the self-appointed King of the World’s fake Peace Board…)

        Liked by 1 person

      • Maybe provocateur would be a better word than fighter, because he is confrontational and he intentionally antagonizes people, but the only place he actually follows through with fighting is in those fake wrestling matches (WWE) –where he found the most inappropriate woman to lead the Department of Education today.

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      • Does anyone he appointed to run his regime know what they are doing?

        Their only qualification is blind obedience and loyalty to him. He calls all the shots. They accept all the blame.

        And he’s been faking it all is life, spending most of his time covering up the truth about his crimes and failures more than anything.

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      • Lloyd,

        Exactly right.

        He was a total failure in business. He filed for bankruptcy multiple times.

        He made his mark as a performer, who played the role of a successful businessman.

        He also plays the role of a President. That’s the one that made him a billionaire. Selling pardons. Selling access to him at private dinner. Selling crypto. Selling meme coins, watches, caps, every other kind of merch. Not to mention the real estate deals with Middle Eastern potentates. Suing corporations for millions.

        Now he’s a real billionaire!

        Liked by 1 person

      • Sorry, Lloyd, I forgot to include the links. See: Trump fighting Vince McMahon at WWE (who established WWE): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=trump+wwe+fight

        Wife Linda McMahon, who helped him get WWE off the ground, now Secretary of the Department of Education: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_McMahon

        And we thought his Secretary of the Department of Education last time was awful, Betsy DeVos, billionaire from the xtian right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betsy_DeVos

        So yes, he has a history of picking the least qualified people that aim to do more damage than good, in these cases, such as sending public funds to religious, private, charter and home schools, not serving children with disabilities, determining curriculum and getting rid of the DoE as well as public education altogether.

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      • At this point, I think the only way to end this MAGA BS is a total all out Civil War ending in the country splitting into two.

        One country called MAGA-Trump-land (or something else with Trump in it) and the other country what’s left of the real United States fighting to keep the US Constitution, which at least gets rid of the Electoral College.

        Still, even if Trump died tomorrow of natural causes, that isn’t going to end the threat, with roots going back to the 1970s or earlier.

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      • Lloyd, When you wrote this, “Still, even if Trump died tomorrow of natural causes, that isn’t going to end the threat, with roots going back to the 1970s or earlier” were you referring to the Powel Memo from 1971? If so, you are exactly right, because that is precisely what inspired Project 2025 and all that we are contending with today.

        See: “From the Powell Memo to Project 2025: How a 1971 Blueprint Shaped America’s Conservative Revolution” below, because it explains a lot about what we’ve been witnessing, including how and why it all occurred: https://legalbeaglejackharding.substack.com/p/from-the-powell-memo-to-project-2025

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      • I have trouble keeping up with this feed but here it goes…We are in a Civil War declared by those in power against our citizenry. The problem is that many of the major cities targeted by Trump are in red states. A delineation of territory is impossible. The threat is from many not one. Has anyone noticed that Russ Vought has been very quiet lately? He isn’t sitting in a corner. He is poisoning all parts of the federal government with his Cheshire grin. It is being reported that Proud Boys et al are a big part of the ICE contingent. While Trump bloviates in every direction, the schemers are infiltrating every part of the country. The Director f National Intelligence is taking ballots from GA. Two journalists have been arrested. Meanwhile, Schumer continues to “negotiate” with people who have no intention of enforcing any agreement. Epstein, anyone? The revolution should be within the Democratic Party, but alas, corporate America has kept any rabble rousers on a leash.

        It’s cold even here in Atlanta (0 degree windchill). I can only imagine what Minnesotans are going through at minus 20 degrees. I worry about the forces Hegseth is assembling while waiting for orders resulting from the Insurrection Act. Today in the Times, David French wrote “This Is Not A Drill” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/opinion/midterms-election-influence-trump.html. He’s right.

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      • Months ago, I don’t remember exactly when, there was an email that arrived along with the morning flood of other email SLOP, they call SPAM, that caught my attention so I opened it, saw enough to want to click, and read what someone was reporting about one of the MAGA KKK leaders had said in a comment thread on their blog/site (maybe on Instagram or X), whatever, that to clean up the United States, to get the country the way “they” want, they’d have to execute at at least  60-million living in the United States.

        Later, I went back to read more and read that whoever wrote that on their site had deleted it. I forget the name. I didn’t take notes. I was overwhelmed with the morning flood of in-box slop, as usual, and moved on but couldn’t forget.  It usually takes me about an hour to clean up the slop from my Gmail account every morning, and even with that effort, the numbers of unopened emails, which I save because I plan to open them later, but later never comes, number in the thousands at the end of each month when I delete them in mass.

        Also, between 2021 and 2024, a comment was left on my blog offering to send me 20 pounds of evidence proving there was voter fraud. They wanted my address so they could mail the evidence to me. I declined. Told them to give that 20 pounds to Trump’s lawyers. They needed it more than me.

        A week later an unsigned letter printed on paper, without a return address, but postmarked from Florida, arrived in my USPS mail box telling me “they” found my address anyway and “they” knew where I lived. I slipped it in a large plastic bag and stored it away in my weapons safe.

        Then there are the one-star reviews for the military thriller The Patriot Oath I wrote, letting me know in their reviews that I earned that for lying about Trump in one paragraph near the end of the book in a minor character’s mind thinking about something she read in the Irish Times, which was based on an actual onion piece where she even mentioned the real-life Irish writer who wrote it with a byline, about Trump putting children in cages. One of those one-star reviews mentioned it was Obama who did that, not Trump. That review is still on Amazon for that book.

        Then there was the comment on one of my blogs or on Quora right after the results of the 2024 election, from an obvious sock puppet, warning me to “leave the country or sleep,” which I interpreted as “die”. Just one of many (I’ve lost count) attacking me for not being blindly loyal to the lifelong cheater, liar, convicted rapist, fraud, and felon, since the election of 2016.

        There have been so many insults and trolls with s ock puppet names supporting Trump, I’ve lost count.

        I’m still here. Waiting.

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      • Thank you.

        I know and I’m aware, which is why my PTSD is keeping me on high alert. It isn’t easy managing PTSD with these perceived threats going on.

        My body can’t handle being hypervigilant 24/7 with a constant flood of cortisone, like I’m in combat all the time, so I meditate and exercise daily to tone that down. I think that’s why I ended up in the ER in December 2023 for a full day. I still don’t know what triggered that extreme PTSD event.

        Something must have been going on in the US in late November or early December to triggered that extreme episode. Maybe something the Toxic T said that was reported in the news.

        The 24/7 VA nurse on call thought I might be having a stroke when I called that toll free number. After all the tests at the ER, they determined it wasn’t a stroke but was caused by stress.

        There’s no reason to be on high alert like that all the time. When fight or flight is triggered by a real threat, instead of an imagined one, it happens very fast triggering the mind and body so time seems to slow down (they call it splitting seconds) and you have super fast reflexes and strength for a short period of time, which comes with a price later when the threat is dealt with … if you survive.

        This happened to me several times when I was in Vietnam in 1966. Saved my life more than once have those faster reaction times and strength.

        Still, I was in my early twenties and didn’t know what was going on with my mind and body then. Now I know.

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      • Pabonner, I knew that managing borders would be a nightmare if blue and red states became different countries, but something you wrote made me realize that it would be even worse than I thought, primarily because of all the blue cities that are in red states. So I looked it up and this is what I found:

        Ice that’s in Blue Cities that are in Red States
        Charlotte North Carolina
        Jacksonville Florida
        Atlanta Georgia
        Fort Worth Texas
        Oklahoma City Oklahoma
        Phoenix Arizona
        Memphis Tennessee

        Other Blue Cities in Red States
        Austin Texas
        Nashville Tennessee
        Salt Lake City Utah

        (Red cities in blue states were not so easy for me to find.)

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      • Right again, Lloyd!

        My mom was a very dedicated civil rights activist and protesting racism is the story of my childhood –including in the Jim Crow South. Though I was born and raised in the North, my grandparents retired in the South when I was an infant and we went there so much that my parents sent my sister and me to schools there. My mom did not see racism that she could not confront, so I learned early on how dreadful Jim Crow laws were and how dangerous it was to fight for the rights of black people –especially in the South. When JFK was shot, I was only 11 years old but I decided that it happened because he supported Civil Rights legislation and that subsequently Lyndon Johnson made sure they had the votes to finally get that passed, in order to honor Kennedy.

        Yes, Nixon’s Southern Strategy was key to securing the racist vote for Republicans, since previously people in the South had refused to vote for GOP candidates merely because that had been the party of Lincoln. I think the smartest move though was their use of the Powell Memo as a way of soliciting support from wealthy racists and companies, since that enabled the GOP to get lucrative businesses on board with them, which could do a lot of damage by virtue of their money, power and influence.

        The GOP alliance with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has also been very effective, because they write conservative legislation that has aided the GOP in passing laws that support their racist agenda and has helped them to take over and control red states.

        It’s not just about supporting racism though. It has become very much about the GOP being the party of the wealthy, who want power and don’t want to pay taxes, so they don’t support social programs (including schools and health care) that help less prosperous citizens.

        Liked by 1 person

      • I know what you mean, Lloyd. I’ve boycotted Koch products for many years due to their extreme, self-centered politics…

        What a shame that most billionaires not only can’t ever get enough money to be satisfied personally, but they also like to put up obstacles for people who are much less fortunate to be able to find financial success. Selfishness abounds amongst conservatives and there are way too many of them like that today!

        Liked by 1 person

      • Hi Diane You email threads are so dominated by Lloyd and ECE professional that I find it just delete them all, Its like 10+ emails per day. Im afraid those 2 are wrecking your very valuable contribution.

        Doug Little Toronto

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      • Thank you, Diane. I really appreciate it!

        As it happens, coincidentally, I’ve got a whole lot going on in my life right now though, so I’m going to have to take a break to deal with it all, but I hope to return here in the future.

        Thanks again and all the best to you and yours!

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  20. I read something today indicating that Republicans think they’d be fine if they could just get rid of 60 million people, presumably Democrats. However, I read a lot of things today and due to browser issues, I can’t locate where I read that now. Did anyone else ever read something like that –and if so where?

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    • Never mind. Lloyd wrote about this above: “one of the MAGA KKK leaders had said in a comment thread on their blog/site (maybe on Instagram or X), whatever, that to clean up the United States, to get the country the way “they” want, they’d have to execute at at least  60-million living in the United States.” I must have seen the same thing, but I’ve looked all over and it’s gone now.

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      • Just so folks know, 60 million people is often given as the number of those who died in the world’s largest conflict in history, World War II –and over half of them were civilians. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

        So the KKK was talking about American deaths on a HUGE scale, and I’m guessing civilians would be the most likely to die then, too –all of which I think should be very alarming to us.

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      • This is especially disconcerting when it’s readily apparent to their leader, the guy who is in charge of the military, knows full well that most of the people they hate are concentrated in blue cities… And he claimed that his “own morality” is the only thing that limits him –when we’ve seen no evidence of him having a moral compass whatsoever…

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      • I’m sorry about the grammatical errors I made in my last post. My PTSD has been flaring up over these very serious national issues, as well as personal matters –neither of which I have much, if any, control over. But I need to attend to the latter as best I can, so I’ll be staying away from the national concerns for awhile now.

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      • Lloyd, some of us will never forget what happened on January 6, 2021.

        I had seen his tweet inviting his followers to be in DC on Jan 6. He said “It will be wild.”

        So of course I was glued to my TV that day.

        Trump encouraged the violence. He promised to march with his followers. Of course, he lied. He’s a coward.

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  22. As a low income senior with physical disorders, such as arthritis, what I’m able to do independently has become increasingly more challenging, (for example, I can’t take out my garbage because I’m unable to lift the dumpster lids). Previously I had roommates who helped me but I’ve been unable to find replacements, so I decided to look into whether I might qualify for getting free homemaker services to help. I just landed on a web page called “Elder Care”, which turned out to be an HHS website and at the top it says: “This site is being reviewed and updated as needed to comply with President Trump’s executive orders.” https://eldercare.acl.gov/resources?

    OMG! If I didn’t know before that we are currently living under a dictatorship, I certainly know it now. Do you believe that?? Have others run across this elsewhere, too?

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    • Trump is an extreme micromanager. He has to be involved in all decision making. So, yes, I have no problem believing the US federal government is no longer what the US Constitution and Congress created.

      The convicted rapist, fraud, felon, mastermind behind the January 6, 2021, failed violent, bloody coup attempt in DC, and his MAGA KKK hate cult allies/regime have already pulled off a hostile takeover of the federal government and the Trump era US government is described in detailed in Project 2025 and the newer, even worse nightmare Project 2026.

      The US MAGA KKK controlled government will be and do whatever Trump wants, which is why I’m still in the process of pulling my accounts out of a national bank and moving to a California state credit union.

      Eventually, the Toxic T will nationalize the banks, the oil companies, and any other industry he wants to control.

      And at the pace they are moving, all TT has to do is live another three to five years (brain dead qualifies as long as the heart is beating) to complete the hostile take over which will include states if there isn’t a civil war to stop that take over. Wanting to nationalize the elections fits TT’s lifelong management style. That’s how TT runs his family crime empire. His children are totally controlled by him and were raised to do what daddy says.

      I’m pretty sure TT also started sexually molesting his daughter when she was 12 or earlier. She does what he wants, too, whatever that is.

      Maybe now, she’s free of that abuse now since she aged out of what he likes, which is young.

      That’s why he bought Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants s and owned them from 1996 to 2015, and attended so many of Epstein’s underage rape parties.

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      • So the GOP claim that they want less government and would provide that really means less for the wealthy and advantaged, but more for the poor and disadvantaged.

        I’m in the latter groups and am just trying to get help removing garbage because I also can’t go outside when there’s ice and snow since my arthritic ankles collapse –so I fall and can’t get up. I need to be able to show my place to a potential roommate, because if I don’t find one ASAP, I’m going to be homeless again very soon. All of which probably means I will die in the ice, snow and cold. I’m guessing the very people who made homelessness illegal are actually hoping for that to happen to people like me, too. Say hello the hell of 2026 for those who are less fortunate…

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      • The Republican Party of Trump is not the same Republican Party, which existed before 2015. And it also wasn’t the working class champion it claimed it was back then with help from FOX fake NEWS

        Trump’s a allies, the MAGA KKK hate cult, worked with the convicted rapist, fraud, felon, and mastermind behind the failed, violent, bloody coup in DC on January 6, 2021, over several years orchestrating a hostile takeover of the party using the primaries like a weapon.

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      • Thanks, Lloyd. All very informative, as usual!

        The issue I’m dealing with now is that my brother has been helping me with my rent but it’s costly so he doesn’t want to do it anymore. That means I absolutely have to get a roommate, but I’ve now got a room full of regular and recyclable garbage and although I’ve tried to stack it neatly, there’s a lot of it so it really HAS to go if I want to show my place to any more potential roommates. Also, all of the programs I’ve looked into that provide free homemaker services to poor people want to see a lease, but now I don’t have one. That means I’d have to pay a service to remove the garbage, which I’ve looked into and that would be prohibitively costly for me –like then I can forget about being able to eat…

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      • I follow a blog out of the UK. In a couple of her posts she talked about how she had to simply decluttering the house she lives in with her husband.

        The last post on this topic she got it down to removing five single “thing’s” a day instead of boxes or rooms all at once. I thought that sounded great. How simple it sounded.

        Still, I’m. having challenges setting time aside to do even something that simple. Five items. Not a room or box. Just five items a day.

        suzie81speaks.com

        Liked by 1 person

      • Diane, For issues around safety, I don’t typically share that info online, but I also didn’t come here to lie. So here’s clues. I was born in, raised in and still reside in the same place as your friend, Lewis –who sadly died prematurely from a brain tumor not all that long ago, leaving thousands of sad, admiring mourners behind…

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      • P.S. In case you didn’t catch my drift, Lewis had been a teacher but was known primarily for playing a leadership role in education. I know you came here & met together at an NPE conference because I recall wanting to attend that myself. I couldn’t go though because I was too busy then trying to fend off becoming homeless (which did occur not long after that).

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      • When the mayor, who was in charge of the schools, promised teacher pay raises but then didn’t give them, Lewis inspired residents to hang banners from their windows, wear red t-shirts, honk their horns and march in support of teachers –which was done all across the city. I was teaching college then but lived across the street from a local high school so I marched for/with the teachers there.

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      • We went through stuff like that in the district where I taught in Southern California.

        Rowland Unified. A small district with about a 1,000 teachers and 20k students.

        California has more than a 1,000 school districts. I remember teaching all day and then going out to walk the picket line, which include teachers, parents, support staff, students, et al.

        Lots of horn honking for support. that how we eventually got a planning period and ended up teaching five period instead of s ix a day.

        Admin said we didn’t need a planning period. If we knew what we were doing, we could get all our work done before we left for the day soon after school ended.

        Really, my work weeks were 60 to 100 hours a week to keep up with teaching, planning, correcting, grading, parent contact, meetings, et al.

        When I retired after teaching thirty years, I promised myself I’d never go back into a classroom to teach again. If i had to earn a living for some reason, like Trumpish billionaire types finding a way to steal the funds in the CalSTRS retirement plan and drain it dry to add to their wealth, I’d volunteer to blow myself up in a war zone to kill enemy combatants … or, on second thought, maybe some of those greedy billionaires that never have enough.

        To get past their bodyguards, I’d strap bombs on me, pay to skydive (I’d lie to the pilot) out of a plane and plummet into their golf courses without a parachute and blow up taking as many of them as possible with me.

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      • I was just about to say that I’m sorry about what you’ve been going through but glad you feel prepared to defend yourself and deal with it all. Now I have to wonder though if you are OVER prepared. Take care of yourself, Lloyd. We don’t need killers and self sacrifices today. We need voters!

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      • As long as the CalSTRS retirement fund keeps depositing each month what I paid into and earned. I’ll be find.

        Still, public pension funds in several U.S. states are experiencing significant, long-term funding crises, although no state has officially gone bankrupt. The issues are primarily driven by chronic underfunding, investment losses, economic downturns, and, in some cases, mismanagement or high-risk, fee-heavy investments with private equity firms. 

        https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2025/07/30/an-increase-in-pension-obligations-adds-to-states-unfunded-liabilities

        As of late 2025, over 45 states reported public pension debt, with the most severe crises concentrated in a few states, including Illinois, New Jersey, Kentucky, and Connecticut. 

        California: While having a large, diversified economy, California holds the highest total dollar value of unfunded pension liabilities ($265 billion) as of late 2024.

        CalSTRS (California State Teachers’ Retirement System) is considered well-funded and on track for long-term sustainability, with a funded status of 76.7% as of June 30, 2024. The system is projected to reach full funding by 2046, driven by a seven-year streak of increasing funding levels and solid investment returns, including a 8.5% net return in the 2024–25 fiscal year. 

        Crossed fingers and knock on wood!

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      • OK, Lloyd, it’s not easy to knock on wood with my fingers crossed but I’ll try…

        I’m glad you got such terrific results from your strike! We didn’t have an elected school board ’til recently, and we’d only ever had ONE strike before the one I previously described, which I readily recalled because it occurred when I was in high school. I remember wondering then why no one had asked for our support –which really surprised me, as someone who had been in many marches throughout my childhood with my civil rights activist mom. Live and learn. Sounds like people in your town planned ahead very well!

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      • Teachers and students had more of a bond than students and administration. Rowland had a split school district with, literarily railroads tracks and a freeway separating poverty from wealth. I taught on the poverty side with child poverty rates at 70% and climbing depending on the schools location.

        Many of the teachers did a lot to support the students we worked with, often paying out of pocket for materials the students and their parents couldn’t afford and the district wouldn’t pay for.

        When I was the journalism advisor for the high school newspaper, I’d use my credit card to buy rebuilt Apple computers, because all of the tech we inherited was dying and none of us could afford new computers.

        So, I ran up debt, while the students sold Ads for the monthly high school newspaper to help buy new or rebuilt stuff, too.

        Teachers started and funded student clubs like hiking, chess, et al.

        Like

      • Also, having died in February of 2021, the five year Yahrzeit for Lewis (who was Jewish) was last week. RIP

        Like

      • Lloyd, Thanks for the reference and info about decluttering. I found the article here: https://suzie81speaks.com/2026/01/05/how-to-do-a-slow-declutter-of-your-home-and-life/#more-31411

        Very interesting! It’s a bit different from what I need to do right now, but I think it might be useful if I end up becoming homeless again and/or if I have to pare down my stuff and move to a smaller place, as my brother suggested –but which I don’t want to do since I invested a lot in my apartment and love it. (Plus I checked and smaller places around here are not more affordable than where I currently live).

        Like

      • Wow! Your students may have been disadvantaged but they were very fortunate to have had you as their devoted teacher! Wonderful job, Lloyd!

        Like

    • Diane, I’m sorry to have been so cryptic. When I first went online decades ago, I always used my own name, did not conceal my location and I met a lot of really great colleagues, often in my area, usually in chats on listservs. (Remember those?) I had roommates at the time, but then I lived alone for many years and after a couple experiences with hinky folks, I realized it was dangerous for me to put myself out there like that, so I started using pseudonyms and stopped revealing my location.

      That’s an issue for me today, too, except now it’s our government that I’m afraid of most. It’s certainly not a fear of you, so here’s one more clue: Don’t let the gender implied by the name that I provided confuse you…

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      • I understand your caution since I’m a MAGA target and have been targets of a tribe of trolls before the trump era, known as the Goodreads Bullies about twenty years ago.

        When they know your real name, they will find out where you live. They’ve done it to me. They spread lies about their targets, too. They’ve also threatened me. Told me to leave the country or sleep, which I took to mean die. That MAGA threat arrived soon after Trump cheated and lied to win in 2024. I will never believe that he won that election honestly.

        I didn’t leave. I’m still waiting for some lunatic to show up. I figure I have a 50-50 change to get them before they get me. Maybe the odds are better than that since the Marines trained us to be killers and combat vets used what they learned turning that training into reality, which almost has its own auto pilot switch when you live with PTSD gained from combat.

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  25. FYI, the next No Kings Day marches will NOT be on Presidents’ Day this year. The next ones scheduled are for next month, on March 28, 2026! Be sure to check around for marches in your area, plan ahead and no matter what, do not engage in violence –because we cannot give the king-wannabe any reasons to declare martial law and cancel elections this year! See: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/28/no-kings-protest-march-00750265

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    • In honor of Presidents’ Day, I think it would be wise to keep in mind what we have not had to do since our forefathers fought against the troops of King George III in the American Revolution, as well as celebrate what we are gladly missing by no longer being royal subjects.

      That’s because our king-wannabe has been to the courts of King Charles and Queen Elizabeth where he witnessed Royal Protocol –which requires all males to bow and all females to curtsy to the monarch. All people may also never show their backs to the monarch, so the monarch always goes first, and people have to walk backwards to the door when leaving a room etc. People may also never shake hands with the monarch unless the monarch initiates that himself/herself first.

      Our US king-wannabe would no doubt adore it if he (and his wife) were treated the same way, even though there are tapes of him notoriously ignoring Royal Protocol instead of following it himself for the Queen.

      Plus, given his nazi base and fascist leanings, as well as how self-serving and demanding he is, he may also require that everyone take an oath of allegiance to HIM, and he might make it mandatory for all people to regularly give “Hail Trump” salutes, including instead of saying hello and goodbye (as with Hitler)…

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      • True. All true! Still, his mental and physical health are both going. I do not think the Toxic T will survive long enough to launch a dynasty. Getting rid of his fascist, MAGA KKK hate regime may be the real challennge.

        Liked by 1 person

  27. Diane, I saw what happened with that huge snow storm in NY, as well as predictions that more is coming today, so I just wanted to say I’ve been thinking of you and hoping that you are doing OK. Take care and all the best to you and yours!

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Thank you, ECE.

      I returned from a vacation Saturday night. Happy to be in my warm apartment.

      The snow started Sunday Mid-day. We didn’t go out.

      The snow intensified on Monday, and it snowed most of the day. We didn’t go out. It was very beautiful to see, especially since Mayor Mamdani declared an emergency and banned traffic. No cars, no trucks.

      The snow remained pristine.

      I have yet to step outside.

      But this lovely peaceful idyll ends tomorrow when a friend flies in from California bearing a puppy that she rescued. She is from Mexico, part of a group of dogs that were abandoned and saved.

      When I heard her name was Eloise, I told my friend that I was naming her Eleanor Roosevelt, and she now responds to Ella and Elly.

      Bottom line: once Ella is mine, I will be walking through the slush and snow three times a day.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • Most certainly I will post pictures. She has been in California since November–running with a pack on beaches, meadows and hiking trails. She’s about to experience a major transition to urban life.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Oooh, that’s such good news!! I’m so glad for you, Diane!!!

        Maybe you can puppy train Ella inside on a peapad, and if you have space outside your back door, put another one there. Plus for times of inclement weather, you can have a dog-run built out back, preferably by an over-hanging roof…

        Like

      • I’m sorry, Diane. I shouldn’t have assumed you have a house with a yard in NY. I live in a basement apt in an apt/condo building with no backyard. I do have a small patio though and my next door neighbor, who also lives in a basement apt/condo here, has two dogs and she uses a pea-pad on her patio. Our patios are below the back porches above, so virtually no snow can reach us. I realize we have a unique setup here, but I’d still recommend puppy training inside with a pea-pad, so that maybe you can hold off having to drudge through the snow and ice 3x a day for now.

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  28. Diane, I was glad to learn that the weather improved in your area! As others here, I’m looking forward to seeing pictures of Ella and learning about your experiences together. Hope all is going well for you and yours!

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  29. I’m getting involved in a battle to stop two charter co-locations in my neighborhood, Diane—at Holmes Middle School and Valley Academy of Arts and Sciences. A petition has been started to oppose the invasion, and community members will be meeting on March 11 to discuss strategy. I found your story about meeting with Al Shanker and his original idea for a “school within a school” fascinating, especially his foresight in recognizing how the concept was evolving into something quite different—and potentially harmful to public education.

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    • If you do not know this, you may also want to look at the PISA test comparisons between developed countries ranked by economic level.

      I think a study at Stanford did the first break down and comaprison.

      Maybe that revelation is why that breakdown can also be found through the PISA test results now.

      “A 2013 Stanford/EPI study by Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein found that U.S. PISA scores are misleadingly low due to higher rates of disadvantaged students compared to other developed nations. When adjusted for socioeconomic status, U.S. students actually showed greater improvement in math and reading, with lower-income students performing better than their peers in nations like Finland.” 

      “2022/2025 PISA results continue to align with 2013 findings, showing that socioeconomic status remains a primary driver of student performance. Like the 2013 analysis, recent data indicates that disadvantaged students often perform lower, with socioeconomic background accounting for roughly 13% – 15% of the variation in scores.

      “Also, the negative impact of poverty on K-12 education is a nearly universal phenomenon, acting as a primary barrier to learning, decreasing school readiness, and causing lower performance worldwide. Poverty restricts access to resources, quality instruction, and technology, with 420 million people potentially lifted out of poverty if all adults completed secondary education.”

      “High child poverty rates significantly depress the average U.S. PISA scores, masking the high performance of schools with lower poverty levels. If schools with <10% poverty were measured alone, the U.S. would rank 1st globally. The 23% child poverty rate makes the overall U.S. average mediocre, despite competitive performance among advantaged student populations.”

      • Performance by Poverty Level:
        • <10% Poverty: 1st in the world.
        • 10-25% Poverty: 4th in the OECD.
        • >75% Poverty: Near the bottom.

      “The U.S. often ranks in the middle, around 31st in math and 20th in reading/science, which ignores that poverty is the primary driver of lower scores rather than a failure of school quality.”

      What works to reduce child poverty? Insights from across the globe

      +7

      Trump administration policies have often sought to reduce federal involvement in early childhood education, threatening programs for low-income families

      . Key impacts include attempts to cut funding for Head Start, closing regional offices that support these programs, and proposing the elimination of Preschool Development Grants, which has caused fundinginstability for child care providers. National Women’s Law Center +3

      “Trump administration policies have often sought to reduce federal involvement in early childhood education, threatening programs for low-income families. Key impacts include attempts to cut funding for Head Start, closing regional offices that support these programs, and proposing the elimination of Preschool Development Grants, which has caused funding instability for child care providers.”

      SOURCE: National Women Law Center

      Liked by 1 person

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    • David,

      Charter schools are definitely harmful to public schools

      Every dollar they receive in tax money is a dollar less for public schools.

      They open and close at a rapid rate.

      Kids need stability.

      The quality of education they provide is no better and often far worse than what’s available at the local public schools.

      The Network for Public Education has gathered loads of research about charters. Go to the website and download some of them.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  30. This is heartbreaking if the document Austin Beutner says he saw is real. According to Beutner, Carvalho told the school board he intended to use the Prop 28 arts funds to shore up the district’s budget deficit. Sadly, it would explain a lot. The board never responded to the numerous complaints from parents about how the money was being spent—not even a boilerplate acknowledgment. When Jackie Goldberg insisted at the last meeting of the year that the funds were used to supplement, not supplant, I suspected she was complicit. This was the school board parents wanted. Why did they betray their constituents? https://nypost.com/2026/03/09/us-news/lausd-boss-alberto-carvalho-blasted-in-letter-from-former-superintendent-austin-beutner/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQcTUZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeBytKGUJRoOyRRsz8wdh81a8mJGWyvjwyk3kvxv6Ia7FC0WnRzWfffiAtGaA_aem_jDv9UtT0mLSEiO-Z_iZc0g

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    • David Pearce,

      The New York Times has a long article this morning about Carvalho. It focuses on a deal he made with a tech company to develop AI for the students in LAUSD schools.

      It does not say anything about misusing funds dedicated to arts programs.

      Still watching to see what FBI was looking for and whether he is charged and why.

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      • Yes, I saw the NYT piece, but I think the misuse of the arts funds was a far bigger issue than the alleged AI scandal. I’m absolutely convinced that the arts funds were misused by the district to supplant the existing arts program rather than supplement it, and that he and district administrators tried to cover it up. At our first meeting, a former administrator announced that arts teachers’ salaries were now being paid with Prop 28 funds. I was a theatre teacher at the time, and there were no new hires at any of my schools.

        Scott Schmerlson eventually had to sheepishly ask the board to discuss the issue during the last meeting of the year, saying his constituents were demanding it. Jackie Goldberg insisted that the district had not used the money to supplant existing programs. After that meeting, the money that had been taken from the Arts Branch was returned, and many more arts teachers were hired.

        Parents are still not happy about how the situation was handled, but I am encouraged that there are now many more arts teachers working in the district. Many parents wanted the superintendent removed over this issue and were livid when the school board they had elected voted unanimously to retain him. That said, he has been strong in protecting students from ICE actions. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-18/lausd-schools-accused-of-violating-law-on-arts-education-funding

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      • Curious I ran a Google search asking if there was evidence of misuse of Art Funds in LA Unified.

        The Google search came up with pull quotes from Ed Soruce, LA TIMES, and Yahoo News

        “Yes, there is significant evidence and allegations that Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) misused over $76 million in voter-approved Proposition 28 arts and music funds. A lawsuit alleges the district used these funds to replace existing budgets rather than expand programs, violating the 2022 law.” SOURCE: ED SOURCE

        https://edsource.org/2025/lawsuit-charges-misuse-of-arts-education-funding-at-lausd-schools/726675

        Then I checked the bias and fact check reliability of ED Source.

        “These media sources are moderate to strongly biased toward liberal causes through story selection and/or political affiliation.  They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports, and omit information reporting that may damage liberal causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy.

        “Overall, we rate The Source Newspaper (La Source) Left biased due to story selection that almost always favors the left and is Mostly Factual in reporting rather than high due to a lack of transparency.“

        https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/source-newspaper-la-source/

        The LA TIMES was also listed as a source for this issue and Yahoo News

        https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-02-11/lausd-misused-millions-intended-to-increase-arts-instruction-lawsuit-alleges

        https://www.yahoo.com/news/lausd-misused-millions-taxpayer-approved-110000781.html

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      • Red states deeper into MAGA KKK fascism are red states where the most billionaires that support Trump live.

        Key donors often reside in states with no income tax or favorable regulatory environments, including support from individuals in California, Nebraska, and North Dakota.

        • Florida: A major hub for Trump donors, including hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who has invested in state-level politics.
        • Wyoming (Teton County): Known for attracting ultra-wealthy individuals.
        • Nevada: Home to casino magnate Miriam Adelson, a significant donor.
        • North Dakota: Home to Governor Doug Burgum, a wealthy supporter and former cabinet appointee.
        • Nebraska: Home to the Ricketts family, who are prominent donors.
        • Texas: Another major base for conservative, high-net-worth donors.

        These donors often represent industries like finance, energy, and crypto, seeking tax relief, deregulation, and favorable government policies.

        Red States resisting compliance, which are not on the list above, of Trump’s demand to turn over full, un-redacted voter rolls are:

        Alaska

        Idaho

        Utah

        Georgia

        Kansas

        New Hampshire

        Mississipi

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      • Yes! And thank God I’m fortunate to live in a blue city, in a blue state, with a lot of other people who exercise functioning brains, have caring hearts, follow a strong moral compass and maintain a committed conscience that’s dedicated to ensuring what’s healthy for human beings and good for all else on our planet will ultimately prevail over the evil doers who care only about power, property, money and themselves…

        Like

    • This is happening at the VA big time:

      “ProPublica has published extensive, ongoing investigative reporting detailing how the Trump administration exerted influence over the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) through unofficial channels, resulting in ethical concerns, potential legal violations, and the targeting of employees. The reports suggest a “shadow” group of advisors influenced policy, personnel, and contract decisions, often disregarding established ethics safeguards.”

      “ProPublica’s reporting suggests these interventions, coupled with the influence of the “shadow rulers,” led to low morale, the exodus of career staff, and disruptions in care, with the agency seeing a net loss of 40,000 employees in fiscal year 2025, including thousands of doctors and nurses. The investigation notes a push toward privatization, with critics arguing the changes “gut” the agency’s ability to serve.”

      https://www.propublica.org/series/inside-trump-va

      I’m actually one of the hundreds or thousands of veteran victims of what Trump is doing to the VA as mental and physical health care is falling apart and, for the first time in twenty years, we and I are being denied care.

      Liked by 1 person

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      • I’m sorry to hear that Lloyd. The greed of Trump and cronies is sickening. I’ve been watching stories speculating about how large stock trades are happening minutes before Trump makes crucial announcements. They’re getting rich while the country is going down the tubes.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Of course. That’s why they love him. The billionaires.

        Several of the billionaires –including Zuckerberg and Thiel–are moving from California to Florida because of a referendum to raise their taxes. Why can’t they pay higher taxes?

        Like

      • Money buys power which triggers endless greed to buy more power so they get what they want.

        Lord Acton said, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

        Several thousand years of history and wisdom in the Bible doesn’t have anything good to say and a lot of criticism and warnings about the corruption caused by having great wealth and power and being greedy for more of both. The other major religions say about the same thing: Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism from the Old Testament.

        Jesus Christ, who was a brown-skinned Jewish man and had another religion founded using his name several centuries after his death, taught that it is extremely difficult for wealthy and powerful people to enter the kingdom of God, famously stating it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich person to enter heaven. He emphasized that wealth often leads to misplaced trust, making it hard to rely on God.

        Jesus taught what he understood about the Old Testament. He never wrote anything and only preached to spread the word of the Old Testament God who he referred to as his father but then it was common back then for all Jews to call God their father.

        Anyway, I digress. Maybe, considering that the MAGA KKK movement claims they are Christians but don’t even follow what their God Jesus taught from the Old Testament.

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      • Hello Diane,

        I just finished your book.  It is a real testament to your witness of the human journey.  I chuckled early in your story because I too come from a large family.  I have five siblings and five of us had degrees in education while the sixth ended up a development officer at an independent school.  Our father was an Episcopal priest and civil rights leader, and our mother was a dogged supporter of the public schools as a regional PTA chair.

        As I read your memoir I began to think of Forrest Gump through your encounters with various elite political and business circles.  What is so unique is that you were not persuaded by status but doing things with a purpose.  Your changes in perspective and understanding concerning the public schools and society are astonishing.  I don’t know that I can think of one leader in my lifetime so able to see the failings of particular policy you once promoted that acted to correct such profound misconception.

        I have been involved in public education at some level for 57 years.  My first encounter with the politics was as an idealistic high school senior who co-led a successful effort to change the school board in Chattanooga from appointed to elected.  I thought I was headed toward politics when I discovered at a private university that my calling was to be in the public schools.  Like you, my perspectives about intellectual development and school structure had to be challenged over the years for me to see what we needed for better schools.  I too bought into the idea of competition and charters as a way to awaken the public schools out of its perceived slumber.

        I was often frustrated as I changed roles toward the principalship because I felt the work that had to be done was in the schoolhouse.  I also learned through 21 years in administration that is the teachers who should be driving reform. I spent 30 years at Charlotte-Mecklenburg where I had some influence with district leadership.  When I moved to Huntsville, AL, I discovered that my leverage in Charlotte could not transfer to my new district.  Your work and status were perhaps the most impressive part of your story.  I hope that some of those leaders you have worked with start to hear your message.

        Public education is the foundation of our democracy. As with a great cathedral it goes unseen but must remain stable to keep its integrity.  I think what we have seen over the past few decades is the result of a leadership cohort that has isolated itself from the experience of much of our citizenry while ignoring the bedrock of our success.  Our misguided meritocracy has resulted in a false narrative that the best leaders come from exclusive backgrounds where those who have experienced public schooling are too often dismissed.  Again, you are an exception to this rule. 

        I believe that we must somehow convince the powers that be that public schools are not a side show secondary to statecraft and business.  The media and influencers should understand that if do not have daily conversations about public schools, we will not get democracy right.  The stubborn effort of those like Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush, and Mike Bloomberg to insist on a high stakes testing as a requirement for improvement has allowed the privatizers to mislead policy at the district, state, and federal levels.   Your work has shown that such efforts have failed for almost four decades.  I can only hope that the scales will soon fall from the eyes of those who repeat these mistakes.

        I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your advocacy for teachers and the work of NPE.  You’re book shows that you have set an example that I hope we are all wise enough to follow.

        Regards,

        Paul Bonner

        Retired Principal and Writer

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      • Dear Paul,

        I was moved by your review of my book.
        Everyone’s story is unique, and mine included. I smiled at the reference to Forrest Gump, because I felt somewhat Gumpian as I wrote the stories in which I interacted with various luminaries. I didn’t want to be accused of name-dropping so some of my best encounters were left out.

        Offhand, the one that I probably should have included was the evening I went to a charity event and was seated next to one of the honorees: Jane Powell. I don’t know if you are familiar with her work as an actress, but I was starstruck. I saw her in many movies, the greatest being “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” Her husband, who was with her, was an original member of the cast of The Little Rascals.

        Thank you for a thoughtful commentary and for taking the time to read it.

        Diane

        Liked by 1 person

    • This is happening at the VA big time:

      “ProPublica has published extensive, ongoing investigative reporting detailing how the Trump administration exerted influence over the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) through unofficial channels, resulting in ethical concerns, potential legal violations, and the targeting of employees. The reports suggest a “shadow” group of advisors influenced policy, personnel, and contract decisions, often disregarding established ethics safeguards.”

      “ProPublica’s reporting suggests these interventions, coupled with the influence of the “shadow rulers,” led to low morale, the exodus of career staff, and disruptions in care, with the agency seeing a net loss of 40,000 employees in fiscal year 2025, including thousands of doctors and nurses. The investigation notes a push toward privatization, with critics arguing the changes “gut” the agency’s ability to serve.”

      https://www.propublica.org/series/inside-trump-va

      I’m actually one of the hundreds or thousands of veteran victims of what Trump is doing to the VA as mental and physical health care is falling apart and, for the first time in twenty years, we and I are being denied care.

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      • I think Trump is using those billionaires to get what he wants. Once he holds all the power, he may dump some or all if he thinks they are not loyal enough to him. He may even have them exterminated along with everyone else he wants to get rid of.

        Trump only admires himself and works with anyone who he thinks will help him get what he wants. He’s already made an alliance with the devil when he decided to use Roy Cohn as his mentor to learn how to use chaos, the Gish Gallup and lies to win over supporters and disrupt the courts and the media, which is why he has used the courts more than 4,000 times before 2016 and is willing to say anythign to the media to always stay on the front pages.

        He takes advantage of breaking news rushing to see who reports the story first which doesn’t give enough time for reporters to fact check. That way his lies are always out front of the facts and truth.

        He uses lawyers too, and once he uses them, he won’t pay them what he agreed to pay beyond the retainer fee, which i’ve read lawyers set very high for him since his history of refusing to pay lawyers for the hours they bill him after the case is well known.

        That may be the reason he’s having trouble finding competent lawyers who know what they are doing. He burned too many of those bridges since the 1970s.

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      • What I am becoming even more disturbed by is what is happening at the Pentagon. The firing of generals is the dismissal of decades of critical experience so important when making decisions of going to and fighting wars. Hegseth has two masters; Trump and his Dominion buddies in the Christian Nationalist movement. As Trump goes on about his East Wing ballroom and anything he can get named after himself, right winged zealots plot with their stooge leading the Department of Defense. This may sound crazy, but the real decapitation is taking place in our military, the State Department, and our intelligence services. this leaves our government vulnerable to a coop unlike anything we have imagined before as our mad king plays golf and gilds the lilly. I can only pray, with little hope, that our legislators awaken to this and begin procedures to impeach Hegseth.

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      • How would Project 2025 impact troops and veterans?

        Project 2025 says, “Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” a prelude to the handbook states.

        Reports in 2026 suggested a “purge” of military leadership, including the firing of top officials, to ensure obedience to the president. Political experts have expressed concern that these policies are designed to create a military that sees Americans as adversaries and is, instead, guided by obedience to one leader.

        To achieve, this Trump has to replace troops who won’t fall into line and ignore the oath they took to defend the US Constitution against domestic enemies like Trump and his regime.

        From all the Military Times polls I’ve read since 2016, about a third of the active-duty military is already willing and ready to do what Trump wants. So, the convicted rapist, fraud, felon and traitor’s MAGA KKK regime is in the process of achieving that goal by getting rid of anyone who won’t do it.

        While Project 2025 says it wants to increase the troop strength while purging the military, I suspect they will end up with a much smaller force to they achieve those goals.

        Just enough to crush the population and put fear into smaller countries like Venezuela.

        Where are all the officers and troops going to go who are purged by Trump’s fascist regime?

        They are not going to go away. I think they may be willing to join any military force that stays loyal to the US Constitution which means states controlled by Democrats and a few Republican controlled states.

        From what I’ve read, I think the number of states willing to blindly support whatever Trump wants numbers about fourteen and some of them are led by autocratic governors, like Texas and Florida, who will throw Trump under a tank to be pulped the first chance they get so they can replace him.

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      • It’s bad and I think the so called establishment doesn’t want to admit this is happening. I just went to the Times on line and there is nothing about Hegseths recent firing of the top General. I our country is rapidly becoming a rogue nation that will soon be isolated by the rest of the world.

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      • I read that from VoteVets yesterday, that the top general was purged.

        So far, the fight from the resistance, which includes Democrats, independents and Never Trump conservatives, is in the courts.

        Litigation Tracker | Lawfare

        But the courts are slower than Trump’s MAGA KKK regime as they continue to move forward to fulfill Project 2025, followed by Project 2025, which is the next worse step. Last time I looked, 51% of the goals had been met. Now it’s up to 53%.

        Project 2025 Tracker – Home

        The People’s Briefing: Project 2026 — The Next Chapter – Democrats Abroad

        Were in a race and the first serious finish line may be the results of the 2026, midterms but even losing that race will not stop Trump’s regime from continuing to force their will on the country.

        I will not be surprised if there is a repeat of January 6, 2021, in early January 2027, before the new Congress can be sworn in. But this time, Trump and his regime will make no one defends the newly elected Congress from the “fight for Trump” chanting lynch mob.

        After that, the only step left will be a violent Civil War. I hope the resistance to stop Trump and his MAGA KKK regime is organized a ready if it comes to that.

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      • Paul,

        You nailed it. Trump–or those pulling his strings–is decapitating the veteran leaders at State, Defense, Justice, intelligence services. Of course this sets up the preconditions for a coup.

        Timothy Snyder wrote about this today.

        Like

  34. In honor of No Kings Day tomorrow, Saturday, March 28, 2026, be sure to check out the following to locate No Kings Day protests near you. This map is truly HUGE, covering lots in red states, too –so maybe MAGATs are learning!? https://www.nokings.org/

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    • From what I’ve read, about one percent of registered Democrats are MAGATs, and a touch over half of registered Republicans.

      Not everyone who votes for Trump is a hard-core, willingly ignorant, hate filled, Trump loyalist, fascist MAGA KKK cult member.

      Some of them vote along party lines and others vote for Trump not for Trump but against any Democrat running against him and/or his toxic skkkum loyalists.

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  35. I find myself fascinated by the story of Amanda Ungaro—a woman who claims she was on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane when she was underage (16 or 17). Some journalists have said that released flight logs confirm this. Her agent, Jean-Luc Brunel, was definitely on Epstein’s plane. Like Epstein, Brunel died in prison by suicide.

    Ungaro also tweeted on X that she was going to expose people shortly before Melania Trump made her recent statement (some are saying Trump himself didn’t know about it). Ungaro has now given an interview to El País.

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  36. I woke up this morning to news that Iran has again closed the Strait, citing the U.S. blockade—which is not surprising at all. What was surprising was the market rally yesterday after Trump declared the Strait “open.”

    Hasn’t the market figured out by this time that Trump’s statements have no credibility?

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    • I learned about a decade ago that we cannot believe anything that Trump says.

      These flip flop claims may be deliberate to profit off of. After all, Trump is King Don the Con!

      Ask Google this question to read what I’m talking about: The results from the serach I just rean were way too long to copy and paste.

      Who profits from insider trading when Trump claims one thing, the stock market jumps, and a day or two later we find out Trump lied again followed by another stock market drop?

      You may also be curious to find out how many times Trump has been documented saying the truth.

      The first time I asked Google that question, all I got were endless reports of his lies. studies show he average about 22 lies a day.

      Then I tried Google’s new AI mode option, and it came back with a list of FIVE factual comments Trump has made like naming the correct country where his grandparents were born. That’s all Google’s AI mode could find.

      FIVE! and some of them were sort of more correct than wrong.

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  38. By 8:50 p.m., the measure passed by a vote of 50.7-49.3% out of 2.5 million ballots cast, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections, clearing the way for lawmakers to redraw district lines outside the traditional once-a-decade census cycle. The winning margin continued to increase throughout the night as more votes were tallied. 

    Virginia voters back redistricting amendment after months of legal and political battles • Virginia Mercury

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    • This is from NPR. “But there are legal matters looming. The Virginia Supreme Court has yet to rule on challenges to the redistricting effort, which could ultimately stop any new districts from being used in this year’s elections.” Keeping my fingers crossed.

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  39. This is a weird one. The DOJ is going after the Southern Poverty Law Center for paying informants to investigate racist hate groups. Maybe they didn’t properly disclose the funding, but isn’t this a terrible look for Republicans? To me, it looks like they’re trying to protect racist organizations from being exposed. AG Todd Blanche said the SPLC is actually trying to manufacture extremism instead of fighting against it. Can you believe that the KKK and other neo-nazi orgs are being pushed into extremism by the SLPC?

    https://www.npr.org/2026/04/21/g-s1-118275/southern-poverty-law-center-fraud-charges-paid-informants

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      • MAGA argues that hate groups or extremist incidents are exaggerated or staged to discredit conservatives, that federal agents or informants provoke or infiltrate groups to create such incidents, and that events like the January 6 Capitol attack were instigated by “feds” or left-wing actors rather than primarily by supporters of Donald Trump. This investigation supports that narrative.

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    • ICE is a law unto itself. US court of Appeals just overturned a CA law requiring non-uniformed ICE agents to show ID. So anyone can “arrest” you, with no uniform, no ID. Insane.

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  41. I’ve been surprised to see nothing here about the visit of King Charles and Queen Camilla to the US this week –or did I just miss it? Maybe people are so “No Kings” oriented these days that they can’t recognize a genuine king today who actually cares a lot more about people, peace, justice, the earth etc. than himself, power, money and prestige. Or maybe it’s just too ironic that we might be better off today (and have free health care) if we had not dumped George III.

    For those interested, you can see summaries of their visits in our country, as reported in the UK, here: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/trump-king-charles-visit-live-37085161?int_source=nba

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    • I’m posting his speech to Congress at 11 am today.

      It is delightful to see Congress jump to a standing ovation when King Charles said we should support Ukraine. And support environmental action. And other not so subtle ways that he rebuked Trump without mentioning his band.

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    • The King or Queen of England is a constitutional monarch and Head of State, holding a primarily ceremonial and symbolic role rather than political power. As the UK’s figurehead, the Sovereign provides stability, unity, and continuity, acting above party politics to represent the nation. The role involves key constitutional duties, diplomatic functions, and charitable patronage.

      Trump is incapable of letting anyone else make decisions. He has to make them all. He trusts no one but himself. But he never accepts the blame for his blunders and mistakes, which happens a lot because he is ignorant, incompetent and a monster in every sense of the word. He always lies. Always.

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  42. Another ridiculous lawsuit from the Trump admin. When teachers are accused of sexual misconduct they are reassigned to their homes until the investigation has concluded in order to protect students. https://edsource.org/updates/department-of-education-launches-title-ix-investigation-into-lausd?fbclid=IwY2xjawRneuxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEelctdnRoL4HI8Xn3TrxawEBcoG1dCC387xn0uEBrstsx16y9qk6xzc8y6Mqo_aem_otfVkLDGoC1svMjv-sQTpg

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      • LA Unified is handling it according to the law in California, which means innocent until proven guilty.

        With Trump, his fascist klepto-kakistocracy regime and their MAGA KKK hate cult support base, it means guilty and forget about innocence. Forget about a trial. Let’s burn that pedophile public school teacher at the stake — unless it’s their convicted rapist, fraud and felon, accused of rape by dozens of women both young and younger, going back to the 1970s. MAGA’s messiah is an innocent victim of a political witch hunt and their life long cheat and liar is so pure, he’s never guilty of anything, no matter what he does. Even if he shoots people at random on fifth avenue with thousands of cell phones filming the slaughter. We know that because of what happened on January 6, 2021. We know that because of the stolen classified documents found at Mar a Lago in a bathroom. We know that about because of the recorded telephone call he made telling electoin officials in Georgie to find enough votes for him to win that state and beat Biden. We know that because of the 60+ cases Trump’s lawyers filed over election fraud that were all dismissed or ruled against. We know that because of the guilty rape verdict in court by a jury after they evidence convicted them.

        And more.

        During my thirty years teaching in the public schools, the district I taught in had two incidents where teachers were accused of having sex with students by students. Both were sent home suspended without pay until the verdict from the trial. Both were found innocent in court because the evidence did not convince the juries of guilt. They returned to the classroom. Although one of the two was transferred to another school far from the one where he’d taught and everyone (all the teachers and staff that knew him) thought he was guilty even though the evidence didn’t convince the jury. Opinions about him were not based on evidence, but his observed behavior over a long period of time. There was something off about that teacher, and the way he talked about his students.

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      • Lloyd, The Trump administration has this issue exactly backwards. In my experience, LAUSD doesn’t ignore allegations—it reacts with a hair-trigger response, out of fear of liability.

        You might remember that I was investigated on September 7, 2022. What began as a routine classroom management issue with a few fifth graders—who had abandoned their assigned scene partners without permission—quickly escalated. After I admonished them, I noticed one student glaring at me. By the afternoon, I was handed a misconduct notice and told in a Zoom meeting that I was under investigation for sexual misconduct. I was immediately removed from my position.

        What made my case so stunning is that as a K-5 Arts teacher, I was always working alongside a classroom teacher, who is a mandated reporter, so there is essentially no opportunity for inappropriate behavior to occur without being observed and reported immediately.

        What followed was a 90-day investigation that felt less like a neutral fact-finding process and more like an effort to prove guilt. Meetings were scheduled with very short notice, which I felt were designed to catch me without union representation. I was told the usual five-day inquiry was skipped due to the “serious nature” of the allegations.

        Three students had made claims of inappropriate touching, leering, staring at a girl’s underwear, and teaching inappropriate material. None of it was true. The student I was accused of touching was absent that day. The student whose “panties” I was supposedly staring at was wearing shorts. The lesson came directly from the Arts Instructional Guide. The classroom teacher—who was present the entire time—and other students refuted every allegation, though it appears they were not interviewed until later.

        I was ultimately cleared and reinstated, but even near the end, the investigators added unnecessary stress. An investigator emailed that they wanted to “discuss concerns” about my behavior—language my union rep said was unusual and concerning. It created significant anxiety, only for the meeting to consist of them reading the findings that I had done nothing wrong.

        Since then, I’ve learned from union representatives that false accusations have become more common, especially in middle and high schools, where some students understand that making an allegation can remove a teacher they don’t like. I’ve also personally spoken with a colleague who was investigated three separate times—someone I know well and who is in no way a sexual predator.

        I’m sure there are cases where teachers have been treated unfairly, and I know the district has had to pay settlements as a result. That doesn’t suggest indifference—it suggests overcorrection.

        From where I stand, the problem isn’t that LAUSD ignores allegations. It’s that the district often responds so aggressively that it risks harming innocent teachers in the process.

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      • David,

        I’ve learned to be wary of accusations against teachers as a result of a highly publicized event many years ago while I was working in DC.

        Three 8th grade students accused their teacher of inappropriate sexual behavior. His name was all over the press. It looked open and shut.

        But when the accusers were interviewed individually, one of them admitted that they made up the charges because the teacher was very strict, gave them too much homework, and was a tough grader.

        He was exonerated after having been dragged through the mud.

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      • That’s what happened to one of the two incidents in the district where I taught. That teacher taught math at one of the other two high schools in that district. The girl that accused him was punishing him for the grade she earned in his class, after she asked him to change if she …. (use your imagination here)

        He refused changing the grade and her offer to service him.

        This happened near the end of the school year, so he didn’t suffer losing his salary while the case was working its way through the legal system, and he had the money to hire a good lawyer (or the teacher’s union provided the lawyer — I don’t remember which). Before the end of summer, the police investigation, and lawyers, revealed it was all a lie and he was back to work, exonerated. In that district we were not pay during the summer break so he a already had enough money saved to pay his bills during that time period. If this happened earlier in the year, his family would have suffered financially. In cases like this, the accused teachers were always suspended without pay until they were found innocent in court or the charges were dropped. Even then, the teachers often had to hire a lawyer and take the district to court to get paid the money they lost while suspended without pay.

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      • I don’t think my reputation was at risk by the time that happened. I’d already established a reputation in that district that might as well have been chiseled in stone, and I was combative from the start, before the reputation was earned.

        I was even warned by a VP I knew that district admin wanted to get rid of me long before that incident, but I was also told they were afraid of me because there was no way they could justify firing me due to the reputation I had earned by then.

        Before I was a teacher, I was already a passionate, dedicated writer, and I have never stopped learning how to write. My BA was in journalism because I thought that what I’d learn would make me a better writer. The same for the MFA that came later.

        So, I took what I learned through all those decades learning how to write and taught my students how to write like me. Even my ninth grade English students. I taught them how to write poetry and submitted the best to contests, which some of my students won year after year.

        I taught my ninth graders how to write short stories and some of them won contests, even in an LA Times student writing contest where students all over the state submitted work. Thousands of submissions. Still, several, not one, of my students ended up being among the few who were published in the magazine the LA times published that year showcasing the winners, and all that was before I took over the high school newspaper-er as its adviser and teacher. All the award the high school paper earned from local, state, national and international contests they competed in happened twenty years into my teaching career.

        After NCLB, and the rank and punish testing insanity, the district kept track of student test scores per teacher, so they’d know the results and put pressure on teachers who were not producing gains.

        Those results proved my 9th grade students were gaining and performing higher results on those tests than all their peers in all three of that districts high schools by a huge margins. Even the students who failed my classes showed gains by just showing up.

        The only reason I know that is because on year, the week before school started, when we were being told about the results of the previous years tests, the VP running that meeting for the high school English Department, put up a chart using an overhead showing gains and losses. Each teacher had their own column. The height of the column showed whose students had the most gains. Our names weren’t on the chart at the base of each column. They used numbers to replace our names. One column soared above all the others looking like a skyscraper in a track of one to three story homes. That VP revealed who that teacher was but did not reveal who the others were.

        That teacher was me. I had no idea. Admin never told me that until that VP did. She said the district had data that went back years and the 9th grade students I’d taught for more than a decade showed gains like that every year. She emphasizes the fact that even the student who failed my class for not doing any work showed gains.

        The thing is I never taught to the test. I refused to. I taught all my students how to write like a professional writer and understand what they were reading. I taught them all the skills I learned and was still learning.

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      • The admin for the district where I taught operated the same way LA unified does.

        I even had my moment to battle the district with legal help from CTA giving me advice. That one was over a news piece published in the high school paper that revealed ballot stuffing during the student body elections one year.

        I was the student papers faculty advisor and had one period of journalism where I taught them how to investigate and write proper journalism pieces.

        My BA is in journalism. I contacted the LA Times and provide all the evidence. They ran a feature piece, and it elevated the scandal to levels the distr8ict didn’t expect. The parents for the journalism students who wrote to pieces became allies. I also contacted a national student journalism association and they joined in. My students competed in their write offs every year.

        In the end, the district fired the principal who picked a fight with the wrong teacher, but I was removed as the faculty journalism advisor teacher, which looked bad for the district because while I held hat job, that high school paper was winning national and internationals awards in competitions with other high schools across the country . We even had a team of students from a European country visit to see how we did it and when they went home to their country, they published a student generated feature magazine with lots of photos about what they learned from that visit. One of my reporters was invited to write one of them from her POV. I think the country was Germany.

        For the next few years, the high school didn’t have a real student newspaper, and they still didn’t have it when retired in 2005. After I retired, they found a new hire teacher to produce a student one-page monthly newsletter to fill the gap left behind when the district closed an award-winning student high school newspaper because of a scandal the district caused by supporting the wealthy father of the girl involved in the ballot box stuffing (she didn’t act alone — her boyfriend helped her). District admin and the principal never asked if my students had evidence to back up that news piece, which they did. After several months, I copied all the signed evidence from witnesses I had spoken to to verify what they saw, blotted out those students’ names and send that packet to a board member who was on our side. He presented that evidence at a board meeting, which embarrassed district admin and the issue ended. But they got even by killing the newspaper the next school year. I had about three years left before I retired so I didn’t start another battle with the idiots. I was worn out and only wanted to reach 60 and retire.

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      • it’s amazing how common these stories of reactionary leadership are and their usual actions to squash dissent. When I was a senior in high school I was reporter for the school paper. Around March, there were numerous complaints about our staff from students written as anonymous letters to the editor. The staff complained that they couldn’t respond because they didn’t know who was complaining. In May, at the annual athletic awards assembly, the track coach, who was used to competing for state titles, broke tradition and did not call his letterman to the stage because we had not met his expectations. Being the confident young man I was, I immediately penned a letter calling out numerous members of the coaching staff by name saying that although our class was not the most athletic, we were among the most accomplished academically. I signed the letter. The sponsor of the paper was at one time our tennis coach and was insulted when he read the letter. He shared it with other coaches and the principal called me in his office to asked me to rescind. I told him I would not, and much to his credit he accepted my decision knowing that the staff was very upset. The irony was that I had done what they asked. I signed my name to the letter. Later, we had our annual highlighting ceremony where a spot light was put on Seniors with significant achievement. I had numerous achievements in high school but did not receive recognition because of what I had written.

        This isn’t about whether I was right or wrong. My dad told me the letter was too accusatory. It was the reactions of those considered leaders among the staff that was disappointing. I was a teenager, and only one coach I mentioned in the letter made an effort to talk out my concerns. It is a common trait I saw frequently as I moved through my career in education. “My way or the highway” is too frequently warn as a badge of honor among policy makers and bureacrats in our profession. This type of “leadership” has resulted in many of the challenges now prevalent in public education.

        My career had an ignominious end in Huntsville. I was last assigned a magnet school as a principal where I found significant problems with my secretary and academic coordinator. I acted to change their practices and found that their vindictive personalities were used to get central office on their side. I was never asked my side of the story. The next year the superintendent took three opportunities to write me up and I was forced to resign. After my first write up, I went to the NEA rep and shared the opinion of my principal colleagues that the superintendent was like her predecessor who had been forced to resign and all of us were constantly looking over our shoulders. At the next principals’ meeting she shared my words verbatim without saying it was me. I knew my goose was cooked.

        The point of this is that a significant barrier to getting the public schools support is that bureaucratic and opportunistic politicians value intimidation and threat to keep their positions. When I was in Charlotte, our superintendents usually lasted less than three years. The school board found no reason to visit or learn about schools, only to blame leaders from principals up for what was perceived as failure. Therefore, things rarely changed, especially in underprivileged schools.

        In my experience as a Senior, a principal in Huntsville, and in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, there was a common frailty. There was no proactive effort to work with underlings to understand problems and work collectively to solve them. The desire to move fast and break things was not limited to the private sector and it created messes that only became worse.

        Our problem isn’t because the tail wags the dog, but because the nose leads the clueless hound to trouble.

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      • What a shame that they went after you like that Lloyd and kudos to you for fighting back because most people don’t. Your school newspaper was probably one of the most powerful learning experiences that your students ever had in public education. Shame on those SOBs for killing it in retaliation!

        Liked by 1 person

      • There’s more. After I retired, I discovered that all of the computers, scanners and printers the journalism students had paid for by selling ADs for the school paper to local businesses, and me writing grants, had been raided and carried off by other teachers to vanish into other classrooms soon after I left that summer before the next school year started.

        They must have thought, there was no more school paper, so why not?

        When I became the paper’s adviser and journalism teacher, the paper had a few old, warn out, unreliable computers that were always crashing and breaking. District admin said the budget couldn’t afford to buy new. So, I paid a few thousand to start for some of what we ended up with using my credit card because my journalism students struggled so hard to get the paper out with crappy tech they had. Over the years, we spent a lot more and raised thousands of dollars.

        Unlike most classes we teach for one year, most of the journalism students were with me for four years from 9th through 12th grades with the seniors become the editors. Most of them always returned, which turned into a family.

        The staff voted at the end of each year for the juniors that year they wanted to have as their senior editors the next year. A democratic student newspaper. My job was to count the ballots and announce the results the last day of the school year when we had a huge feast in my classroom ordered and paid for by the students. We had feats like that each month after they published and distributed the next month’s paper. The journalism class was my last class of the day. When the bell rang, the students disturbed class bundles to every class on campus for a high school with about 3,000 students. We sent class sets to the feeder middle schools. We came up with worksheets for teachers to use as a lesson who wanted to have their classes read the paper as a lesson with classwork and discussions.

        The janitors loved the journalism students since there was always food leftover and the students didn’t want to throw it out, so they left it for the night janitors who cleaned all the classrooms.

        The senior editors one year even purchased a full classroom set of journalism textbooks so they could learn how to become better journalists and they had me teaching them out of the set they bought. They, not me, wrote to publishers for samples; then decided which text was the best one. I told them the decision was theirs since it was money they raised by selling ADs or the paper that paid for the texts.

        To be fair, I don’t blame the teaches who did that because the next school year, there was no journalism class or high school paper. The high school went without for a while before a new teacher started up the newsletter with none of the equipment and not using the textbooks, which I moved to the school’s library storage while I was cleaning out my classroom before I left, so those textbooks may still be sitting in library storage twenty-three years later.

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      • Because of that journalism class I taught and the students who produced the high school paper, I kept a daily journal for one full school year the second year I was their teacher and documented that year comparing the four 9th grande English classes I taught to my journalism class at the end of each day. I wrote notes during and between classes to capture what happened and typed them up when I got home. Not wanting to rely on memory, I didn’t sleep until it was done.

        Years after I retired, I used that daily journal to write my teacher’s memoir called Crazy is Normal. I changed the students’ names, but what I wrote about is based on the students I taught the tone year. No fiction. No unreelable memories. I wrote each entry in detail every day after school before i went to bed. I didn’t want to rely on my memory later. That daily journalism had more than 500, single spaced printed pages at the end of that school year. I think it was 1995 – 1996.

        Crazy is Normal: a classroom exposé: Lofthouse, Lloyd: 9780986032851: Amazon.com: Books

        What’s in that memoir is as accurate as possible down to the smallest details and what I was even thinking at the time.

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    • Trump hates California. LA Unified and the teachers union are in California. To Trump, they are guilty and must be punished by him even if they are already being punished and haven’t been found guilty yet. Trump wants to destroy everyone and anything in blue states that defy him. 86-47

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  43. This is Teacher Appreciation Week and I was meaning to mention it sooner but I’ve been sick a lot lately. Sorry.

    So I want to say how valuable my fellow colleagues on this blog are to me, and I’d also like to share the following with everyone:

    https://thefreebieguy.com/teacher-appreciation-week-freebies-deals/

    As one really wonderful teacher I had used to say (all the time and for no particular reason at all), “Have a Happy!”

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    • With what I know about Trump after studying him in depth for more than a decade starting in 2015, I do not think Trump will use this money for anyone but himself. To increase his wealth and achieve his Machiavellian goals.

      “As of May 2026, Donald Trump’s political operation controls a massive war chest, with his main super PAC, MAGA Inc., holding over $300 million to $347.8 million, while his total, including nondisclosing nonprofits, exceeds $500 million to $1.5 billion in reported, combined assets. This unprecedented, vast, and partly non-disclosed fund is fueling, yet also creating anxiety among, Republican donors regarding its deployment.”

      What I learned about Trump before the 2016 election was enough to warn me who he was. Everything he’s done since supports my initial impressions of how dangerous and corrupt he is (and he is getting worse), after hundreds of hours of research into his life’s history.

      A history so heavily documented that it boggles the imagination how anyone could support him except those who think like him, which is frightening to the extreme.

      That there are millions who willingly wallow in their ignorance and hate and worship someone without limits. The MAGA KKK hate cult is spread out like a thin layer of toxic, deadly sludge coating the country and reaching beyond our borders like a terminal plague leaving nothing but rot and misery behind.

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  45. I woke up this morning to discover Trump is considering a deal with China to build a trillion dollars of factories in the US.

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    • FIRST: Whatever Trump thinks or claims or says he is going to do is almost always a lie and doesn’t happen.

      SECOND: By late 2015, over 1,900 companies with Chinese-affiliated capital were operating in the U.S.. While precise, updated “factory” counts are difficult to isolate due to complex ownership structures, Chinese investors hold major stakes in over 2,400 U.S. companies across various sectors, including manufacturing and food processing. While large-scale manufacturing investments are relatively small, Chinese firms have acquired U.S. production facilities and built new “greenfield” factories, such as Tianjin Pipe’s Texas plant and Keer Group’s South Carolina plant.

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      • For Chinese owned factories in the United States, they’ll pay whatever the law says in whatever state those factories are located in — in addition to what they have to pay for more competitive job skills.

        Key Details on Chinese-Owned Entities in the US (2026):

        • Hourly Rate: Average of $27.59, with a range of $35k–$62.5k for most employees, notes ZipRecruiter.
        • Range: Salaries can vary from $20,000 (low end) to $130,000 (high end) based on role, location, and skill level.
        • Context: This average covers a broad spectrum of jobs and is generally competitive with, or lower than, top US-based manufacturing roles depending on the industry. [1]

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      • The same applies for US companies in China but based on China’s laws. For instance, Costco is nonunion in the US but in China all their workers must be allowed to belong to a labor union. Costco follows the law there.

        As of early 2026, Costco has seven warehouse locations in mainland China. The retailer has been actively expanding its footprint in the country since opening its first store in Shanghai in August 2019.

        While an exact, single number is difficult to determine due to complex, evolving supply chains, thousands of American companies operate in China, with over 1.7 million workers employed by U.S. affiliates in China as of 2014. Major U.S. brands, including Apple, Tesla, Nike, and Coca-Cola, maintain substantial manufacturing, sourcing, or retail presences there, with roughly 73% of U.S. companies surveyed in late 2025 planning to remain in China despite tariffs. [1, 2]

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      • I have a friend who works for a Chinese company that makes bedding in NYC. It sounded the same as corporate America. He often complains about budget cuts and requests to do more with less.

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      • The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) governs like a corporation, and they own all the land in urban China and share ownership with rural Chinese. It’s not only illegal but almost impossible to be homeless in China. I’ve seen large families sharing one apartment that would feel crowded with two people in the US. One of Anchee’s uncles lived in a renovated small closet with enough room for a cot, dresser, small TV on top of dresser and standing room between the cot and door. No chair. No table. The rest of the converted house in Shanghai held several families divide dup between how many rooms there were in the house when it was built by the French before WWII.

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      • The one I’m talking about had three stories above ground and a basement. There was one bathroom on the second floor all the families shared. The original kitchen for the one French family that lived there before WWII was on the ground floor. After the CCP won the civil war, every residence in Chinees cities that had been buy for and was once owned by foreigners was divided up like that. A family of five living in what was once one bedroom for westerners.

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      • You may find this fact interesting. Most in the west do not know this.

        Urban residents, especially in high-tier cities, face premium housing costs. In contrast, rural residents often live in larger, family-owned houses, bringing housing costs down to nearly zero. In major cities, a 100m² apartment can cost over $800,000 USD to purchase, while rural housing is substantially cheaper.

        Most if not all homes in rural Chinese villages are co-owned between the state and generational families. There is no rent, not property tax, no mortgage payments. Without the states permission, those families cannot take out equity loans on their houses or sell them. When there are economic downturns in China and factor workers lose their jobs due to layoffs, the state often provides free one-way tickets to go home because most factory wo4ekrs have family homes in rural Chinese villages. From what I’ve read most if not all rural families also have a half-acre of auricular land they can grow food on.

        In Urban China, the cities and suburbs, the state owns all the property and leases it out based on market prices. A lease may last for decades before it must be renewed. Leases can be traded, bought and sold like you own the place when you never do. Those who lease may take out loans to pay for the downpayment and the one time property tax collected at the singing of the lease.

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  46. My response to this article about a teacher who kept teaching after being fired for allegations of sexual misconduct. https://www.propublica.org/people/holly-mcdede

    Dear Ms. McDede and KQED Editorial Staff,

    As someone who was falsely accused of sexual misconduct and endured a 90-day investigation at Los Angeles Unified School District in 2023, I feel your article leaves out an important part of the story: the sheer number of allegations made against teachers each year that are ultimately unsubstantiated or found to be untrue.

    Through a public records request, I learned that 285 certificated personnel were reassigned from classrooms in LAUSD during the 2023–24 school year alone. Administrators know this reality, even if they rarely say it publicly. In many secondary schools, accusations can arise from misunderstandings, adolescent perceptions, personal conflicts, or retaliation against teachers who enforce discipline and accountability.

    Your article frames Agan’s continued employment as shocking, but it also notes that when concerns resurfaced at his second district, he openly disclosed his prior history and assured administrators that he avoided personal contact with students because of what had happened before. That sounds less like deception and more like someone attempting to adjust his behavior after a previous complaint.

    From my reading of the article, it is entirely possible that Agan is telling the truth when he says he had no sexual intentions in touching students, that he learned from the earlier allegations, and that he changed his conduct accordingly. The article itself does not present evidence of criminal sexual intent.

    It is also worth remembering that many of these allegations occurred during the height of the “Me Too” movement, a period that significantly changed social and professional norms regarding physical interaction between males and females. Behavior that may once have been interpreted as overly familiar or inappropriate but nonsexual came to be viewed through a much more serious lens. That cultural shift is important context.

    The article also notes that at the second school, the complaint centered primarily on one student who felt he gave her too much attention and later ignored her after she expressed discomfort. The story further mentions that the student later struggled academically and failed the class. That does not mean her feelings were dishonest or invalid, but it does suggest the situation may have been more emotionally and academically complicated than the article acknowledges.

    You also note that only a very small number of teachers who retain their credentials continue teaching after allegations of misconduct. Yet when those numbers are placed in the context of California’s roughly 286,000 credentialed teachers, the percentages are extraordinarily small. The article gives little sense of how statistically rare these cases actually are.

    What troubles me most is that this story may effectively destroy Agan’s career regardless of whether any criminal misconduct occurred or whether his intentions were sexual in nature. The article has already been shared on the LAUSD “Parents Supporting Teachers” Facebook page, where many commenters are treating him as unquestionably guilty. In practical terms, he may now be permanently condemned in the court of public opinion.

    That raises an important ethical question: Do the reporters recognize that publishing a story framed this way may permanently end a person’s ability to work as a teacher, even in the absence of criminal charges or findings of sexual intent? Was that an intended outcome of the reporting?

    Schools absolutely must protect students and investigate complaints seriously. But there also has to be room for proportionality, context, due process, and the possibility that people can learn from prior allegations and change their behavior. In an era of severe teacher shortages and collapsing morale, many educators will read this article as confirmation that one allegation — even absent criminal conduct or proven intent — can permanently destroy a career and reputation.

    Thank you for considering another perspective.

    Sincerely,

    David Pearce
    Retired LAUSD K–5 Theatre Teacher

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    • I used the email address at the end of that piece to also complain to the journalist who wrote that poorly titled hatchet piece, pointing out that in the United States we are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, not from allegations like those directed at Agan for hugging too much. From what I read all he did was touch shoulders. Not even full hugs. And a few comments about what girls were wearing.

      Agan should have known better not to touch students for anything but self-defense.

      But what if he grew up in a culture (or family) where hugging was cultural to show you cared in a nonsexual way? I taught students like that. They’d hut me. I didn’t hug them. Thank God that didn’t happen often. Only a few rare occasions I wasn’t ready for. I didn’t nut hug back.

      I didn’t bring that up in my complaint. I should have. My focus was on leaving the word “alleged’ out of the title of that piece.

      As for what girls were wearing in his classes, if his school had a dress code and the students violated it, he should have kept his mouth shut and written them up. Sending them to the office. The middle and high school where I taught in the same district, had a supply of clean, baggy sweats that came from lost and found to provide to students to wear for the rest of that day.

      That’s what I did. I wrote dress code violations and sent those students to the office. It was almost always girls who didn’t have enough clothing on to cover up properly for a classroom setting in an academic class like English and journalism. Just hit me. The girls in my journalism class never dressed provocatively or violated the school’s dress code. Only in my English classes.

      I never mentioned what I thought about what they were wearing. Sexy outfits on girls distract the male students, who are distracted enough as it is thanks to the years it takes to adjust to all those hormones that hit at that age. If they adjust and get used to managing those emotions.

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      • I was fascinated by a discussion among parents about what should and shouldn’t be acceptable school attire. One parent, whom I really respect, argued that as long as a student’s genitals are covered, their clothing should be considered acceptable. They felt that many dress codes are inherently sexist because they tend to focus disproportionately on girls, and that boys need to learn self-control rather than placing responsibility for their behavior on girls.  

        It’s a new world, Lloyd!

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      • Public school dress codes are primarily decided by the local school board, which votes on and approves district-wide policies. However, the specific rules are shaped by input from principals, teachers, parents, and students, while ultimately being bounded by state and federal laws.

        Voters elect school boards. Voters elect their state and federal representatives.

        If I had a parent say that I hope I would have pointed out how a Constitutional republic/democracy like ours works.

        That individuals do not have the freedom to do whatever they want. We have rules and laws decided by the officials we elect and we follow them or pay the price like getting written up and sent to the school office for a dress code violation that the local elected school board created and voted on as long as that did not violate state and federal laws.

        If they voted in a dress code that allowed fig leaves to cover private parts, I shudder what the ripple effect would be after a student came to school only wearing a Biblical style fig leaf.

        Would teachers be able to teach if a boy or girl walked into class dressed like that? I dout it.

        Still, to be fair to teachers, when “shit” like that comes out of a parent or student’s mouth we never heard before, I usually didn’t think of a response until later. Sometimes it would take me a day or two to come up with one. Once I had one, I’d use it again when it fit.

        I think I would have been ready to counter that dumb parents comment about boys need to learn self-control. I would have agreed but also pointed out, they all do not learn at the same speed and some never learn. That we have no control over who someone learns or doesn’t learn. Even our own children or the children we teach.

        I used this response too many times to count.

        That parents teach their kids their own way at home, but teachers teach in a classroom setting from planned lessons with state approved material.

        Leaning and remembering what they learned from parents and teachers is the child’s responsibility and we do not all learn the same way or remember the same way.

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      • Outside of that one issue they’re great! Very active supporter of public education and a staunch opponent of privatization. They’ve played a big part in pushing back against charter schools in LAUSD. Oh by the way, Holmes Middle School and Valley Academy Arts & Sciences won the battle against co-locating with Magnolia “Public” Schools.

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      • The 1,000 acre, forth generation ranch behind the community of homes I live in acts like Sovering Citizens and members of Trump’s MAGA movement. The rancher refuses to cut firebreaks between her weed overgrown pastures and our homes that are mandated by legislation and codes to protect our homes from fires. About fifty years ago, a fire broke out on that ranch that burned down to that firebreak behind our homes then and didn’t jump the firebreaks to burn the homes we live in today. Now there is no firebreak and hasn’t been for years. When I contacted the rancher and asked them to make the firebreak ageing according to state law, he accused me of being entitled and did nothing. Those weed can grow higher than my six foot+ tall fence. They don’t graze their cattle in the fences pasture behind some of the houses so even the cattle don’t keep that under control.

        There are all kinds of parenting styles, from abusive to supportive, and we are living in the age of the Sovereign Citizen movement, that I think was the beginning/foundation of what led to MAGA.

        The sovereign citizen movement is a loose, anti-government extremist ideology whose adherents believe they are exempt from all U.S. laws and taxes. They claim the government is illegitimate and use elaborate “pseudolaw” to argue that legal regulations do not apply to them. [1, 2, 3, 4]

        Because adherents frequently refuse to comply with police (such as during traffic stops) or attempt to enact “citizen’s arrests” on public officials, U.S. law enforcement agencies like the FBI classify the movement as an extremist domestic terrorist threat.

        The sovereign citizen movement and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement did not directly merge, but they cross-pollinated extensively during the COVID-19 pandemic. Disillusioned by government public health measures, many far-right anti-government extremists and QAnon adherents adopted MAGA ideals, blending sovereign pseudolaw with election denialism.

        The MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement and the Sovereign Citizen movement share core anti-establishment beliefs, viewing the federal government as inherently tyrannical and illegitimate. Both rely heavily on conspiracy theories and prioritize “constitutionalism”, often defending their actions with pseudo-legal rhetoric and resistance to public health mandates or tax obligations

        Donald Trump’s core “MAGA” base encompasses roughly 30% of the U.S. adult population and accounts for just over half of his overall voter coalition.

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      • I reported them and the town where I lived mailed them a certified letter.

        The town said they wouldn’t sent anyone to deliver it to their house which is inside the fenced ranch with locked gates at the entry. The town said if they didn’t sign for the certified letter and ignored it, there was nothing the town could do.

        I’ve been thinking of writing to my congressman and see if that gets any action.

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