Homeschooling; Jim Crow Again; Public Transit; and More

 #Casey Parks, "Going Home," The New Yorker June 21, 2021. - "(Before the pandemic, six per cent of Detroit fourth graders met proficiency benchmarks in math, and seven per cent on reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.)" "Around three per cent of Black students were homeschooled before the pandemic; by October, the number had risen to sixteen per cent." "In 2020, around seventy percent of Detroit public school revenues came from per-student allocations by the state." 

"Most of the earliest homeschooling textbooks were written from a Christian perspective, and some were racist. Bob Jones University, the private South Carolina college, refused to admit Black students until 1971, began issuing homeschooling textbooks through its press later that decade." " 'United States History for Christian Schools,' first published in 1991, stated that most slave-holders treated enslaved people well, and that slavery 'is an example of the far reaching consequences of sin.' " 

"Betsy DeVos's first budget proposal as Secretary of Education under President Trump, in 2017, would have cut nine billion dollars from federal education funding, while adding more than a billion dollars for school-choice programs." 

"About half of Detroit's students are now enrolled in charters, one of the highest proportions of any U.S. city."

#Ari Berman, "Facing Down Jim Crow Again," Mother Jones, July + August 2021. "The basic idea is the same: to couch voting restrictions in race-blind language to disenfranchise new voters and communities of color." "There are strong similarities between the Mississippi plan of 1890 and the Georgia plan of 2021." President Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, asked the Georgia state legislature to appoint its own presidential electors to overturn the will of the voters. 

The overall election board in Georgia has the authority to take over up to four county election boards it deems underperforming. "And since November, at least nine GOP-controlled counties have dissolved their bipartisan election boards to create all-Republican panels." 

"By the early 1900s, only 7percent of Black residents were registered to vote in seven Southern states, according to data compiled by the historian, Morgan Kausser, and Black turnout fell from 61 percent of the voting-age population in 1880 to 2 percent in 1912." The states-right jurisprudence of the post-Reconstruction era has been resurrected.

#Rachal Monroe, "The Go-Between," The New Yorker, June 7, 2021. -"The half-dozen ransomware negotiations specialists and the insurance companies they regularly partner with, help people navigate the world of cyber extortion. But they've also been accused of abetting crime by facilitating payments to hackers." "By 2015, The F.B.I. had estimated that the U.S. was subjected to a thousand ransomware-recovery attacks per day; the next year, that number had quadrupled.:

"In 2018, the average payment was about seven thousand dollars according to a ransomware-recovery specialist [online company, Covewear (sp?)] By 2020, further increases in average payments caused some cyber-insurance companies began to exit the market. "Around three quarters of Fortune 500 companies eventually invested in kidnap-and-ransom insurance, but there was some discomfort with an industry that turned a profit by funneling money to the Mafia, terrorist groups, and criminal gangs." "These days, some ninety per cent of kidnappings are resolved, when specialists are involved, the success rate rises to ninety-seven percent."  

#Aaaron Wiener, "A Ride, Not a Privilege," Mother Jones, July + August 2021. - "The cuts that cash-strapped transit agencies proposed, before being bailed out by Congress -- eliminating 40 percent of New York's City's subway services, a fifth of the DC regions Metro stations, and two-thirds of Atlanta's bus routes -- wouldn't have been their instant demise, but it was hard to see a way out of the death-spiral of mutually reinforcing service cuts and ridership losses."

"There's something for everyone in good public transit. It's essential to curbing climate change. The American Public Association estimates that every dollar spent on transit generates $15 in economic activity."

#Tom Philpott. "Empire of Dirt," Mother Jones, July + August 2021. - "The Gateses own 242,000 acres nationwide, an empire of dirt more than 1.5 times the size of Chicago, and worth a cool $5 billion." "The world's cache of arable land is shrinking under pressure from sprawl, pollution, and desertification. Between 1940 and 2015, the average price of an acre of farmland increased six-fold, and economists expect that trendline to steepen."

The Fruits of Betsy DeVos

Betsy DeVos's heart must be beating harder as she learns about what is happening in Florida's school districts. DeVos has little regard for traditional public schools, nor does she have experience with public education. What most activates her heart are vouchers to private schools, and, especially, religious education.

In Florida, school districts will be required for the first time to send a portion of local tax revenues to charter schools; also, the law gives charter schools the flexibility to open multiple schools each year. The law funds a new initiative, called Schools of Hope, that transfers the lowest-performing public schools to charter school management companies.

Miami-Dade Schools may see a quarter of a billion dollars of its funds transferred to charter schools. [1]

Florida's  statewide voucher program, called a tax credit scholarship, cost state taxpayers over $600 million in the first ten years of operation, from 2002-2012, according to Fund Education Now, a state-based public school advocacy group. Much of that money may have been wasted, as more than 300 charter schools in Florida have failed due to poor performance.

80 percent of parents who use the vouchers send their children to religious schools. Only 25 percent of those using these vouchers transfer their children out of the lowest-performing schools. [2]

Florida ranks 41st on school funding, according to the Education Law Center and Rutgers Graduate School of Education.



ADDENDUMS:
*Steve Bannon told CBS's Charlie Rose that the Catholic Church and bishops "have been terrible about" undocumented immigrants. He suggested they were unable "to come to grips with the problems in the church" because they rely on undocumented immigrants to fill the churches and have an economic interest in "unlimited illegal immigration."

*President Trump may next attack those in "temporary protected status," a provision of immigration law that allows the government to grant temporary work authorizations and protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants from certain countries where life remains dangerous.

*DAMAC Properties, a Trump Organization partner, signed a $32 million contract  with the Middle East subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corporation.

*President Trump asked for deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health; however, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bipartisan bill providing $36.1 billion for the health institutes.

*An audit by the inspector general of the Interior Department  found that $84 million was improperly spent to help develop California's plans to build two giant tunnels to ship Northern California's water to Southern California. California's water districts, and not federal taxpayers, were supposed to bear the costs of the $16 billion project.

*The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that the Graham-Cassidy bill that would convert Obamacare into block grants for states, would result in a 34 percent cut in spending, compared to Obamacare over ten years. This cut would be mostly in Medicaid funding.

Footnotes
[1] Jeff Bryant, "Like Her Boss, Betsy DeVos Makes a Disaster All About Herself," Our Future.org, September 5, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

Some Things to RememberTrump By

Letter Writer in The New Yorker Undresses Trump Administration
Letter writer Pat M. Gelb describes state of emergency in the June 5 & 12 The New Yorker:

"While the public has been distracted by the F.B.I. and congressional investigators, Trump has decimated the State Department, and he refuses to fill dozens of positions, undermining our government's ability to respond to ordinary needs, let alone crisis-level exigencies. He is dismantling the E.P.A. and eviscerating environmental regulations. The Justice Department is rolling back the hard-won victories of decades of civil-rights struggle, and the Department of Education is abetting initiatives to destroy public schools. There is another reason, besides cowardice, that explains the Republicans' continued support for Trump: he is doing their dirty work, deconstructing a government they deem too costly and egalitarian."

Ten Items From Rep. Patrick Murphy's (D-FL) List of Things to Remember Trump By
1. Failing to govern as though he represents the entire country.

2. Making a false wiretap claim.

3. Approving a deeply flawed ACA replacement bill that breaks his campaign promises.

4. Instituting an unconstitutional immigrant ban that makes the nation less safe.

5. Leaving dozens of vital national security positions empty at the State Department.

6. Ordering a Navy SEAL raid that gathered no actionable intelligence.

7. Supporting tainted election results in Turkey that gave more power to its autocratic leader.

8. Picking fights with longtime allies like Germany, Canada, and England.

9. Introducing a tax plan heavily skewed toward the benefit of wealthy tax filers.

10. Failing to divest himself of business interests that present clear conflicts of interest.

ADDENDUMS:
*The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the AHCA will cut taxes by $992 billion over  ten years.

*Several Republicans, including Tom Price of HHS, have attacked the latest CBO AHCA score.

*Newt Gingrich has called for the abolition of the CBO.