March 1, 2017

Ms. DeVos's Fake History About School Choice - By The NYT Editorial Board

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos offered a positively Orwellian explanation Monday of why historically black colleges and universities were created in the United States. Incredibly, she suggested that they were “real pioneers” in the school-choice movement and “started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education.”

The Education Department’s own website — on a page titled “Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Higher Education Desegregation” — offers a more accurate history. These colleges, it shows, were created, beginning in the 19th century, as a direct response to rigid racial segregation when the doors of white colleges were typically closed to African-Americans.

Rather than integrate colleges, the Southern and border states established parallel, Jim Crow systems in which black college students were typically confined to segregated campuses handicapped by meager budgets and inferior libraries and facilities. Litigation over the funding equity issue continues to this day.

Ms. DeVos’s insulting distortion of history, which she tried to pull back after furious criticism, grows out of her obsession with market-driven school policies, including the idea of a publicly funded voucher program that public school students could use to pay for private education.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/opinion/ms-devoss-fake-history-about-school-choice.html?emc=edit_th_20170301&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

March 1, 2017

Visions of Trumptopia - By The NYT Editorial Board

If there was a unifying theme to President Trump’s campaign, it was his pledge to serve America’s “forgotten men and women,” working people forsaken by the economy and Washington.

In his speech Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Trump presented himself as having made an aggressive start at championing the cause of working people, and promised a new era of rising wages, bustling factories and coal mines, sparkling air and water, and cheaper and better health care, all behind a “great great wall.” He told a few whoppers, but largely kept his eyes riveted to his teleprompter and his delivery subdued. He even opened his speech with a long-overdue condemnation of hate “in all of its very ugly forms.”

We heard again the same sorts of gauzy promises and assertions of a future Edenic America, a sort of Trumptopia, that characterized his campaign. He didn’t explain how he would get it all done, much less pay for any of it; indeed, it sounded at times as though he were still running for the job, rather than confronted with actually doing it. Across his first few weeks in office, Mr. Trump has shown little sign of delivering anything for working Americans beyond whatever satisfaction they may derive from watching him bait the Washington establishment and attack the reality-based media.

Mr. Trump likes to describe his chaotic first month as “promises kept.” Really? Remember how he promised during the campaign to “immediately” fix Obamacare and deliver “great health care for a fraction of the price”? He hasn’t even put a plan on the table. On Monday, he complained to the nation’s governors that “nobody knew” replacing Obamacare “could be so complicated.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/opinion/visions-of-trumptopia.html?emc=edit_th_20170301&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284

March 1, 2017

After Backlash, DeVos Backpedals on Remarks on Historically Black Colleges

By YAMICHE ALCINDORFEB. 28, 2017

WASHINGTON — Facing a fierce backlash after she called historically black colleges and universities “real pioneers” of school choice, Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, spent Tuesday afternoon backtracking on the controversial statement and highlighting the institutions’ roots in racism and segregation.

Ms. DeVos, in a series of Twitter posts on Tuesday and in remarks at a luncheon with presidents from some of the schools, repeatedly acknowledged that the schools were not created simply to give African-American students more choices but because black students across the country were not allowed into segregated white schools. The controversy is the latest gaffe for Ms. DeVos, who has had a rough start.

Since Vice President Mike Pence cast the tiebreaking vote to confirm her, Ms. DeVos has fled from a small group of protesters who temporarily blocked her from entering a school, been criticized by a middle school’s administrators for saying their teachers were in “receive mode,” and suffered through the embarrassment of the Education Department misspelling the name of the civil rights icon W.E.B. Du Bois in an official tweet.

The latest controversy began on Monday evening when Ms. DeVos released a statement shortly after meeting with several presidents of historically black colleges and universities. In it, Ms. DeVos began by praising the schools for making “tangible, structural reforms” that allowed students, often underserved, to reach their full potential.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/us/politics/betsy-devos-historically-black-colleges-statement.html?emc=edit_th_20170301&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57435284&_r=0

March 1, 2017

Kurt Eichenwald -- How Donald Trump's Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Is Fueling ISIS

Kurt Eichenwald
How Donald Trump’s Anti-Muslim Rhetoric Is Fueling ISIS
February 28, 2017 5:11 pm

The jihadis shoot their propaganda across the internet in search of the Western world’s frightened and dispossessed. On Twitter and Facebook, from YouTube to Google Play, the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) traffics in lies, bombarding Western Muslims seeking adventure, compatriots or an outlet for their religious fervor.

The message is stark, terrifying: Your countries hate you. They despise your beliefs. They seek to destroy your faith and convert you to theirs. Your safety, your obligation to true Muslims, is to join the camp of Islam, the caliphate, and take up arms against the infidels.

Since the horrors of 9/11, American presidents operating under the advice of the intelligence community’s counterterrorism experts have understood that countering this propaganda has been among the most essential parts of the fight against ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other murderous jihadi extremists. Through carefully selected language and—for the most part—considered policy, the United States has worked to expose the lies and convince young Muslims drawn by the propaganda toward hate that they are welcome and appreciated in America.

That era appears to be over. President Donald Trump, in office for less than two months, has gutted the strategy used by Republicans and Democrats alike—out of ignorance, hubris or both—sending a new message from the White House, one that reinforces the jihadi extremists’ propaganda and increases the likelihood that more Americans will die in attacks.

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http://www.nationalmemo.com/trump-fueling-isis/

March 1, 2017

Joe Conason -- Fuzzy Math: Why Trump's Congressional Address Simply Doesn't Add Up

Joe Conason
Fuzzy Math: Why Trump’s Congressional Address Simply Doesn’t Add Up
March 1, 2017 6:00 am

Donald Trump once bragged that he could be “more presidential than anybody” — and if that is still just another false boast, his Congressional address proved that for at least one hour, he could seem more presidential than he ever did before. Somebody must have told him that those polls showing his popularity in the toilet are real, not fake, and that if he didn’t want to watch them descend further, this speech presented a chance to “re-set,” as the cable anchors put it.

After his dismal inaugural address, and then five weeks of nightmarish malice and incompetence, that “presidential” bar of expectations is set very low for Trump. So while his speech was well below the standard of most recent presidents, he delivered it calmly and coherently with moments of his undeniable dramatic flair (as when he skillfully and shamelessly exploited the all-too-visible agony of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens’ widow). That was enough to declare this desperate rescue operation a success.

The clearest evidence that Trump was trying to restore a semblance of American decency to his regime — to “normalize” himself as president — came within the first few minutes, when he spoke up at long last against racism and anti-Semitism. He went so far as to mention last week’s racist shooting of two Indian immigrants, one of whom died, in Olathe, Kansas. He had simply ignored the shattering incident (and the unarmed hero who jumped the shooter), provoking an angry editorial in the Kansas City Star, until his staff realized that if he pretended to care, even for a few seconds, this tragedy too could be used to humanize him.

Beyond those contrived moments, the Congressional address was typical Trump — replete with gross demagogy, especially in demonizing immigrants, and devoid of real policy. Indeed, he went beyond his usual recitation of impossible promises and insupportable predictions, predicting that he would virtually abolish narcotics addiction, rebuild the country’s entire infrastructure, immediately and drastically reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals, and spur all those rusting Midwestern factories back into production.

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http://www.nationalmemo.com/trumps-congressional-address-doesnt-add-up