Year: 2018

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Trump Increases Federal Deficit By 32 Percent In Fiscal Year 2018

Remember the Teaparty? Remember how angry and outraged they were when President Obama strapped this country around his waist and pulled it out of the ditch? Remember how Republicans stood on the sidelines and criticized every dime Obama spent to revive a dead economy?

Because of the quick and decisive actions of President Obama, the economy rebound. The Stock Market that was free-falling off the cliff grabbed the rope thrown by Obama and somehow managed to pull itself back to today’s record levels. And unemployment continually decreased.

Yes, Obama did what he had to do to save America, in spite of the grumblings of the Teaparty and the Republican party.

But where is the Teaparty now? Where are the Republicans? Miraculously, they are in lockstep with their little drummer boy, Donald Trump. Blind with their giddiness as he increased the federal deficit by 32 percent to pay for a campaign promise giving permanent tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, like Donald Trump.

The federal deficit hit $895 billion in the first 11 months of fiscal 2018, an increase of $222 billion, or 32 percent, over the same period the previous year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The nonpartisan CBO reported that the central drivers of the increasing deficit were the Republican tax law and the bipartisan agreement to increase spending. As a result, revenue only rose 1 percent, failing to keep up with a 7 percent surge in spending, it added.

Our grandchildren will thank us later… I’m sure of it!

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Joe Scarborough Close to Naming NY Times’ Anonymous Writer

Forget the substance of the NY Times Op-Ed – a piece stating Donald Trump as unhinged and incapable of understanding the simplest tasks or having the simplest skills or mindset necessary to lead this country. The Substance of the Op-Ed has not taken a back seat, it’s not even in the same vehicle. Today, the fascination is trying to figure out wrote the Op-Ed?

Just about everyone associated with the Trump White House has denied, some even going as far as expressing their desire to be hooked up to a lie-detector machine. The goal? To prove to their mighty leader that they did not write the Op-Ed.

But while White House employees are falling over each other in a mad rush to be the first in line for the lie-detector machine, media outlets are throwing in their two cents in the who-done-it controversy.

Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ recently stated that he is close to naming the White House author. He also cautioned that the anonymous author may not be a senior administration official, as originally stated by the New York Times.

“Willie had a pretty good source that suggested that it wasn’t someone that the country knows and actually has the name,” Scarborough said. “We won’t say it here today, but, but that name is slowly but surely getting around in Washington, D.C.”

Scarborough asked Times reporter Nick Confessore, an MSNBC contributor, whether the newspaper had overplayed their hand.

“I don’t speak for the paper, but, yeah, I would say that I would hope and I expect and I’m sure that my colleagues on the op-ed page would not use the phrase ‘senior administration official’ if it was not an actual senior person,” Confessore said.

“But that said that still leaves a fairly wide number of people,” he continued. “So if you adopt a strict definition of a senior administration official, it’s still dozens or 100 people that it could be, which is why it’s a good use in news stories, as well, that we often use to mask identities or have a source attribution. But hopefully, it is a person who merits that title.”

Meanwhile, the message of the Op-Ed is officially lost.

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Republican Senator Ben Sasse – “Too Much Drama” From Trump’s “Soap Opera Presidency”

Ben Sasse, a Republican Senator from Nebraska called out Donald Trump and his White House for all its drama in a Sunday morning interview.

“I don’t have any desire to beat this president up, but it’s pretty clear that this White House is a reality-show, soap-opera presidency,” Sasse told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” running through a list of the more incendiary reports that have put the White House on the defensive in recent months, including several anonymous accounts detailing dissent and subversion in the administration.

“What you’d like is the president to not worry so much about the short-term of staffing but the long-term of vision-casting for America, pull us together as a people, help us deliberate about where we should go and then build a team of great, big-cause, low-ego people around you,” he said. “Right now it feels like there’s just way too much drama every day and that distracts us from the longer-term stuff we should be focused on together.”

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Obama to Voters – “Restore Some Sanity In Our Politics”

The coming midterm elections should be taken seriously, as a chance to “restore some sanity in our politics,” Former President Barack Obama said at a campaign event in California on Saturday – a clear swipe against Donald Trump and the normalization of insanity since Trump won the White House.

Obama didn’t mention President Donald Trump by name during a 20-minute speech Saturday in the key Southern California battleground of Orange County but the allusions were clear.

“We’re in a challenging moment because, when you look at the arc of American history, there’s always been a push and pull between those who want to go forward and those who want to look back, between those who want to divide and those are seeking to bring people together, between those who promote the politics of hope and those who exploit the politics of fear,” he said.

His appearance — one day after a strongly worded critique of Trump at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — touched on themes of retirement security, climate change and education.

“If we don’t step up, things can get worse,” the former president told the audience at the Anaheim Convention Center. “In two months, we have the chance to restore some sanity to our politics. We have the chance to flip the House of Representatives and make sure there are real checks and balances in Washington.”

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Teachers Need Some R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Most of the nation’s schools are now open and running, but what of education?

Here in New Jersey and in much of the New York suburbs, the opening week was an exercise in damage control. Most school districts, including mine, that do not have air-conditioning suffered through a terrible four days that saw students and teachers getting sick from the heat and school districts that changed their school’s schedules to single session days (there’s no such thing as a half-day).

As the climate warms and it is, these days will become as frequent as snow days are in the winter, and will force all schools to have air conditioning as default equipment. This will cost money that the public will need to contribute in taxes, and with property taxes already high in these states, something else might need to be cut to pay for it.

And just wait until next spring when those of us living in states, where the new tax law limits our ability to deduct some mortgage and home equity loan interest and property taxes, complete our returns and realize that the GOP is fleecing the middle class so that corporations can get their 15% tax cut.

Through all of this, and more, teachers are doing their jobs with tremendous help from…exactly. There is simply no national agenda to improve education other than to cut back on regulations, destroy public unions, promote charter and for-profit schools, private school vouchers, and policies that question the value of what really made America exceptional and great: the public schools.

With the GOP in charge, the federal government is abandoning its oversight role and giving the power back to the states to set their own academic requirements, student evaluations and equity policies. While it is true that states should have a great deal of power over their public schools, some states have notoriously low standards, are starving their budgets to lower taxes, and are falling short of ensuring that all students are protected by the laws and are provided with an effective education.

And if you thought that last school year’s teacher walkouts in Oklahoma and West Virginia were isolated events, then you are in for a shock. I have no doubt that this year will bring more walkouts, more labor disputes, and more civil disobedience. I, for one, am in the mood and I work in a state where the teacher’s union is strong and salaries allow for a middle class life.

Which makes this week’s weather folly all that much more galling for both students and teachers. Many students, including not only my high schoolers, but children as young as five years old, were in classrooms for hours that registered temperatures in the 90s. If we left these same students in cars with the window cracked a half-inch for 15 minutes while we ran into Starbucks we’d be arrested for child endangerment. Our administrators sent us messages thanking us and complimenting us on being “troopers” and “roughing it out,” words that have no place in a school.

I’m a teacher, not a soldier. I don’t operate on the front lines, I teach in a classroom. And it’s my job to prepare today’s students to be tomorrow’s leaders. Respect, or get out-of-the-way.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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The Back-To-School Special: What You Know Beats How You Feel. Every Time.

My school district thought that it would just a fabulous idea to have the faculty report at the end of August, and not wait until September as they had for, say, the past 110 years. And to try and mollify us, in addition to giving us something to think about, they contracted with Dr. Robert Brooks and had him deliver a lecture about why it’s key that educators create an atmosphere of trust, respect and comfort for our students. Dr. Brooks’s main point was that in order for students to reach their potential as learners, teachers need to provide a supportive, engaging, safe environment in their classrooms. Students should feel welcomed and respected, and they should know that the teacher is going to provide them with opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge, to work through problems, and to fail, as long as we also provide them with opportunities to correct their mistakes. He also spoke at length about creating resilient children who can use their life experiences, temperament and previous knowledge so they can feel successful and confident in their abilities. Much of what he said reflected what many educators learned in the 1980s and 90s through the Madeline Hunter Instructional Theory Into Practice model. Hunter spoke of “feeling tone'” which was a method of making one’s classroom into, you got it, a supportive, engaging, safe environment. This all sounds reasonable, but then Dr. Brooks lost me completely. On two occasions during his lecture, he stated that “teachers do not teach math, history, science, 2nd grade or 3rd grade.” His point was that we should be focusing on how students feel in the classroom and making them feel comfortable and welcomed in school. I could not disagree more. From the time I began teaching 35 years ago, I have called myself a “History Teacher.” Not Social Studies–History. There’s a difference. My view is that students need to know the subject, and through the subject they learn the disciplines inherent in that subject, the different strategies and learning modalities necessary to succeed in that subject, and the facts, arguments and research that informs the subject. It’s through the subject that a student finds their level of engagement and interest, and it’s up to the teacher to make that subject as relevant to the student as they can. The subject must drive the teacher’s approach to education and to their classroom management. In sum, the subject comes first, then comes the environment. I do agree with every educational theorist on the merits of creating a classroom environment where students feel welcome and safe, and where children know that the teacher can be trusted to provide them with worthwhile activities and information that will allow them to succeed. But we need to do that through our subjects, not first or separate. I want resilient students who can evaluate their own work against a rubric and edit, rewrite or change their minds to make a more cogent historical argument, and I will create a classroom environment that values those approaches. What Dr. Brooks did not mention was that learning in and of itself is stressful. It’s difficult to fit contradictory or seemingly unfathomable facts into your worldview. I will challenge students and ask difficult questions and, at times, make students uncomfortable because that’s how you can assess learning. Many times students leave the classroom, and not just mine, without a resolution or with more questions that need answers. And it’s all driven by the subject. What’s happened in education over the past 15 years is that educators have been told to focus more on mindsets, resilience and students’ emotional concerns at the expense of actually teaching them a body of knowledge. Academic skills have become more important than facts because, after all, if you can learn how to analyze a source, you can do that in every subject, right? The Common Core gets some of the blame because it was a list of skills that students needed to learn. I thought that was great, but the problem was that the skills ate the content. The other problem is the assumption that we are living in a post-fact world because, after all, you can just look it up on the Internet. As a response to that folly, I am actually planning more lessons that don’t require students to open their computers. Teachers must teach their subjects first and foremost and use that subject to create an inviting classroom where students know they can succeed. To my colleagues around the country, I hope that you and your students have a successful year, and that by the end you have students who are both knowledgeable and happy. For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
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The Silly Season Gets Ominous

Gee. It turns out that the president actually lied. Not that this is a total surprise given his history of being a liar, telling untruths, exaggerating facts, creating alternative facts, being 100% wrong, saying one thing and contradicting another, making stuff up, fibbing, retweeting fake news stories, lying to his wife, and getting his American History facts absolutely wrong. Now he got caught. And this is not going to go away so easily. It was always clear that Donald Trump had affairs, as anyone who read about him during his days as a New York personality in the 1980s and 90s. And I’m sure he paid off a number of women to stay silent or to simply go away. He also convinced himself that he could control his message and make sure that anything too embarrassing would get squashed before it hit the papers. The problem is that he brought these personality traits to the White House, and we know what happens to people who convince themselves of their own importance. Every president has flaws that become magnified once they are in the White House. Clinton had affairs, Nixon believed he could explain himself out of his own lies, GW Bush needed to please his dad, Obama was too detached. And on and on. Now we have Michael Cohen admitting in court that the president knew about the payments to silence Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal before the 2016 election, and that the president intended these payments to influence the election’s outcome. To the president, these are not crimes. To the rest of the legal, political and social world, these are serious enough that President Trump will have to answer for them. This is not anything to celebrate. If Cohen is telling the truth, then the president is lying, and Trump’s talk about a rigged election turns out to be accurate. The problem is that it was his campaign that was trying to influence it. Democrats running in close elections need to be careful about making too much of this issue too quickly. The news is damning enough, but the real concerns are health care, taxes, and local concerns. And if this is all happening in August, imagine the fun we can look forward to in the fall. For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
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What Party? Some Democrats Aren’t Helping the Cause

Remember when the two worst words you could post on your Facebook feed was when a group of friends were talking about a party that you weren’t invited to and you plaintively asked, “What party?”

I’m starting to feel that way about my party, the Democrats. I’m a registered Democrat and have been since I started voting at age 18. I’ve supported its mission and values, and even agreed when Democrats and Republicans would agree on something important, even if neither party got everything they asked for in the deal. I’ve worked the polls as the representative Democrat and even spent 14 hours side-by-side with a Reagan Republican and we had a lovely day chatting and cross-checking voter rolls.

But lately, some Democrats have not represented the party well. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s statement last week that America was never that great is a prime example. I understand what he means; that we have a higher standard of ethical and moral behavior to live up to and we’re still working on that. And if he truly believes that, then the good governor should express that sentiment and urge Americans to do better at home and abroad. Instead, he gave a nice gift to the most demagogic person to sit in the White House, and the president took great advantage of it.

What Cuomo should have said was that the present administration was not going to make America great if it continued to allow polluters to pollute more, to relax clean air and water standards, to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans who want to join the military, to give massive tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, and to subvert American ideals as they relate to immigration and the treatment of children. In short, the focus needs to be on the behavior that he doesn’t want to see. Once you start labeling and questioning what on the surface is a broad claim, you’re going to get yourself into trouble. And he did.

It’s the same with those Democratic representatives and candidates who are calling for President Trump’s impeachment. Perhaps the Mueller investigation will uncover an impeachable offense, but to date the president has done nothing that is likely to lead to a broad swath of the electorate to support legal action against him. Democrats are only giving Republicans and Independent voters a reason to see this as more of a partisan issue than one that deserves their support. Plus, it makes Democrats look desperate and churlish.

Donald Trump has tweeted his little heart out, rampaged against immigrants, labeled the press as enemies and has questioned the country’s commitment to security in Europe. Despite all of that, a majority of people still do not support him or his agenda, support immigration and believe that we should be solid as a rock when it comes to NATO. Why, then, muddy the waters with impertinent and provocative statements that only give him something to fight against?

Democrats need to channel this anger and frustration into a message that resonates with voters on the issues above and affordable health care. But if the party runs on impeachment and other divisive issues, they will blunt their message and suppress some support that would otherwise come from moderates and independents.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Former Navy Admiral to Trump – Please Revoke My Security Clearance

William H. McRaven, a decorated Navy Admiral who oversaw the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, penned a letter to the national disgrace in the Oval Office, the national disgrace also know as Donald Trump.

Dear Mr. President:

Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.

Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.

Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs.

A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.

Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.

If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be.

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Son Gives Maximum Donation to Democrat Running for His Republican Father’s Seat

“I just gave the maximum allowed donation to Jennifer Lewis, a democrat running for my father’s congressional seat”

His Republican congressional father announced that he is not running for re-election. But I don’t think that is the reason the son donated the maximum to a Democrat. The son is a true American, a citizen of this country sadden by the fact that Republicans have decided to uphold Donald Trump over the Constitution.

Bobby Goodlatte is the son of Bob Goodlatte, a Congressional Republican in Virginia. In a Sunday tweet, Bobby told the world of his displeasure with the Republican party.

https://twitter.com/rsg/status/1028798224382009345
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I Know! Let’s Allow Businesses to Take Advantage of Consumers!

What a fun game this is. The country elects Republicans who oppose government involvement in our lives, except for our private parts, favors businesses over people, and makes it easier for businesses to take advantage of us when we try to fight back. The game then continues when we elect Democrats to fix all of that.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – which was created in the aftermath of the Great Economic Blowup of 2008 – was supposed to monitor companies that wanted to take advantage of consumers and separate us from our money, which, if you want to be technical, is what every company wants to do. The issue is that most companies sell a product that, when used correctly, meets a financial, social or emotional need, or tastes pretty darn good. Those that sell products that just separate us from our money, make fraudulent claims or prey on unsuspecting consumers with questionable claims or practices need to be thrown out of the market place.

Until last year, the Bureau, which was still run by Obama appointees, was responsible for reclaiming billions of dollars from companies that did bad things, including credit card companies, lenders, regular banks, student loan purveyors, and other swamp creatures.

Now it’s not run by anyone remotely interested in overseeing consumer protection. In fact, many of the original rules have been neutered or rescinded, and the CFB is run by Mick Mulvaney, also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Guess which job demands more of his time?

The results have been significant. The CFB is now looking to suspend examinations of lenders for violations of the Military Lending Act, which is supposed to protect military families from fraud and stuff.

And Betsy DeVos now wants to scrap rules that forced for-profit colleges to substantiate their claims about being able to get their students jobs that pay money and stuff. You remember the for-profit colleges like Trump University and Corinthian College, right? They were forced out of business because they took money and didn’t do…stuff…like give people the skills and knowledge to get jobs.
Now, I know that not-for-profit institutions of higher education couldn’t guarantee anyone a job, but that’s because their job is to…wait for it…educate their students, which most colleges do pretty well. But if your reason for existing is to get someone a job, then you’d better do quite well at that.

And this is just the beginning. Consumers and employees are already at a disadvantage because we have to agree to arbitration if we have a dispute with a company rather than being able to file class-action suits. Arbitration is stacked in favor of corporations simply because they run the system. It will likely not surprise you to know that this spring, the Supreme Court said that arbitration was constitutional because it would avoid costly and time-consuming litigation. As if costly and time-consuming were both so bad that they simply can not hold up under judicial or legislative scrutiny.

There’s also the repeal of the Fiduciary Rule, which said that financial companies had to put the interests of consumers ahead of commissions and sales goals. Imagine a company that fights against putting consumers first. Can you say, Wells Fargo?

As for pay-day lending, why that industry even exists is a tragedy. Workers should not have to get a loan that uses a paycheck as collateral. Employers need to pay their employees a livable wage and not make it necessary for them to saddle themselves with loans that have exorbitant interest rates. It’s outrageous that the alternatives in this list do not include demanding a wage that allows someone to live a decent life, or to be able to go to a regular bank and open or checking account.

It is certainly incumbent upon all consumers to educate themselves and to spend their money wisely. But when unscrupulous businesses can continue to operate in a market economy without government oversight, that’s a recipe for disaster.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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What A Great Idea! Let’s Pollute More!

I agree that any talk of restoring this country’s greatness must include a return to the smoke-belching, less-regulated, gas-guzzling, backroom-deal-making era that characterized the United States during its hegemonic, paternalistic, condescending, arrogant post-World War II to 1991 past. If I’ve argued anything in my life, it’s that smog and respiratory distress are about as American as politicians who haven’t a clue as to how to effectively run the country.

We seem to have hit the jackpot these days.

I suppose when you don’t believe in science, or that people have an effect on the climate, then enacting policies that roll back environmental laws and that encourage automobile manufacturers to build cars and trucks that will pollute more makes perfect sense. After all, the companies that produce cars have been absolutely correct in the past when they opposed seat belts, harnesses, catalytic converters, cleaner fuel standards and designs that allowed vehicles to crumple around the edges rather than on people. And I’m all about forgiving Volkswagen and others when they faked pollution data to make their cars appear cleaner. It’s perfectly reasonable to cut back on regulations because, hey, we can trust Detroit, Tokyo and Wolfsburg to make the right decisions for us.

And there’s absolutely no hypocrisy in the new policy when it comes to federalism, because allowing states, such as California, to follow their own pollution protocols is just too much for the know-nothing conservatives who on every other issue argue that states should absolutely be able to follow their own paths. Environmental concerns, they are arguing, must be dictated by Washington or else some states might have cleaner air than other states, which would violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Birthright citizenship means that everyone should have dirty lungs.

The good news is that many Americans did go to science class pretty regularly and understand that there’s no going back to the coughing, wheezing past. And I suspect that many Democrats, who are already making inroads by running on health care that actually saves lives, will use this assault on our environment to further the argument that this administration simply doesn’t make a sensible argument on, well,…anything.

So get ready for those fun September temperature inversions. And dirtier rain. And more unhealthy air and water. I’m feeling greater already.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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