I promised myself I would not post anything about Orange 45 unless absolutely necessary. Then I read this. Dave Pell asks a crucial question:

While Trump appointees are doing their best to impose their policies before January 20, a federal judge in California told Betsy DeVos in no equivocal terms by a federal judge that she cannot divert CARES money to private schools. The nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools received $13.2 billion in CARES funding, which they were required to share with charter schools and to private schools with low-income students. However, charter schools, religious schools, and private schools also qualified for billions more from the CARES Payroll Protection Program, which excluded public schools. DeVos initially tried to wedge private schools into the public schools’ $13.2 billion fund, even if the private schools had no low-income students. But three federal judges rejected her efforts. Now she is permanently enjoined.

LANSING, Mich — A judge has formally closed the case on U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ efforts to rewrite a section of the Coronavirus Aid…

John Merrow looks at the deeply partisan divide in our country and thinks about ways that we can communicate with each other.

Three Big Questions:  1) How many of the nearly 73 million Americans who voted for President Donald J. Trump can be persuaded to support President Joe Biden? 2) How can we connect with them?  3) Can we fix our schools so they don’t keep turning out angry and disaffected graduates who eagerly support demagogues?

I suspect that the racists, the white nationalists, the misogynists, and other close-minded bigots who voted for Trump aren’t persuadable, nor are greedy, selfish voters who care only about their finances. 

But, as I see it, that leaves many millions of Trump voters who might be open to change. Let’s not scorn or mock them but rather try to understand their position.

To change the minds of adults who voted for Trump, we…

Thomas Ultican took a close look at spending on education technology in North Carolina and was shocked by what he learned.

He begins:

A North Carolina cabal of school superintendents, politicians, consultants and technology companies has gone wild over the past seven years. In Chapel Hill, Education Elements obtained an illegitimate $767,000 contract. Chapel Hill-Carborro City Hills Schools (CHCCS) Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance, Jennifer Bennett, supposedly ignored school board policy and agreed to the contract in secret. It seems that when the state and local schools are spending on education technology, policies and law are being ignored.

After the Education Elements negotiations, Bennett sent a message to their Managing Partner, Jason Bedford, saying, “Need to get you guys to modify the [contract] if you can since if we include the whole potential payment value, then we have to take this to the Board since over our $90K threshold ….” This…

Consider the following scenarios that were recently printed in our local newspaper related to the spread of COVID-19:

1. Going to work when sick.
2. Not wearing face masks or not wearing them correctly.
3. Traveling to COVID-19 hot spots and bringing back the virus.
4. Sending children to school sick.
5. Attending large holiday parties where unmasked people engage in close contact activities like dancing, singing, and sharing food.
6. Gathering for in-person birthday parties with guests from other households.
7. Attending large prayer group sessions without following social distancing and masking guidelines.
8. Visiting grocery stores or other areas without practicing social distancing and wearing masks.
9. Joining poker games where people sit too close to each other.
10. Huddling too close together at bars to watch football games.

THINK PEOPLE!
These are clear examples of how this virus continues to spread.

Steven Singer was an avid supporter of Bernie Sanders. Now, post election, he is feeling cautiously optimistic about the prospect of a Biden presidency. He explains why here. I’m posting his first reason. Open the link to read the other four.

Singer writes:

President-elect Joe Biden.

Go ahead and say that aloud once.

“President-elect Joe Biden.”

How does it feel?

If you’re like me, it feels pretty good.

And to be honest I never expected that it would.

Sure, I voted for Joe. I gave money to the campaign. I volunteered.

But Biden was far from my first choice. In fact, looking over the field of Democrats seeking the party’s nomination, he might have been my last pick.

I was a Bernie Sanders guy and probably will be until the day I die.

But damn if it doesn’t feel good to say “President-elect Joe Biden!”

Before today, 

Joe Biden passed the 270-vote in the electoral college!

He won Pennsylvania, with leads in Arizona and Nevada.

It is a very good day for America and the world!

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/07/politics/joe-biden-wins-us-presidential-election/index.html

Our long national nightmare is over!

Trump must go. Pack his bags. Clear out and take I ask, Don Jr., Eric, and Stephen Miller with him.

“The awakening Democratic presidential primary, with 14 declared candidates and at least nine possible more, amounts to a stark choice over the party’s future: left or center, identity-issue minded or pluralist, radical or incrementalist. In fact, we haven’t seen Left battle lines so dramatically etched for more than half a century, since 1967 and 1968, under the dual weights of a disastrous foreign war and a rising new generation determined for change. The hero of that Democratic primary, who pushed Lyndon Johnson out of the race, ignited the energy of America’s young, and set up the new fault lines along which the future of the party got fought, was Eugene McCarthy, Democratic-farmer-labor senator from Minnesota. For many of us who were part of the McCarthy campaign, it’s a new Gene McCarthy—not in form, but in values—that we want today. For those who didn’t live it, it’s hard to imagine the…

Protesters demonstrating in the swimming pool of the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Fla., scream as motel manager James Brock dumps muriatic acid into the water on June 18, 1964.

“The 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protest was part of a series of events during the civil rights movement in the United States which occurred on June 18, 1964 at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida. The campaign in June – July 1964 was led by Robert Hayling, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, C. T. Vivian, Fred Shuttlesworth, among others. St. Augustine was chosen to be the next battleground against racial segregation on account of it being both highly racist yet also relying heavily on the northern tourism dollar. Furthermore, the city was due to celebrate its 400th anniversary the following year, which…

When the history books are written in years to come, the Trump administration’s cruel, callous, inhumane treatment of immigrant children may well be the most horrifying chapter.

Caitlin Dickerson writes in the New York Times that border officials are sending unaccompanied minors to Mexico, even though it is not their home country and they have no family there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/us/migrant-children-expulsions-mexico.html?referringSource=articleShare

U.S. border authorities have been expelling migrant children from other countries into Mexico, violatinga diplomatic agreementwith Mexico and testing the limits of immigration and child welfare laws.

The expulsions, laid out in a sharply critical internal email from a senior Border Patrol official, have taken place under anaggressive border closure policythe Trump administration has said is necessary to prevent the coronavirus from spreading into the United States. But they conflict with the terms upon which the Mexican government agreed to help implement the order, which were that…