Daily Howler on Mitt Romney and Betsy DeVos

Proponents of "education reform" also tend to control the narratives, and the supply of facts. The things you're allowed to read in mainstream newspapers will tend to align with their views.
Romney's op-ed column offers some strong examples of this unfortunate state of affairs. ....

Romney's claim is crazily wrong...
Persistently, the Romneys make gloomy claims of this type. The liberal world sits and stares.
Everyone, of the right and the left, has agreed to this rolling deception. The right pushes this claim for various reasons, financial gain among them. The left says nothing about this deception because manifestly the left doesn't care.

The Daily Howler

I love the Daily Howler's often long commentaries about the failures of our liberal tribe. Bob Somerby spent years teaching in an inner city school so when it comes to education he is especially sharp. While he doesn't take an absolute anti ed deform position he always makes point that no one else does. Here it today's post:

http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2017/01/romney-calls-bay-state-schools-number.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyHowler+%28the+daily+howler%29

Romney calls Bay State schools number one!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2017

Fails to list one basic reason: In Sunday's Washington Post, Mitt Romney offered a ringing endorsement of Betsy DeVos, Donald J. Trump's multi-billionaire nominee for secretary of education.

DeVos is a strong proponent of those policies which have long been described as "education reform." Just for the record, people who gain control of the language will often find success in the political wars.

Proponents of "education reform" also tend to control the narratives, and the supply of facts. The things you're allowed to read in mainstream newspapers will tend to align with their views.

Romney's op-ed column offers some strong examples of this unfortunate state of affairs. Consider this passage, in which Romney makes a claim which is virtually required by law within the mainstream press:

ROMNEY (1/8/17): It's important to have someone who will challenge the conventional wisdom and the status quo. In 1970, it cost $56,903 to educate a child from K-12. By 2010, adjusting for inflation, we had raised that spending to $164,426—almost three times as much. Further, the number of people employed in our schools had nearly doubled. But despite the enormous investment, the performance of our kids has shown virtually no improvement.

"The performance of our kids has shown virtually no improvement?" In major newspapers like the Post, the constant promulgation of such claims is virtually required by Hard Pundit Law.

Everyone has heard these claims a million times by now. That said, Romney's claim is crazily wrong, as we've endlessly noted.
For all major demographic groups, scores have soared since 1970 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the Naep), the federal testing program which Romney specifically cites in his column. That said, it's virtually impossible to learn that fact in the pages of major newspapers like the Post and the New York Times.

Daily Howler on Brian Willians - How He Was Rewarded With Wealth and Influence for Pushing Us Into War

Brian Williams was in Iraq because his employers worked quite hard to get us there. That’s how we found our way into Iraq—with people like Williams and (Chris) Matthews pimping the glories of Candidate Bush, then calling Gore “un-American.” 

Brian is very wealthy today. People are dead all over the world because so many chasers of “press corps” Mammon sang these particular songs. On the brighter side, Williams is very wealthy today.

We’ve warned you and warned you and warned you again—disaster lurks when “journalists” are handed multimillions by corporate owners like (Jack) Welch. This syndrome affects our “liberal” journalists too, including those we may be most inclined to love, respect and trust.
.......
Immelt could afford both cribs? Having fawned to his friend Rush Limbaugh, Williams was now bringing in two times Immelt’s haul! He owned a house in wealthy New Canaan too, handed down from the influential in-laws which must never be discussed in profiles of Williams. Now, he also shared a Manhattan address with Immelt and with Welch. These are the sorts of facts people like Williams work quite hard to suppress. Obedient members of the guild will generally keep such facts undiscussed. This leads us rubes to believe the relentless cons about Brian’s vast everydayness.
We’ll discuss that problem before the week’s end; your lizard brain will insist that we’re wrong. But we don’t think that Williams is an obvious “decent guy” in the way he approaches the world.

We think he scratched his way to the top. Along the way, we’ll guess that he was often less than obsessively honest, and not just about those RPGs in Iraq.

When Howard Kurtz sang Brian’s songs: Back in 2007, Howard Kurtz sang Brian’s various songs in his book, Reality Show. By then, Williams was very important. Perhaps for that reason, Kurtz broke his back to tell Brian’s story in the way Brian likes it told. In December 2007, we did a three-part Special Report about Kurtz’s ridiculous fluffing of Williams. For links to all three parts, click here.  For something resembling a fourth part to the series, you can just click this. 

Read it all at:

THE FOG OF BRIAN’S VARIOUS SONGS: Why was he in Iraq at all?

Posted: 11 Feb 2015 08:25 AM PST

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2015

Howler Howls at Krugman and Press Corps

This column comes quite close to being deceptive. As a matter of fact... it goes over that line....
The breakdown of the mainstream press corps has been a giant problem for decades. Another huge problem: the way the guild will airbrush this problem away.  Daily Howler on Krugman column.

I'm a Paul Krugman fan. It is the first thing I read in the Times every Monday and Friday. As I was reading the Krugman piece this past Friday (Moment of Truthiness) something was bothering me when he wrote about the open distortions and mistruths that are never challenged:

aren’t there umpires for this sort of thing—trusted, nonpartisan authorities who can and will call out purveyors of falsehood? Once upon a time, I think, there were. But these days the partisan divide runs very deep, and even those who try to play umpire seem afraid to call out falsehood. 

My immediate thought was, yes, there is supposed to be an umpire. It is called the  press. Like, just maybe the very paper Krugman works for, which, to take education coverage as an example, will print any lie or distortion coming from Arne Duncan, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee (where are stories on her cheating while the Times hammered Atlanta), Bloomberg, et al.

You'll note that Krugman never goes near the education issue while his colleagues Brooks and Kristof go wilding on teachers and their unions. Krugman talks about the Republican privatization agenda but doesn't connect the Democratic neo-liberal agenda which doesn't stray all that far. Dems may want more government spending but they want to hand the money spent to privatizers, at times making tea party anti-government types look rational.

Anyway, I was glad to see the Daily Howler (In our view, Krugman goes over the line!) take direct aim at Krugman's piece and the press corps in general though I think, as former teacher who does cover ed issues, he doesn't take enough aim at the biased ed deform press.

Press corps gets airbrushed away: Has our political system “been so degraded by misinformation and disinformation that it can no longer function?” That’s the question with which Paul Krugman started yesterday’s column. Plainly, we’d say the answer is yes. We'd say our system has been disabled that way for a rather long time. In our view, misinformation and disinformation were thoroughly clogging the system at least by the start of the Clinton-Gore years. By the end of those years, the disinformation drowned us. In that sense, Krugman was raising a very good question. If anything, he was raising this question a bit late in the game.

Good. Howler ties the Clintons to the game. But his aim is on the press corps and Krugman's letting them off the hook.

Krugman correctly suggests that our system has been degraded by misinformation to the point of breakdown. But can you see who’s been airbrushed out of the tableau he’s painting? In the passage we have posted, Krugman portrays a troubling dance between politicians and voters. Not a word is included about a third group—our badly degraded press corps. Remarkably, the press corps doesn’t exist in this column. It’s airbrushing all the way down!

Traditionally, the press corps is supposed to address misstatements by politicians! This is a very basic part of the way our system is supposed to work. Traditionally, even eighth graders have been entrusted with this basic knowledge. America’s press corps, the so-called “fourth estate,” has always played a key role in their civics texts. Krugman wiped this group off the face of the earth.

Well, some people -- those in the battle against ed deform -- certainly might agree that if the ed press corps didn't exist we just might be better off. But then again, I might ask Howler to pay more attention to the ed deform crowd and their supporters in the media (like Education Shmation).

Howling at the Debate: Did Ifill Roll Over for Palin?

THE IFILL COWER: Gwen Ifill asked very few follow-up questions last night. Was that because of the evening’s format? Or was it a function of Ifill’s political problems? Brit Hume’s first remarks after last night’s debate referred to the problem Ifill carried with her into this debate:

HUME (10/2/08): Well, now the families come on the stage to join the two contestants as they say good-bye and thanks to the moderator, Gwen Ifill, who seemed to have gotten through this evening without anybody jumping on anything she said or making her the issue, which I'm sure she's very grateful for.

Let’s translate: If Ifill had challenged Palin last night, conservative elements would have scorched her for displaying her vile “liberal bias.” And yes, that’s clearly what Hume meant. Because let’s face it, there was exactly zero chance that weaklings of the pseudo-left were ever goin to “jump on” Ifill. As we all know, conservatives go after people like Ifill. Liberals ask her for jobs.

More insightful analysis of how the so-called liberal press operates at today's edition of The Daily Howler.