Post-election Readings on Why Dems Lost - or are they in denial due to popular vote?

The progressive populism of Bernie Sanders nearly toppled the establishment of the Democratic party but Clinton and Obama came to the rescue to preserve the status quo. And I do believe Sanders would have beat Trump to avert this neofascist outcome!... Cornel West

 My research suggests that Rust Belt populism is rooted in the region’s loss of locally owned industry — not simply because of economics but because of how that loss hollowed out the community structure that once connected people to politics, leaving residents alienated and resentful..... Josh Pacewicz, WAPO

A couple of post-election pieces for your reading pleasure that beat up the Democrats. I may do follow-ups on some of them in more detail. I'm interested in the intersection of class and identity politics - how to walk that line without abandoning either.

I posted some pieces about Bernie Sanders on the issue and how the Hillary wing of the party distorted what he was saying:

• Bernie Sanders Nailed It On Identity Politics and ...
• What Bernie Sanders Gets Right About Identity Poli...

I believe the struggle between the Hillary and Bernie wings continue to this day.

MORE is holding a discussion around the election in mid-January. ICE also had a discussion a few weeks ago that was informative.

I'm not agreeing with all points raised, just putting this stuff out there for discussions trying to assess "wha' happen?" I particularly liked the WAPO piece because it analyzes how the Dems lost the working class -- and links that to the decline of unions. Which makes sense. The right have understood that by killing or weakening unions it could break their unity and ties to the Dems. This was the plan since Reagan -- the the outcome has been economic disaster for the middle class -- wages has have been stagnant since the early to mid-80s -- DUHHH! Reaganomics and the right wing assault. For educators, the phony Nation at Risk Reagan commissioned to go after education was the opening shot. That our major union leader Albert Shanker signed onto this report was the beginning of the end of our ability as teachers to fight back. Randi only continued Shanker's capitulation to ed deform.

1.
An interesting piece from the Washington Post.

Monkey Cage

Here’s the real reason Rust Belt cities and towns voted for Trump

By Josh Pacewicz December 20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/20/heres-the-real-reason-rust-belt-cities-and-towns-voted-for-trump/?tid=pm_politics_pop&utm_term=.f9fc6082adbe

=======
2. The Nation:

 What Is the Left Without Identity Politics?

Four writers consider the question dividing the Democratic Party.

By Walter Benn Michaels, Charles W. Mills, Linda Hirshman and Carla Murphy

https://www.thenation.com/article/what-is-the-left-without-identity-politics/

=====
3. Liza Featherstone's interesting take at The Guardian

Feminists misunderstood the presidential election from day one 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/15/feminists-election-misunderstood-women-voters

4. Cornel West: Goodbye, American neoliberalism. A new era is here
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/17/american-neoliberalism-cornel-west-2016-election

School Scope, The Wave: The Fallacies of School Choice, Part 2

My column for this week to be published Dec. 23, 2016 at www.rockawave.com


School Scope:  The Fallacies of School Choice, Part 2

By Norm Scott

At one point, a decade ago, the voices standing up against what I’ve termed the “ed deform” movement were few. But the mainstream press is beginning to catch on. Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker recently wrote:  “Missing in the ideological embrace of choice for choice’s sake is any suggestion of the public school as a public good—as a centering locus for a community and as a shared pillar of the commonweal, in which all citizens have an investment. If, in recent years, a principal focus of federal educational policy has been upon academic standards in public education—how to measure success, and what to do with the results—DeVos’s nomination suggests that in a Trump Administration the more fundamental premises that underlie our institutions of public education will be brought into question.”

The neighborhood public school as a center of community throughout the nation. What an ancient concept.

The school choice movement is a master plan over the past three decades marketed to degrade the public schools and promote a shift of public money into private, often profit-making hands. A key is to brand the entire concept of public schools as a failure of government and the teaching corps (emphasize incidents concerning bad teachers and create a negative image in the minds of the public). Imagine if there was a plan to unlock the money going to the police force where blame was placed the individual police when battling crime. Critics of police have never called for an alt/private police force to be created to give the public a choice. If Trump and his education secretary Betsy DeVos get their way, there will be only a cinder of a public school system left after they are done.

A few weeks ago a Rockaway parent sent a letter to The Wave challenging my stance opposing charters, vouchers, education tax credits, and the so-called school “choice” movement and my opposition to Betsy DeVos as articulated in my Dec. 9 column (http://tinyurl.com/z7jxw3o) and I replied in Part 1 on Dec. 16  http://tinyurl.com/gv3jzpn where I talked about public schools as a guaranteed institution and part of the fabric of American life. I suggested we continue the dialogue.

The anonymous parent left this comment on my blog.

“Please tell me if I understand your objections to vouchers and charter schools. You believe:

·      Public education is corner stone for creating a common American culture and any diffusion would weaken our Republic.

·      Charters and vouchers take precious money away from the traditional schools thus creating more dysfunction.

·      Public funding of religious schools violate the "No Establishment Clause" in the U.S. Constitution and the prohibition of public money being used in private religious schools in the New York State Constitution.

·      For profit schools are fundamentally skewed to favor the corporation over the students and the students will suffer.

He nailed some of the essence of what I was trying to say in a way I do not always articulate. Not to say I convinced him.

The shift of funding from public schools into private, often unregulated and for profit hands, holds great danger for the very future of a public school system. In New Orleans the entire system is charter and Detroit is headed that way. Without any neighborhood public school options left there is less choice. One New Orleans parent I know who originally supported charters found that she had to send her child across town because he couldn’t go to the charter across the street.   (Please read this Dec. 12, 2016 NY Times article, How Trump’s Education Nominee Bent Detroit to Her Will on Charter Schools [http://tinyurl.com/zpc2vlq] on DeVos’ disastrous impact on causing mayhem in Detroit schools.).

That is not to say that public funds are not misused but there is a greater degree of accountability. In the long run we end up with either no public school system or a sliver only serving kids no one wants. If your child has difficulty or a handicap, you may be out of luck. Next year DeBlasio has to run, partially on his management of the schools. Success Academy’s Eva Moskowitz gets public money for 40 schools and 40,000 students but doesn’t have to run for anything. And she can pay herself a half a million bucks a year with no public oversight. Charters - especially the avaricious chains like Eva Moskowitz' have the intent - no matter what they say -- to skim off all the top performing kids they can, leaving the unwanted to whatever is left of public schools.

School choice is marketing. And if your kid doesn't make the cut of the school you want then you find you are in the woods - especially if your neighborhood public school no longer exists.

Norm keeps raving away at ednotesonline.com. Happy holidays.

Bernie Sanders Nailed It On Identity Politics and Inequality, and the Media Completely Missed the Point

What makes the attacks on Sanders so disingenuous is that they are so clearly partisan and unprincipled. Contrast Sanders statements on class and race with Clinton’s.

Following up on my recent post of the NY Mag piece - What Bernie Sanders Gets Right About Identity Politics...  I'm still looking to post pieces on what is going on in the Democratic Party struggles. This article shows that the Sanders/Clinton battle is still being played out. I don't hold out much hope for the Dems moving in Bernie's direction given there are so few people we can name who would line up with him. The struggle will play out locally, not just nationally. Watch how things go here in NY state where Cuomo will try to play the left while being a centrist. The UFT will almost always play against the left. They were not only against Bernie due to Clinton but philosophically the UFT/AFT complex is always against using class and I believe they even charged MORE at some point with playing the class card.

In this piece Katie Halper also exposes how the media misinterpreted what Bernie was saying about identity politics, race, class and economics.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/12/bernie-sanders-nailed-it-on-identity-politics-and.html

Bernie Sanders Nailed It On Identity Politics and Inequality, and the Media Completely Missed the Point

By Katie Halper  |  December 7, 2016  |  9:43am

For over a year, critics within and around the established wing of the Democratic Party have painted Bernie Sanders as a misogynistic, racist, heteronormative, cis, male, pseudo-anti-establishment, actually-totally establishment politician motivated by a humongous ego and a desire to thwart progress and the election of the first female president in US history. And then there were the less moderate critics.

I kid, but only slightly.

And as we saw in a recent episode of anti-Sanders outrage, this narrative is still extant. On Sunday November 20, during a talk at Berklee College in Boston, Sanders said something nuanced about race, ethnicity, gender and class, and the same media that supported Clinton during the campaign distorted his remarks to fit this narrative.

Though the election is over, the battle over the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, which was personified and defined by Clinton v. Sanders, is in full swing. While Clinton and her supporters represent a centrist neoliberal wing of the party, Sanders and his supporters represent the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” as the late Senator Paul Wellstone put it. In fact, the fight for the DNC chair is part of this same struggle. Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), who had endorsed Sanders and whom Sanders appointed to the Democratic Platform committee, is seeking to be DNC chair. The ADL’s vicious and embarrassing smear campaign against him as being an anti-semite—which he’s not—demonstrates how much is at stake.

So, it makes sense that the official Clinton campaign, as well as the David Brock run smear PR empire, continues to push the narrative which they worked so hard to develop and embed during the campaign to delegitimize Sanders and his critiques.

According to this narrative, Clinton and her supporters understand the unique but overlapping challenges faced by women, LGBT, people of color and immigrants. This tendency, to see the intersections of issues of class and race and gender and etc. is called “intersectionality,” a term and concept developed by Kimberle Crenshaw. Sanders, they argue, is a single issue candidate, a vulgar class reductionist, only interested in fighting for the interests of the white working class.

The problem is, for many of the so called intersectionalists who support Clinton and reject Sanders, intersectionality and identity politics include everything except for class. They are so tone deaf about class that they hear the “working class” as a white monolith, as if working class people of color or LGBT people or immigrants don’t exist. Yes, Sanders has spoken about the unique challenges of reaching the white working class, something that would make sense to any intersectionalist who thinks that white supremacy is a real thing. But his use of the word white in this specific context is just more proof that his use of working class without “white,” includes people of all backgrounds. Sanders; critique of inequality, and his attack on the one percent, is one that champions the rights of people from all backgrounds. At the same time, Sanders acknowledges the singular struggles and double (or triple, or quadruple) burdens faced by different people, and how the economic inequality is compounded by racism and sexism. For example, the NAACP gives him a rating of 97% on his positions on affirmative action. They give Clinton a rating of 96%.

What Sanders Actually Said
Let’s look at what Sanders said that got him in so much trouble. After his Nov. 20 talk, the moderator opened the Q&A by reading one of the audience questions. Rebecca, who considers Sanders and Elizabeth Warren her heros, had written, “I want to be the second Latina senator in U.S. history. Any tips?”

Sanders responded:

“It goes without saying that as we fight to end all forms of discrimination, as we fight to bring more and more women into the political process, Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans — all of that is enormously important, and count me in as somebody who wants to see that happen.”

What Sanders was clearly saying, and actually did say, is that discrimination is real and a problem, that diversity and representation of underrepresented people is “enormously important,” and something he “wants to see…happen.”

He went even further than that, though, saying:

“Right now, we’ve made some progress in getting women into politics — I think we got 20 women in the Senate now. We need 50 women in the Senate. We need more African Americans.”

Not only is diversity critical but there is still more work to be done. There has been some improvement but not enough.

But then he uses the “but” word:

“But it’s not good enough to say, “Hey, I’m a Latina, vote for me.” That is not good enough. I have to know whether that Latina is going to stand up with the working class of this country, and is going to take on big money interests.”

Okay, so what does his “but” do? Here, it does not contradict but complicates. It builds on his other statements about diversity in government. Diversity is absolutely necessary but it’s not sufficient. We have to know where those candidates stand in terms representing the people’s interests, not merely their demography (which again, IS important, but not enough!)

He expands:

“One of the struggles that we’re going to have right now, we lay on the table of the Democratic Party, is it’s not good enough to me to say, “Okay, well we’ve got X number of African Americans over here, we’ve got Y number of Latinos, we have Z number of women. We are a diverse party, a diverse nation....”

And then come more “buts” as he delves deeper into the conflicts of between policies for the people and policies for the financial elites.

“But, but here is my point, and this is where there is going to be division within the Democratic Party. It is not good enough for someone to say, “I’m a woman! Vote for me!” No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry.”

And here’s where Sanders brings up identity politics. Ready? Brace yourselves!

“In other words, one of the struggles that you’re going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics.”

Identity politics is a term used for the addressing of the issues and injustices of particular groups in the political process. This is the only time Sanders ever mentions identity politics. “Go beyond identity politics. ” For the mainstream media, that was the gotcha moment, and the focus of attention. Yes, “go beyond” can mean different things. It can mean to go “farther” or “go further” as when directions tell us to “go beyond” a certain intersection, or a counselor advises us to “go beyond” our comfort zone. At worst, “to go beyond” can have a dismissive and discounting connotation—though “get beyond” or “get over” would be a better choice if the idea was to dismiss.

At any rate, the fact that Sanders emphasized how important identity politics are shows he was clearly not eschewing them. In addition to what was already quoted, Sanders followed his sentence on identity politics by saying, “I think it’s a step forward in America if you have an African-American head or CEO of some major corporation.” And in case you missed the message, he finished his speech with, “We need candidates — black and white and Latino and gay and male — we need all of those candidates and public officials to have the guts to stand up to the oligarchy.”

He couldn’t have been clearer in presenting economic policies and representational diversity as being complementary, and not mutually exclusive.

How the Media Responded
It looks like the first major publication to pick up the story was Talking Points Memo, (TPM) which had written the following headline by Monday Morning: “Sanders Urges Supporters: Ditch Identity Politics And Embrace The Working Class.”


The headline and opening sentence, which use the words “ditch” and “move away from” clearly distort what Sanders was saying. They also miss that he was talking to people running for office and the Democrats, not his supporters, though what did I expect after the headline? The headline also reads like a translation from 1930s Pravda. You can almost hear the Internationale crescendo in the background as a caricature of an old and archaic Sanders spouts dated disproven ideas about the working class, forsaking the progress of women and people of color.

Either emboldened by TPM’s lax (mis)reporting or too lazy to review the comments on their own, several other outlets incorporated “ditch” or its synonyms into their articles’ headlines or paragraphs.

At Vox, not surprisingly, Matt Yglesias, chided that Democrats neither can nor should ditch “identity politics”:

Not everyone put the headline in its headline. Some put it into the body of their articles.

Rebecca Traister linked and quoted the TPM headline in a piece she wrote for The Cut, lamenting that Sanders was “recommending that Democrats embrace the working class and “Ditch Identity Politics,” according to one headline.” In the very next sentence, She clarified that:

In fact, the headline was overblown: Sanders did not say we should dump identity politics, and affirmatively noted that “we should bring more and more women into the political process” and that “we need 50 women in the Senate!”

Bustle did a cute move in copy and pasting the TPM headline into its opening paragraph.


On Wednesday night, the TPM talking point, if you will, made it’s TV debut. Speaking on All in with Chris Hayes, Clinton supporter and Slate writer Michelle Goldberg complained that Sanders was saying the Democrats need to ditch identity politics.” To be fair, though Goldberg did repeat “ditch,” she did get the target of Sanders’ message right, noting it was for the Democratic Party and not his supporters. That’s neither here no there, except, perhaps, to show that Goldberg had taken enough time to go over what Sanders had said and deliberately chose to not update or correct the verb.

Host Chris Hayes, who was with Goldberg in the studio, interjected (though barely audibly), that Sanders, “didn’t quite say that.” Nina Turner, former Ohio State Senator and Sanders surrogate, who was speaking from a remote studio, also clarified, that Sanders, “didn`t say it that way. He didn`t mean it that way.” But Goldberg ignored the correction, continuing as if nothing had been said: “I think that there is a fear among some people that in this move, that kind of a purely class-based politics will throw women and people of color under the bus in this attempt to win back the culturally conservative white working class.” Goldberg, a white female Clinton supporter, speaking past Turner, a Black woman, to explain how the Vermont Senator who Turner had chosen to support was espousing an ideology that would throw women of color under the bus, was “problematic,” to use a word so frequently invoked by Sanders critics.

Politico swapped it out for “slam.”

On the Right, The Blaze went with “quit.”

The Observer chose “grow out of.”

Others definitely went to great lengths to distort what Sanders said, and it’s hard to believe they were innocent.
As for opinion pieces and tweets, this one stands out as being utterly unrelated to reality.

What makes the attacks on Sanders so disingenuous is that they are so clearly partisan and unprincipled. Contrast Sanders statements on class and race with Clinton’s.

What Clinton Said
Back in February, Clinton delivered a speech in the suburbs of Las Vegas where she explicitly pitted economic policies against “progress” for women, immigrants, people of color, and LGBT. In an obvious dig at Sanders, who the Clinton campaign was deriding as a “single issue candidate,” Clinton asked, rhetorically, “Not everything is about an economic theory, right? If we broke up the big banks tomorrow — and I will, if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk, I will — would that end racism?” When the audience responded “No!” Clinton took the call and response and really ran with it, asking “Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight? Would that solve our problem with voting rights, and Republicans who are trying to strip them away from people of color, the elderly, and the young?”

The audience responded to each of these questions with… “No!”
Clinton gets a lot out of this call-and-response jam session. She makes the strawman argument that Sanders thinks or has ever suggested that breaking up the banks will end racism, sexism, homophobia, voter disenfranchisement and xenophobia etc. She is certain that taking on the banks is insufficient. But she goes further by saying that it may not even be necessary. She vows that she will do something about the banks, “if they deserve it, if they pose a systemic risk.” Clinton is agnostic on whether the banks deserve any kind of regulation or are a risk. And Clinton paints breaking up banks and fighting against structural racism as two discrete and unrelated projects.

The truth is that the foreclosure crisis was one of the most stunning and disturbing examples of institutionalized racism. As Nathalie Baptiste writes in the American Prospect:

“Across the nation, black homeowners were disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis, with more than 240,000 blacks losing homes they had owned. Black homeowners in the D.C. region were 20 percent more likely to lose their homes compared to whites with similar incomes and lifestyles. The foreclosure crisis also affected blacks of all income brackets; high-earning blacks were 80 percent more likely to lose their homes than their white counterparts, making the homeowners of Prince George’s County prime targets.”

Clinton wraps up her speech by calling herself “the only candidate who’ll take on every barrier to progress.” Of course, her ignoring the systemic risks already posed by the banks and de facto racist policies already practiced by the banks, makes it hard to believe that she is at all equipped to do this.

People who care about identity politics should have been in an uproar. They may not particularly care that she oversimplified and distorted Sanders’ analysis. But how could Clinton have ignored the racist nature of the subprime loan scandal? Also, how could she present economic justice and other forms of justice as so unrelated?

And yet there was no outcry.

Clinton’s statements were nowhere near as nuanced as Sanders. Sanders doesn’t make one more important than the other. Clinton does. Had Clinton spoken about class and identity politics with the same intersectionality and nuance as Sanders, her statements would have been very different. She would have taken the very sensible position that while bank reform is a good and necessary thing, it alone will not end racism or sexism. She would have emphasized the need for attacking the overlapping issues.

But she didn’t and Sanders did. Not that you’d know.

Katie Halper hosts the Katie Halper Show. You can listen to her latest episode, featuring Matt Stoller and Leslie Lee, below.

#Townsend Harris Update: Audio of Jahoda Throwing F-Bomb

The source continued that the “subject of the meeting was benign—how to improve school climate. Principal Jahoda’s vulgar remarks were uncharacteristic to the positive nature of this meeting.” They also disputed the claim that the comments were not “directed at anyone” and that Ms. Jahoda was “talking about [herself], no one else.” They explained that Principal Jahoda’s vulgar language was in direct response to a comment made by a subordinate and that the manner in which Ms. Jahoda responded reflected her behavior when dealing with colleagues..... sophomore Marsad Kabir expressed that, “It seems as if you’ve lied to our newspaper. How do you then respond to the reports of harassment that have happened in the past? If those accusations [the incident with the inappropriate language] were true, what about the rest?”  ...thhsclassic.com

OMG- I love these student journalists, Mehrose Ahmad and Sumaita Hasan, at THHS - The NY Times ought to hire them right now. Also thanks to Jonathan Halabi who has been on the case and has send me info and links to videos. And also his work at the UFT EB meeting last night in raising the issue.

This is our 2nd report of the day on THHS. Here are my reports in reverse order.

•  Townsend Harris Update: Jahoda Mocks Students in ...

• Townsend Harris Protest Update: NY Times Joins in ...
• Townsend Harris Students, Parents and Teachers Exp...
•  Peter Lamphere on Rosemarie Jahoda: What Does It T...

The THHS issue was raised at the UFT Ex Bd meeting by Jonathan Halabi of New Action - where Rona Freiser of the Queens office claimed the UFT was on the case all along -- though no one seems to know that -- that they protested to the DOE when Jahoda was put in. Fact is that given Jahoda's history of going after Peter Lamphere when he was CL at Bronx HS of Sci- a direct attack on the union, there are times for lines in the sand to be drawn.  I'll have more on the abusive principal issue we raised at the EB meeting and the response. Actually I have so much to report on that meeting I may do 5 posts today -- but it's cold out, what else do you have to do but read Ed Notes?
 
Let's get right to the audio where Jahoda says she won't be like the previous principal who was so popular. I heard from a parent who wrote:

Townsend Harris Update: Jahoda Mocks Students in her Class at Stuyvesant, THHS Report on Jahoda Actions

[Stuyvesant] Freshman Audrey Hatch was participating in GLASS's annual Day of Silence on April 14 when.... her math teacher, Rosemarie Jahoda, made jesting comments about her and other students in class for their refusal to speak.....
"I found Ms. Jahoda and told her that I thought she was being rude and I wished she'd apologize," said Goldin. According to Goldin, things escalated from there, and disciplinary measures are now being taken against Goldin for his actions while confronting a faculty member.
.....May 15, 2003, http://stuyspectator.com/spectator/display.cgi?id=1224

“Change is always welcomed if the outcome is to improve things. Townsend Harris is a well-oiled machine. It has always been a well-oiled machine and that does not mean some things might need to be changed. There are directives that have to be adjusted to, but if all the plumbing in your house is working and maybe one faucet is leaking, you would just change the washer in the sink, you wouldn’t rip out all the pipes.” ...... THHS Chapter leader

One of our ace correspondents (who likes to remain anon) dug up this 2003 gem from the Stuy Spectator from Jahoda's past when she taught at Stuyvesant, pointing to her consistent disrespect for students.

And below that is a report from the current students at Townsend Harris chronicling the kinds of changes made by Jahoda that has caused the reaction there.

As the evidence piles up, we must not just demand that Jahoda be removed from Townsend Harris but not allowed to supervise or manage anyone in the DOE. I can just see them making her an ATR supervisor, where she will fit in quite comfortably with the other slugs. Note that Jahoda seems to have spent her career from teacher to AP to temp principal only in the top schools. No working at schools with struggling students for Jahoda because they would have slaughtered her.

I'll be back with another post with audio of Jahoda throwing the f-bomb despite denials, thus having students catch her in a blatant lie. Jonathan Halabi from New Action raised issues about the school at the UFT Ex Bd meeting last night and also called for actions against the Supt and deputy supt.

Student's Feelings Hurt by Teacher for Silent Protest During Class

It's a Wonderful Life Radio Show

We'll be using this calendar in 2017. Also have the 2016

I've written about one of my favorite movies before, most recently when we were in Seneca Falls in the Finger Lakes a few months ago -- (VA-CA Report: A Tour of the Finger Lakes).  We bought a bunch of movie memorabilia at the museum dedicated to the movie, a museum supported by the actress who played the little girl Zu Zu. I think they were even selling her petals. We thought of going back up a few weeks ago for the 75th anniversary at the museum but didn't make it.

check out Chaintheatre

Instead we went to a radio broadcast of the movie yesterday at a performance space in Long Island City by Chain Theatre Co (http://www.chaintheatre.org) and it was a wonderful experience. I love radio-type broadcasts, like Prairie Home Companion. Yesterday they had 8 actors playing all the roles.

On the Today Show, the 3 actors who played the kids were on and Matt Lauer talked about the values in the movie, but of course they didn't go near the epic battle between uber capitalist slumlord Potter and the semi-socialist views of George Bailey. That It's a Wonderful Life has a lot of lefty in it is ignored and the religious aspects are pushed. Many assume Frank Capra was a Roosevelt lefty but this NY Times review of a Capra bio says otherwise:

The film critic for London's Daily Express thought that Capra's political influence was potentially as great as Franklin D. Roosevelt's. And Capra was one of those rare Americans whose name became not only a household word but an adjective as well.

Audiences flocked to see "Capraesque" movies like "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Meet John Doe" -- parables of ordinary people forced to stand up against the greed and corruption of the rich and powerful. Those dramatic comedies, with their depictions of hardship, their "common man" heroes (usually Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper) and their celebrations of small-town virtues, gave expression to a country struggling to climb out of the Depression; they have, ever since their release, been identified with Roosevelt and the New Deal. Yet it is one of the great surprises of Joseph McBride's masterly, comprehensive and frequently surprising biography, "Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success," that the man who seemed to put the spirit of the New Deal on the screen was, in reality, a closet reactionary and a dogged Roosevelt hater.

Frank Capra managed to fool just about everyone; even his wife was unsure of his political affiliations. Longtime co-workers who were Democrats assumed he shared their political convictions. Katharine Hepburn, who starred in his 1948 picture "State of the Union," thought him "quite liberal"; others applied the term "radical" to him. And why shouldn't they have, when Variety was calling a sympathetic character in "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" "quasi-communistic" and The Saturday Evening Post was reporting that in the Soviet Union Capra was "hailed as a comrade"? But as Mr. McBride, the author of previous books on Howard Hawks, John Ford and Orson Welles, tells us, Capra was a lifelong Republican who never once voted for Roosevelt. He was an admirer of Franco and Mussolini. In later years, during the McCarthy period, he served as a secret F.B.I. informer.

In part, the misperception was due to Capra's writers, who generally ranged from New Deal Democrats to card-carrying Communists. One of Capra's great strengths as a director in the 1930's was his ability to work with anyone who had something to contribute to his pictures, even those who were far to his left. He was also enough of a popular entertainer to cater to his audiences; he understood that during the Depression the most hissable villains were grasping bankers and businessmen.

But ultimately the misunderstanding over Capra's politics seems to be a case of people seeing what they wanted to see. In his analysis of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," Mr. McBride points out that the Gary Cooper character, far from being some sort of socialist or New Deal liberal, was, if anything, an "enlightened plutocrat" whose philosophy of voluntary giving was little different from that of Republican businessmen opposed to the New Deal; and he shrewdly notes that while Deeds got into trouble for trying to distribute most of the $20 million he inherited to desperate farmers, he was still planning to keep $2 million for himself.

 Here are links to some of my previous posts on the movie.

Not a Wonderful Life: Education Writer's Block
Dec 27, 2013 ... Well, the good news is that I can spend 3 hours tonight watching “It's a Wonderful Life” for the hundredth time,

The Hottest Love Scene in Film History - 
Dec 6, 2014 ... I'm a sucker for "It's a Wonderful Life" -

The Subprime Mortgage Crisis: It Was All George Bailey's Fault

Update on The Baileys and Potter

Can't resist today's cat photo.

Dec 25, 2008 ... As an adjunct to last night's post on It's A Wonderful Life, there is this item in today's business section of the NY Times. Jeffrey Goldfarb writes in ...

Beware Tainted Research from Brookings Institute - report on school integration has limited utility

"because most forms of school choice further segregation, the report's recommendation will likely only further segregation and inequality for students."... Great Lakes Review

Yes, Brookings Inst has a dog in the race -- to continuously try to prove school choice is the answer. The Great Lakes Reports say "wait just a minute."

Recent report on school integration has limited utility for policymakers, review finds

EAST LANSING, Mich. (Dec. 19, 2016) - An October report from the Center on Children and Families at Brookings attempted to compare various research findings on school segregation with a focus on expanding urban charter schools. The report argued that school quality is the primary determinant of student achievement, and that instead of addressing school segregation, policy should focus on improving the schools that students of color and low-income students attend. However, an academic review of the report finds the report has limited use for policymakers.
Erica Frankenberg, Penn State University College of Education, reviewed the report, Segregation, Race, and Charter Schools: What Do We Know?, for the Think Twice think tank review project. Think Twice, a project of the National Education Policy Center, is funded in part by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. Dr. Frankenberg's research has examined how the design of school choice policy affects racial and economic student stratification. This has included examining the segregation trends in charter schools as well as analyzing state and federal policy to understand why such patterns of segregation exist in charter schools.
Overall, Frankenberg says, "This report is more a distraction than a contribution." Despite its claimed attempt to investigate research findings on school segregation, the report suggests that policy attend to school quality via school choice.
In her review, Frankenberg finds that the report presents a false choice between school integration and creating high-quality urban charter schools. She indicates that the report is limited because of its selective review and interpretation of the literature on race and poverty, and its questionable conclusions that are not reflective of the research consensus.
Frankenberg concludes, "because most forms of school choice further segregation, the report's recommendation will likely only further segregation and inequality for students."
Find the full review on the web:
http://www.greatlakescenter.org
You can find the original report from Brookings on the web at:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/segregation-race-and-charter-schools-what-do-we-know/
Think Twice, a project of the National Education Policy Center, provides the public, policymakers and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
The review can also be found on the NEPC website:
http://nepc.colorado.edu

Townsend Harris Protest Update: NY Times Joins in as PTA Calls for Jahoda's Endgame

Student reduced to tears after meeting with Principal Jahoda following an incident in November....

The co-presidents, Sangida Akter and Tahiya Choudhury, were meeting with Ms. Jahoda with the hope of having the administration draft a letter to the community that would reassure them that such incidents are not tolerated, but the meeting left them them feeling “uncomfortable” and with the impression that Ms. Jahoda showed more interest in protecting the school’s image than addressing their concerns. One of the two left the meeting crying.... Student report

NY Times
Townsend Harris High School is one of New York City’s most prestigious public schools, where 100 percent of students graduate on time and all of them are prepared for college, according to city metrics.  But in recent weeks, the academic powerhouse in Queens has felt a ripple of protest, as students, alumni and teachers have battled with the interim acting principal, agitating for her ouster. On Thursday, parents piled on....

A follow-up to my earlier post: Townsend Harris Students, Parents and Teachers Expose Acting Principal Rosemarie Jahoda and Dept Supt Leticia Pineiro

Soon after posting I opened up the NY Times and found this:

At Elite Queens High School, PTA Calls Embattled Principal ‘Rude’

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/nyregion/townsend-harris-high-school-principal-jahoda.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

I loved this part the best:

The resolution demanded that [Dep Supe] Ms. Pineiro and the city’s Education Department apologize to Townsend Harris students, and asked that Ms. Pineiro and the district’s superintendent [Elaine Lindsey] no longer oversee the school.

Note that the reporter doesn't ignore Jahoda's past:

This is not Ms. Jahoda’s first brush with controversy. In 2010, when she was an assistant principal at the Bronx High School of Science, another of the city’s elite schools, 20 of the 22 math teachers she oversaw filed complaints against her. In an official “fact-finding” report, an arbiter painted a jarring portrait of her dealings with teachers. The report said Ms. Jahoda had referred to one teacher as a “disgusting person,” and that teacher had called Ms. Jahoda a “dictator.” The head of labor relations for the Education Department at the time rejected the conclusions of the report.

How about naming the head of labor relations at the time and shaming for poor judgement? I'm sure if it was a negative report on a teacher, it wouldn't have been ignored.

Then there are these reports from students:

http://www.thhsclassic.com/2016/12/16/parent-teacher-association-calls-on-chancellor-farina-to-remove-ia-principal-jahoda-immediately-from-thhs/

http://www.thhsclassic.com/2016/12/15/student-reduced-to-tears-after-meeting-with-principal-jahoda-following-an-incident-in-november/

Townsend Harris Students, Parents and Teachers Expose Acting Principal Rosemarie Jahoda and Dept Supt Leticia Pineiro

Deputy Superintendent Leticia Pineiro talks down to students

I’m not [Former Principal] Anthony [Barbetta] and I’m not standing in the f*****g hallway.... Rosemarie Jahoda, acting principal Townsend Harris HS... Report from student web site ...
(http://www.thhsclassic.com/) --

Jahoda joins Pineiro

I am a parent of a student at Townsend. This is so disturbing to me and many other parents. I can tell you… the principal doesn’t leave a warm feeling like Barbetta did. There are definitely big shoes to fill. I heard from another parent that the position for a permanent principal is not listed on DOE, leaving us to believe that she has already been given the position. I signed the petition, but how effective would this be? What else can we the parents do to make this go away????
Help!... Parent email to Ed Notes.

UPDATED COMMENT:

this past thursday there was a PTA meeting at Townsend Harris HS and all the parents signed a resolution to demand that Jahoda not get appointed principal of THHS. Check out The Classic's Facebook page its all documented https://www.facebook.com/thhsclassic/

[Student made VIDEO  excerpts  below]
 
Another Farina outrageous appointment. And it's not just Jahoda but Dept Supt Pineiro and Supt Elaine Lindsey (who was supposed to show but didn't have the guts), both of whom were despised when they were in the Bronx.

We know the Farina method - to put people like Jahoda, who wiped out the entire math dept at Bronx HS of Science when she was an AP there, into schools to go after staff. Why else put someone with her history in charge of what many people thinks is the best high school in the city?

Funny thing is, that it is not a case of Jahoda's past coming back to bite her but of her consistent behavior since the got there in September --- showing she has learned nothing - and that the DOE coddles people like her, as does the CSA along with, sadly, the UFT. [See Eterno on ICE this morning -

ICEUFT Blog RANDI HOLDING FUNDRAISER FOR MAYOR DE BLASIO WHILE AFT MEMBERS IN NYC INCLUDING MY WIFE SUFFER UNDER MAYOR]

The UFT must choose between supporting its members and playing political football - and it always chooses the latter. Bottom line to DeB - stop the mayhem of Jahoda-like appointments.

I wrote this on Ed Notes which I handed out at the DA on Weds:

Townsend HS Students, Parents Protest Rosemarie Jahoda Permanent Appointment as Principal

Carmen Farina has appointed yet another slug principal with a reputation for going after teachers, especially chapter leaders, this time to one of the city’s most prestigious schools.

Students held an in school protest last week – see FB video http://tinyurl.com/gmakjzu and a petition opposing the Jahoda appointment has 3500 signatures.
https://www.change.org/p/chancellor-farina-stop-rosemarie-jahoda-from-being-appointed-the-permanent-principal-of-townsend-harris-hs?recruiter=646940072&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

What Does It Take To Get Promoted to Principal in NYC?
MORE’s Peter Lamphere as a math teacher and chapter leader at Bronx HS of Science, came under attack by Jahoda when he stood up to her when she went after almost the entire department, leading to most of the BHS math teachers leaving.

Peter ended up with 2-U ratings under Jahoda and BHS principal Valerie Reidy. He fought one off successfully and had to hire a private lawyer for the other. The UFT "solution" was to parachute Peter out of the school, not to engage in a hand to hand combat with Reidy and Jahoda. Peter was the chapter leader and these two engaged in a direct assault on the union for him doing what he was elected to do.

Read Peter’s entire piece at: http://nyceducator.com/2016/08/what-does-it-take-to-get-promoted-to.html#disqus_thread

UFT cow tows to the CSA
A UFT with guts would be picketing over the appointment of Jahoda as principal. And should contact the parents to protest. She is in the same vein of Monika Garg at CPEI -- a prototypical Farina rewarding people with a history of bad behavior and anti-unionism toward teachers and especially chapter leaders.

Today, the UFT should be picketing Farina for this appointment.

Jahoda is an education criminal for destroying the careers of so many teachers and harming so many students in the process. The UFT must stand up to stop people with a history of abuse and use media to expose them.

Isn't that what was done with Monika Garg at Central Park East 1? And she did the same at LaGuardia HS - in essence a vocational school for talented kids in the arts looking for careers - where the principal, who came from Townsend Harris - is trying to turn the school more towards academics -- which will turn kids and teachers away.
  
Townsend tudents have a web site  http://www.thhsclassic.com/  and here is a report from them:

Sources provide accounts of interim acting principal’s behavior

December 9, 2016

By Mehrose Ahmad and Sumaita Hasan, Managing Editor and Editor-In-Chief

In the recent sit-in that occurred at Townsend Harris High School, Deputy Superintendent Leticia Pineiro asked for evidence to support the claim that Interim Acting Principal Rosemarie Jahoda has harassed members of her staff. The Classic has confirmed evidence of such behavior.

We have obtained irrefutable evidence of a conversation in which the principal speaks in the following manner in response to a suggestion from a colleague that she be more present in the school’s halls: “Standing in the hallway is not gonna make a difference… I’m not [Former Principal] Anthony [Barbetta] and I’m not standing in the f*****g hallway. I’m not gonna do what Anthony did… I’m not gonna stand and hold the door open.”

In reference to this statement, Ms. Jahoda responded, “Let me explain something to you: I don’t talk like that. I don’t speak to people in that manner.”

Other sources, however, confirmed that “such language is not unusual.” Another said, that this type of discussion is “characteristic of their interactions,” explaining that the dismissive tone has led to a negative culture in the school, where ideas are disregarded and individuals feel harassed for expressing themselves.

In a wide range of conversations, we have heard specific examples of people in the building being spoken to in a manner that has been described as “rude and condescending.”

One source described interactions with the principal that were similarly dismissive and inappropriate as above and left the source in tears following the meeting. We confirmed that multiple individuals witnessed this source’s emotional response to the interaction.

Of the aforementioned example, Principal Jahoda stated, “I don’t recall that.”

Beyond the source that provided the evidence of the quotation about standing in the hallway, our sources were unwilling to consent to us providing specific quotations of their interactions with Principal Jahoda due to fear of retribution, but we can confirm that other such evidence exists. One person we spoke to said, “We believe she [Ms. Jahoda] would retaliate personally against us. I fear retaliation.”

Another person, when asked if they refrained from allowing us to provide specific quotations on the record due to fear of retribution said, “100%” and added, “I have heard clear indication [from the principal] that if you cross [her] path, you’ll get it. I’ve heard from many people about fear of retaliation.”

Look at the video: https://youtu.be/-Nnyf4Y7GIg

Published on Dec 10, 2016

Townsend Harris students held a sit-in on Thursday, 12/8 in protest of the potential appointment of Rosemarie Jahoda as the new principal of the school. Deputy Superintendent Pineiro interviewed students about their reasons for protesting; these interactions have since become controversial within the school community. Here are some clips from the event.

Ed Notes received this report from a Bronx teacher who has dealt with Pineiro and Lindsey re: the video:

That is Jahoda next to her. Pineiro  seems to browbeat the kids and to speak down to them. She puts words in their mouth's. She accuses the meek boy of being physically aggressive towards her. And that's bizarre because she's pushing a nasty [finger?] towards him.

The interactions with the kids or inappropriate beginning to end. If this were a classroom demeanor I would read it unacceptable – forget ineffective.

Near the end she tries to force a kid to clarify what the complaint is – and the kid says I don't feel comfortable saying it in front of Jahoda, and the supe keeps pushing her anyway

But from my point of you, the most of noxious part, is when the Boy says please speak with our teachers, let them explain how they're being harassed. And she says no you tell us how they're being harassed, and then accuses the boy of trying to represent the teachers. She says very clearly that she's focused not on what teachers have to say but on what students say.

====
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20161209/flushing/townsend-harris-high-school-principal

QUEENS — Students and educators at Townsend Harris High School are outraged over the possibility that their interim principal might soon be installed permanently at the elite school on the Queens College campus in Flushing.

Students staged a sit-in on Thursday, live-streaming their protest on Facebook against Rosemarie Jahoda. Also, a change.org petition demanding Jahoda's ouster garnered more than 3,000 signatures in a few days.

“The principal of Townsend Harris High School should have a high respect for the humanities tradition, preferably with a background in the liberal arts and/or the classics,” the petition states. “Like Townsend Harris himself, the principal should be a first-rate diplomat, someone with an open-door policy who is approachable and serves as a natural magnet for students, teachers and parents.”
In three months that Jahoda has been interim acting principal, however, she has been a bad “fit,” many said.

“This semester, there have been rumors of numerous instances of faculty harassment, significant changes to programs and course offerings without input from the faculty and [Student Leadership Team], and as time has passed, less parent engagement,” the petition said. “Our children have not been insulated from this. Several have complained about her being aloof or even combative.”

In their dealings with Jahoda, teachers and students expressed frustrations over things like field trip procedures, creating uniform grading policies regardless of the level of coursework difficulty and lacking sufficient time when scheduling certain assignments, according to an article in the school newspaper, the Classic.

“Change is always welcomed if the outcome is to improve things,” Social Studies teacher and UFT Chapter Leader Franco Scardino told the Classic. “Townsend Harris is a well-oiled machine. It has always been a well-oiled machine and that does not mean some things might need to be changed. There are directives that have to be adjusted to, but if all the plumbing in your house is working and maybe one faucet is leaking, you would just change the washer in the sink, you wouldn’t rip out all the pipes.”

Jahoda did not immediately respond to request for comment.
DOE officials noted that the official principal hiring process, known as C-30, has yet to begin.

“Principal hiring and assignment decisions are made by the superintendent in accordance with the Chancellor’s Regulations, and based on consultations with members of the school community,” DOE spokesman Will Mantell said. “We listen closely to the feedback and concerns of all school communities, and engage them as part of the C-30 process.”

Mulgrew Pulls Scare Tactics Card on Opt Out Over Loss of Funding as Parents/Educators Point Out Untruths

Leonie Haimson:
No school or district lost funds last year when 95% of districts didn't make 95% participation rate. I guarantee they won't this year either. You can only cry wolf so many times. There is nothing about withholding funds; and it looks like John King’s ESSA regs will be junked anyway. See http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/12/gop_essa_accountability_teacher_prep_hit_list.html

Mulgrew slammed the opt out movement as threatening funding at the Delegate Assembly on Weds as reported here and here. 
But we knew that from the Unity Caucus leaflet from last June which led to a leading parent group, NYSAPE, to chastise Mulgrew, Parent Opt-Out Group Slams Mulgrew Over Unity

Caucus leaflet.


For decades I and others have maintained that our union leaders often function as agents of ed deform - the facilitators, the handmaidens of teacher evaluation systems, common core, charters, here. A complicated dance, trying to convince people to shove castor oil down their throats no matter how revolting?

testing, etc., while at the same time speaking out of the other side of their mouths in trying to convince the members they are opposing ed deform but at the same time arguing for some aspects of ed deform. Read about Mulgrew's passionate defense of the evaluation system

Does the UFT/AFT have a dog in the race? Opt out has scared the shit out of the deformers, yet our union leaders react like it is a plague. Why?

The Mulgrew quotes were put to a parent dominated listserve:

Q Will opt out put funds in danger? A Opt out is now dangerous. If 95% in a district don't participate in tests, ESSA law says funding can be withheld.

Q—Portability—Can they do that without ESSA, and will opt-out movement hinder us?

Opt-out now really dangerous, they will enforce 5% provision. They want to defund us. If we give them a reason….ESSA says we still must give standardized test and info must be public. Said civil rights community was very strong on that. Says feds have right to withhold Title one funding.

Here are some responses so far from a variety of people.

Sounds like the words of a sell-out and a coward.... NYC Principal

Another NYC Principal"
Based on what I know regarding ESSA, the withholding of funds is not on the table. Even Elia at this week's board of regent meeting did not mention the withholding of funds. She mentioned students receiving a score of not proficient. Which Betty and the regents were pushing back on.

Jia Lee, Chapter Leader:
He gets his direction from Randi. It's how she keeps local 1 (NYC/UFT), the largest voting block statewide and then nationally in the AFT, in line with whatever agreement that's been made with corporate bureaucrats. I smell desperation.  Meanwhile Randi values her connections to those very people, and perhaps it's because she knows the imminent threat to our union; at the same time, her own fears put us into ever more compromising positions. What we need is a resolve that goes beyond any fear tactics.

Teachers Is it true that Randi took a poll of UFT members last week and is ready to announce the union's re-election endorsement of deBlasio and Cuomo?  I understand she's holding off declaring support of Elizabeth Warren for Prez in 2020. Thinks that would be premature and not sure which way the wind is blowing.

Norm in The Wave: The Fallacies of School Choice Marketing Campaign, Part 1

The Fallacies of School Choice Marketing Campaign, Part 1

By Norm Scott

Published Dec. 16, 2016

http://www.rockawave.com/node/237809?pk_campaign=Newsletter

In last week’s column (http://www.rockawave.com/news/2016-12-09/School_News/School_Scope.html)
I posted a letter from an anonymous Rockaway parent who disagreed with my stand on charter schools, vouchers, and Trump’s proposed education secretary, and school privatizer, Betsy DeVos. He feels that school choice is the answer to the problems our public school system faces. I will use the next batch of columns to try to elucidate why I oppose charter schools, vouchers, and any tax
credit for people sending their children to private and religious schools and why even a flawed public schools system is worth fighting for, while trying to fix the flaws. Balkanizing the schools and putting them under thousands of different management organizations, many of them out for a profit, will only
end up degrading all schools. (See Detroit where Betsy DeVos pushed through a system of totally unregulated schools that has lead to chaos.)

The parent contacted me through my blog and asked this
question. “Are you satisfied with the current state of public education (outside of the charter system) in NYC? If not, how would you improve the system?” Oy! This may take 10 years of columns. Let me say right up front. From almost the day I began teaching in Sept. 1967, it was clear the public school
system needed reform. By my 3^rd year I also realized that the
teacher union, the UFT, often a partner with the then Board of Education in managing the schools, also needed reform and that if we wanted change we would have to address both. By 1970 I had become an educational activist which continues to this day. What to change the system to and how to do that has been up for discussion seemingly forever.

Now that I know there is at least one person who reads this column, I will address a bunch of the issues raised in future columns. But this time I want to explore the concept of public institutions.

Pretty much every part of the nation and every neighborhood in most urban areas have had an assumption over the past 150 years or more that there will be certain guaranteed public institutions. A police and fire station (though sometimes these are volunteers). A post office. Access to a hospital. Some sanitation services. Certainly, this has been true in New York City. These
institutions were built and managed by entities that were,
theoretically at least, under the control of a public process – people elected by us who were subject to some level of accountability. Both political parties pretty much signed up to support this concept.

Theorists like conservative economist Milton Friedman and the libertarian movement opposed many of these concepts of public services run by government. The idea of a public school system was one of the first institutions to come under attack (as has the postal service). After Regan’s election in 1980, privatizing interests began to see the trillion dollars spent on public schools as an enormous source of revenue. Thus was born the school choice movement. I will drill down a bit next time. Meanwhile, I urge my one reader (and any others) to check out these two recent articles in the NY Times.

New York Charters
Enroll Fewer Homeless Pupils Than City Schools (http://tinyurl.com/z5uv8ya)

“…in at least 21 of
the 29 geographic school districts in the city that have charters, every charter had a lower percentage of students in temporary housing last year than the average among the traditional public schools in the same district.”

Here is an excerpt of Dec. 12, 2016 NY Times article, How Trump’s Education Nominee Bent Detroit
to Her Will on Charter Schools (http://tinyurl.com/zpc2vlq):

“Detroit Public Schools, [DeVos] argued, should simply be shut down and the system turned over to charters, or the tax dollars given to parents in the form of vouchers to attend private schools. ‘She is committed to an ideological stance that is solely about the free market, at the expense of practicality and the basic needs of students in the most destabilized environment in the country,’ said
Tonya Allen, the president of the Skillman Foundation…. Most charters have failed to improve on the dismal performance of the traditional public schools. High-performing national charter networks have stayed away because of the instability of the market. that will mean shutting down mostly traditional public schools, which in Detroit serve the neediest students, and further desert students in neighborhoods where charters have largely declined to go. “My complaint around this is not that you disagree,” said Ms. Allen, “but that you never could come up with another solution to deal with the practical issues of poor public policy that is not only eroding a traditional school system, but eroding all schools.”

Norms keep searching for answers and finding few at
ednotesonline.com

American History: Interfere in Elections Everywhere

What a hoot about the outrage regarding interference in elections for a guy who majored in history. The CIA was built on interfering in election everywhere in the world, even using assassination where necessary. Chile and helping put in brutal dictatorships is just one example -- and the role our own AFT played in helping undermine left unions, as George Schmidt exposed in his pamphlet.

So let's calm down here. They may have done it and if we could do it in Russia to overthrow Putin we would in a heartbeat. I just heard Stephen F. Cohen on Brian Lehrer -- Cohen has taken the other side on the Putin issue, as have many on the left who see American aggressive imperialism at work. https://www.thenation.com/authors/stephen-f-cohen/ and read this piece: Neo-Mcarthyism and the New Cold War.

As with anything, we need to hear all sides of an issue to make rational decisions. Fred Klonsky touched on America's history of intervention.

The United States does have a well-documented history of interfering and sometimes interrupting the workings of democracies elsewhere. It has occupied and intervened militarily in a whole swath of countries in the Caribbean and Latin America and fomented coups against democratically elected populists.
The most infamous episodes include the ousting of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 — whose government was replaced by an authoritarian monarchy favorable to Washington — the removal and assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in 1961, and the violent toppling of socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende, whose government was swept aside in 1973 by a military coup led by the ruthless Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The Washington Post... Fred Klonsky,  Sunday’s hard rain.