I love the poorly educated.

 

 

During the 2016     Presidential campaign, Donald Trump said that “we won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated”.

Before you go any further, I should warn you that his story is NOT about Donald Trump.

It is actually a book report.

Randi Weingarten has been the president of the American Federation of Teachers since 2008, and she recently release a book titled” Why Fascists Fear Teachers”. At 177 pages, it is a quick read, and is definitely worth the effort.

First of all, what exactly is a fascist?

Here is one definition:

 Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology characterized by a centralized dictatorship, suppression of opposition, extreme militarism, and the subordination of individual rights to the interests of the nation or race. It is an anti-democratic system that seeks to create a strong, unified nation under a single, all-powerful leader and party, controlling nearly all aspects of public and private life. 

 Historically, Hitler and Mussolini are the best examples of fascists, but Trump fits the definition as well. In March of this year, Bernie Sanders and AOC took their oligarchy tour on the road.

 Trump’s cabinet in his second term is worth $381 billion – higher than the GDP of 172 counties. Elon Musk, the world richest man, spent $270 million to get Trump elected, which includes the $45 million that he spent on mis-leading ads.

 If you are wondering why Trump likes the poorly educated, consider this:

 States that tend to vote for Democrats spent more money on education.

 Here is a breakdown of per public spending by state:

 Arizona is one of the worst states:

 https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-spending-by-state

 I’m a fan of Heather Cox Richardson, and she is mentioned in this book. In “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the state of America”, she mentions that fascist leaders may compete for our votes, but modern democracies fail because of autocratic candidates who work within the system to change it”

 That sure sounds like Project 25, doesn’t it?

 What do fascists do when the afraid that students will learn the truth on their own?

 They ban books, and Moms for Liberty is one of the worst offenders

 According to the ACLU, more than 3000 books were banned in America, and these restrictions also app to college and universities, who face   loss of funding if they even mention DEI.

 Two months after Hitler came into power in 1933, he presided over the first book burnings in Germany, and 20,000 books were destroyed.

 A Democratic society needs PUBLIC schools, in addition to private and religious schools, yet many states, including Arizona, use vouchers to divert public money for private schools. Although the original intent of vouchers was good, the program has grown to the point that they will cause nearly $1 billion in the state’s budget

 As a result, every public school in Arizona will receive $300,000 less in state funding. 3 out of 4 students who benefit from vouchers were already attending private schools, so the vouchers effectively result in a tax break for wealthy parents.  

 https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Lessons-From-Arizona-1-Pager-FINAL.pdf

 

I’ve been a teacher, either full time or part time for more than 20 years, so can assure you that teaching is NOT an easy job- and Ranid Weingarten has been a teacher longer than that, which is why her book is worth reading.

 Another book worth reading is “Reign of Error”, written by Diane Ravitch,

 Diane Silvers Ravitch (born July 1, 1938) is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. In 2010, she became "an activist on behalf of public schools."^[ Her blog at DianeRavitch.net has received more than 36 million page views since she began blogging in 2012. Ravitch writes for the New York Review of Books.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Ravitch

 Randi Weingarten has written an excellent book about education. Although the book itself is only 177 pages, the supporting notes add up to another 59 pages, and it is worth reading.

 

 

 

 

 

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There's something rotten in Denmark

 

As I mentioned in my past of September 14, the Supreme Court has made a number of questionable rulings recently, including the fact that a fair number of decisions were made using the “shadow docket”

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2025/09/here-comes-judge.html

The most recent questionable ruling was when the court decided it was OK for ICE to arrest people “if they looked suspicious”

 https://www.npr.org/2025/09/13/nx-s1-5507125/the-supreme-court-clears-the-way-for-ice-agents-to-treat-race-as-grounds-for-immigration-stops

This ruling is contrary what a federal district court ruled in 2013

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/joes-law-gets-boot-lawyer-plaintiffs

Plaintiffs have established that the MCSO had sufficient intent to discriminate against Latino occupants of motor vehicles. Further, the Court concludes that the MCSO had and continues to have a facially discriminatory policy of considering Hispanic appearance probative of whether a person is legally present in the country in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The MCSO is thus permanently enjoined from using race, or allowing its deputies and other agents to use race as a criteria in making law enforcement decisions with respect to Latino occupants of vehicles in Maricopa County.

 Federal immigration raids are getting more and more common across the country. On Monday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for federal immigration enforcement agents in Los Angeles to use race and other profiling factors in deciding who to stop and potentially detain. At the same time, ICE has expanded operations in Massachusetts and Illinois, and it remains active in Washington, D.C.

With the backing of the federal government and the courts, ICE is moving quickly to carry out the White House's deportation agenda. 

ICE recently raided a Hyundai plant in Alabama.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hyundai-georigia-ice-raid-450-detained-electric-vehicles-batteries/

In a large-scale immigration enforcement raid at a huge Hyundai facility in Georgia on Thursday, 475 immigrants suspected of living and working in the U.S. illegally were detained, federal authorities announced. 

Steven Schrank, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Georgia and Alabama, told reporters Friday that the majority of those detained were Korean nationals, but he didn't know exactly how many. They worked for a variety of different companies at the site, including subcontractors, he said.

South Korea's Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Saturday that more than 300 South Koreans were among the 475 people detained.

 No criminal charges were announced during Friday's news conference. The sweep was conducted as part of a month-long investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other federal crimes, Schrank said. He described Thursday's raid as the largest enforcement operation at a single site in the history of Homeland Security Investigations, which is a unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"This operation underscores our commitment to protecting jobs for Georgians and Americans, ensuring a level playing field for businesses that comply with the law, safeguarding the integrity of our economy and protecting workers from exploitation," Schrank said.

The sweep targeted one of Georgia's largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, touted by Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials as the biggest economic development project in the state's history. Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea's biggest automaker, began manufacturing electric vehicles a year ago at the $7.6 billion plant, which employs about 1,200 people, and has partnered with LG Energy Solution to build an adjacent battery plant, slated to open next year.

The search shut down construction on the battery plant.

 As the article below points out, the raid will cripple further Korean investments in America.

https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/09/south-korea-visas-immigration-us-investment-hyundai-lg?lang=en

The timing compounds Korean frustration. Lee’s August White House visit just a week prior was widely seen in Seoul and Washington as an important step in alliance management—though light on policy substance, it was heavy on rapport-building, with Trump explicitly praising Korean investment commitments. For Korean officials and industrial leaders who had spent years repositioning away from China and toward deeper U.S. economic integration, enforcement actions targeting their flagship investment projects created strategic whiplash.

 Korean companies are now reconsidering these projects. LG Energy Solution paused construction work at the battery plant, while at least twenty-two other Korean factory sites across automotive, shipbuilding, steel, and electrical equipment sectors have been halted, as major conglomerates grapple with precautions about U.S. travel and urgently verify visa statuses.

 The shipbuilding initiative that Trump and Lee celebrated also faces potential stalling, with Seoul warning that ongoing funding negotiations could derail Korea’s commitments without resolution of the worker visa issues. Industry insiders worry about delays to ongoing projects requiring hundreds of Korean technical personnel, from shipbuilding to steel mill construction.

 This hesitation reflects broader Korean concerns about mixed signals from Washington. Their shock and opprobrium, particularly on the ICE images, centered on dignified treatment rather than legal exemptions, suggesting their strategic contributions might not ensure the respectful partnership they had anticipated.

ICE is also doing damage in other areas:

According to the New York Daily News, ICE has confirmed that it will patrol Bad Bunny’s show at the 2026 Superbowl, looking for “suspicious people” The main performer (Bad Bunny) is from Puerto, so he will probably look suspicious to ICE

Earlier this summer, the San Diego Padres told ICE that they could not come in.

Host city San Francisco (which has a large migrant population) should do exactly the same thing.

The Senate has passed a bill making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the United States' largest interior law enforcement agency, with funding for Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda higher than most of the world's militaries, including Israel's.

Pending its passage in the House of Representatives, Trump's bill could mean a massive increase in ICE funding as part of an immigration enforcement agenda worth $150 billion over four years.

A revised version of Trump's bill was narrowly voted through the Senate on Tuesday. The estimated price tag of the legislation is around $150 billion between now and 2029—an annual average of $37.5 billion, which is higher than the military expenditure of all but 15 countries.

Here is where it gets interesting:

Stephen Miller (the Nazi in the White House) is the driving force behind Trump’s immigration policy. He was the man behind the separation of families during Trump’s first term.

Miller owns stock in Palintar, which provides personal information to ICE so that they can more easily identify vulnerable people.

Miller owns anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 in Palantir stock, according to newly released financial disclosure forms posted online and first reported by the Project on Government Oversight. Federal financial disclosure forms only require ranges to be given rather than exact holdings.

Palantir won a $30 million contract in April to deliver something called the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (ImmigrationOS) by September, which is supposed to give the U.S. government “near real-time visibility” on immigrants to manage deportations, according to Wired. Palantir also has lucrative contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, with the firm chalking up more than $1 billion in new federal contracts since Trump took power again in January, according to the New York Times. And it’s those contracts that will raise plenty of eyebrows among people who still care when government employees potentially benefit financially from their positions.

https://gizmodo.com/stephen-miller-owns-stock-in-notorious-ice-collaborator-palantir-2000619547

 “Border czar” Tom Homan was recently caught on tape accepting a $50,000 bribe from companies vying for government contracts.

One of the top architects of Donald Trump’s immigration agenda previously received thousands of dollars from a company raking in millions from deportations.

But the White House says that there's nothing wrong with this situation.

What's more, border czar Tom Homan is just the most recent official in his administration who we have learned was paid by the private prison company Geo Group in the past. According to federal disclosure forms, Attorney General Pam Bondi previously earned money as a lobbyist for the company in Trump's first term.

The Washington Post was the first to publish disclosure forms filed last week showing Homan earned at least $5,000 as a consultant for Geo Group over the two years before he joined Trump’s second administration.

Geo Group also gave $1 million dollars to the Make America Great Again PAC which backed Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Last year, after Trump was elected, the company’s CEO, Brian Evans, estimated that Geo Group could make an additional $400 million annually as a result of Trump’s planned deportations. And indeed, the company is one of multiple private prison companies making a profit from locking up immigrants for the administration. So much so, that on a conference call earlier this year, the company’s executive chairman said “we’ve never seen anything like this before” while referencing the speed with which the Trump administration has sought to procure contracts with Geo Group.

So the order of events is as follows: Tom Homan and Pam Bondi consult and lobby for Geo Group, Geo Group helps elect Trump in 2024, Homan and Bondi join Trump's administration in 2025, and then Trump’s administration helps Geo Group make profits. At a minimum, that raises questions about a conflict of interest.

But the White House says there’s nothing to see here.

 

 

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-border-tom-homan-private-prison-immigrants-rcna209544

The Teapot Dome Scandal

 

It’s often said that history repeats itself, and the Teapot Dome scandal from 100 years ago is one example.

I read six newspapers a day, but I have found that the best sources of news are either Heather Cox Richardson or Rachel Maddow.

Both of them have written a few books (and I have read all of them) and Heather Publishes a daily newsletter titled “Letters from an American”. You can read it for free, but an annual membership is only $50. Rochel, of course, is a long-time contributor on MSNBC, where she appears at least once a week.

According to reporting in The Ankler, Rachel was making $30 million a year from MSNBC to host the show on Monday nights, just one night a week. She has now renegotiated her salary with the network so that she will make $25 million a year for the next five years. “This is a difficult time and they needed to keep her,” one executive explained. “No one else can do what she does. You can’t build a brand like it overnight.”

Heather is currently a college professor at Boston College, but she also makes about $1,000,000 a year from her newsletter.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-26-2025

Both of them are historians, which means they can find a story from the past that directly relates to today.

The Teapot Dome scandal is one of those stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal

The Teapot Dome scandal was a political corruption scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Warren G. Harding. It centered on Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, who had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of an investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison, but no one was convicted of paying the bribes.

Before the Watergate scandal, Teapot Dome was regarded as the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics". It permanently damaged the reputation of the Harding administration, already hurt by its handling of the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 and Harding's 1922 veto of the Bonus Bill.^{[citation needed]}

Congress subsequently passed permanent legislation granting itself subpoena power over tax records of any U.S. citizen, regardless of position. These laws are also considered to have empowered Congress generally

If you had to pick the most corrupt president, Harding would certainly be one the list, but there are a few others that would quality as well, and they can be found at the link below:

https://www.ranker.com/list/most-corrupt-presidents-us-history/melissa-sartore

For a lot of reasons, Donald Trump would likely quality as THE most corrupt, in part due to the fact that the net worth of his family has increased by $80 billion since this election in 2024.

Andrew Johnson is also on the list, and so are Richard Nixon, Andrew Jackson, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, John Quincy Adams and Ulysses Grant.

For what it is worth, though, Donald Trump is rated as THE worst president we have ever had. That rating is based on his performance during his first term – and he has gotten worse since then.

https://presidentialgreatnessproject.com/

Here is the connection from past to president:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/us/politics/tom-homan-fbi-trump.html

Tom Homan, who was later named President Trump’s border czar, was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation, according to people familiar with the case, which was later shut down by Trump administration officials.

The cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the case.

Mr. Homan’s encounter with the undercover agents, recorded on audiotape, led him to be investigated for potential bribery and other crimes, after he apparently took the money and agreed to help the agents — who were posing as businessmen — secure future government contracts related to border security, the people said.

After Mr. Trump took office this year, Justice Department officials shut down the case because of doubts about whether prosecutors could prove to a jury that Mr. Homan had agreed to do any specific acts in exchange for the money, and because he had not held an official government position at the time of the meeting with undercover agents, the people added.

One person familiar with the case said the evidence gathered had not met all the necessary elements of relevant federal crimes, while another contended that the case was effectively ended prematurely, before such additional evidence could be gathered.

Justice Department officials ultimately decided that the evidence against Mr. Homan was insufficient to support charges of wire fraud, bribery or conspiracy, the people said. Emil Bove III, a former senior Justice Department official and onetime personal attorney for Mr. Trump who is now a federal appeals court judge, expressed skepticism about the case as early as February, one person said. The existence of the investigation was reported earlier by MSNBC.

 

Joe McCarthy famous said, “if looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”

 Logically, is it looks like a bribe, it’s probably a bride. If Pam Bondi and the Justice Department were doing their jobs, Tom Homan would be going to prison.

Der Siegel warned us in 2016 that Trump was not qualified to be president – and the majority of American newspapers said the same thing.

I have read 25 books about Trump, and all of them have concluded that he is more than a little crazy, and “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” provides the best summary.

https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250212863

You can argue until the cows come home about whether Trump’s cabinet is the worst we have ever had, but Pete Hegseth, Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel would certainly be on the list for “least qualified”

Part of the problem, of course, is that at least 23 people who worked for FOX “news” are now working in his administration.

https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-fox-news-personalities-serving-donald-trump-administration-2070560

For now, there is little that any of us can do to fight against the madness of the Trump administration, but the ongoing protests sweeping the country WILL make a difference – and Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air. On top of that – the midterms are actually not that far away – so be sure to vote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Happy New Year" can also be celebrated by Gentiles

 

In 2025, Rosh Hosanna begins at sundown on September 22, and ends at nightfall on September 25.

Rosh Hosanna is the New Year in Judaism. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah  It is the first of the High Holy Days (‘days of Awe'), as specified by Leviticus 23:23–25, that occur in the late summer/early autumn of the Northern Hemisphere. Rosh Hashanah begins the Ten Days of Repentance culminating in Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It is followed by the Fall festival of Sukkot which ends with Shemini Atzeret in Israel and Simchat Torah everywhere else.

Rosh Hashanah is a two-day observance and celebration that begins on the first day of Tishrei, which is the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year. The holiday itself follows a lunar calendar and begins the evening prior to the first day. In contrast to the ecclesiastical lunar new year on the first day of the first month Nisan, the spring Passover month which marks Israel's exodus from Egypt, Rosh Hashanah marks the beginning of the civil year, according to the teachings of Judaism, and is the traditional anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman according to the Hebrew Bible, as well as the initiation of humanity's role in God's world.

The country that we now know as Israel was once known as Palestine, a name that that goes back centuries.

Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by 150 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the Palestinian territories. The territories share the vast majority of their borders with Israel, with the West Bank bordering Jordan to the east and the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt to the southwest. It has a total land area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi) while its population exceeds five million. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Ramallah serves as its de facto administrative center. Gaza was its largest city prior to evacuations in 2023.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine

 Situated at a continental crossroad, the Palestine region was ruled by various empires and experienced various demographic changes from antiquity to the modern era. It was treading ground for the Nile and Mesopotamian armies and merchants from North Africa, China and India. The region has religious significance. The ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict dates back to the rise of the Zionist movement, supported by the United Kingdom during World War I.

The war saw Britain occupying Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, where it set up Mandatory Palestine under the auspices of the League of Nations. Increased Jewish immigration led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after a proposed partitioning by the United Nations was rejected by the Palestinians and other Arab nations.

(editors note: a two-state solution was proposed in 1947 – but was rejected by the Palestinians and other Arab nations. When Israel was created in 1948, Arab countries declared war)

The 1948 Palestine war saw the forcible displacement of a majority of the Arab population, and consequently the establishment of Israel; these events are referred to by Palestinians as the Nakba ('catastrophe'). In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which had been held by Jordan and Egypt respectively.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) declared independence in 1988. In 1993, the PLO signed the Oslo Accords with Israel, creating limited PLO governance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through the Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel withdrew from Gaza in its unilateral disengagement in 2005, but the territory is still considered to be under military occupation and has been blockaded by Israel. In 2007, internal divisions between political factions led to a takeover of Gaza by Hamas. Since then, the West Bank has been governed in part by the Fatah-led PA, while the Gaza Strip has remained under the control of Hamas.

Let’s fast forward to today:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/world/europe/starmer-uk-recognize-palestinian-state.html

Britain, Canada and Australia confirmed this morning Sunday that they now formally recognize Palestinian statehood, piling pressure on Israel to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and putting three major U.S. allies at odds with the Trump administration. As of now, 147 members of the 193-member United Nations recognize the state of Palestine. The United States and Israel are not in that group.

The seemingly coordinated announcements came on the eve of the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, at which France and Portugal are also expected to vote for recognition of Palestinian statehood.

The concerted action will deepen the diplomatic isolation of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. But so far, it has done little to curb his military campaign against Hamas, which has killed tens of thousands of people in Gaza and left much of the enclave in ruins

Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, waited to act until after President Trump’s state visit last week to Britain, during which Mr. Trump said he disagreed with the move, preferring to focus on securing the release of the hostages held by Hamas militants.

“I have a disagreement with the prime minister on that score,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference with Mr. Starmer on Thursday, although he added, “One of our few disagreements, actually.”

When Mr. Starmer announced Britain’s plans in late July, he said a final decision would hinge on multiple conditions. Israel, he said, must address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, sign up to a cease-fire agreement with Hamas to secure the release of hostages, and pursue long-term peace with the Palestinians, based on a two-state solution.

Since then, Israel has attacked Hamas leaders in Qatar, the Persian Gulf state that has been the site of cease-fire negotiations, making any agreement more elusive than ever. Far from scaling back, Israeli troops have expanded their combat operations, advancing on Gaza’s main urban center, Gaza City.

For Mr. Starmer, who worked as a human-rights lawyer before entering politics, the decision has nevertheless been an anguished balancing act. He has tried to avoid daylight between Britain and the United States on issues like trade and the war in Ukraine. But Gaza poses moral and political challenges.

 

Mr. Starmer noted that members of his extended family lived in Israel (his British-born wife, Victoria, is Jewish). “I understand, firsthand, the psychological impact” of the Hamas attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers in October 2023, he said. “So, I know exactly where I stand in relation to Hamas.”

Domestic politics played a part in Mr. Starmer’s decision as well. Pressure to do more has swelled within the ranks of his Labour Party, as well as in the broader public, as harrowing images and videos of suffering Palestinians have been broadcast online and in the news media.

“The U.K. government will hope that this buys them an extended period of quiet without having to take further moves,” said Daniel Levy, who runs the U.S./Middle East Project, a research institute in London and New York. “But if Israel’s actions continue to be as egregious, aggressive and criminal as is currently the case, then that is highly unlikely to play out.”

He and other critics fault the British government for not having done more already. Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of genocide, despite calls to do so by Labour members of Parliament and legal experts. And while it has suspended some weapons sales to Israel, it continues to supply parts for F-35 fighter jets, used by the Israeli Air Force in strikes on Gaza.

The government issued sanctions on two far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet: Itamar Ben-Gvir, the security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister. Downing Street also signaled it could arrest Mr. Netanyahu if he entered Britain, pledging to fulfill its “legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law.” The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him last November

Israel has long been the beneficiary of aid from the United States. In 2023, the only country that got more aid was Ukraine, which got $17 billion. Israel was #2, at $3 billion.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/countries-that-receive-the-most-foreign-aid-from-the-u-s

There are many reasons why foreign aid to other countries benefits the United States, but a full explanation of those advantages would require a few hundred pages.

For now, the move by Canada, Britain, and Australia should lead to more peace, and less genocide, to a region that has long been torn by turmoil.

On that note – HAPPY NEW YEAR!