Accreditors going wild

benfell

For-profit institutions

There is a new blog post entitled, “The conundrum of higher education accreditation.”

Eric Kelderman, “The Education Dept. Wants Accreditors to Compete. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11, 2019, https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Education-Dept-Wants/246658

Census

Jessica Schneider, “Federal judge permanently blocks Trump admin from adding citizenship question to 2020 census,” CNN, July 16, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/16/politics/judge-permanently-blocks-citizenship-question-2020-census/index.html

Jessica Schneider, “2nd federal judge blocks Trump admin from adding citizenship question to census,” CNN, July 17, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics/2020-census-citizenship/index.html

Felicia Sonmez, “House votes to hold Attorney General Barr, Commerce Secretary Ross in contempt for failing to comply with subpoena on 2020 Census,” Washington Post, July 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-to-vote-to-hold-barr-ross-in-contempt-over-2020-census-citizenship-question/2019/07/17/8dbeb35c-a89c-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html

Donald Trump

The comments from [Will] Hurd and [Mike] Turner were commendably direct and unvarnished. But they need to be placed in context. The hundred and sixteenth Congress contains a hundred and ninety-seven Republican representatives and fifty-three Republican senators. Of these two hundred and fifty profiles in courage, Hurd and Turner were the sole ones to specifically use the word “racist” to describe [Donald] Trump’s attack. Other Republicans, even as they broke with Trump and criticized his comments, ransacked the thesaurus to avoid it.[1]

So the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted, 332-to-95, including “137 [Democrats] voting to effectively kill the [impeachment] resolution and 95 opposing the move.”[2] It was specifically about Donald Trump’s multiple forms of xenophobia, not about any wrongdoing found or suspected by Robert Mueller.[3] Which is all to say that neoliberals are nearly as afraid of Trump’s base as Republicans.

I understand and have previously acknowledged[4] the neoliberals have a strategy that requires some patience.[5] Indeed, they made a move to advance that strategy, holding William Barr and Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for failing to produce subpoenaed documents regarding the citizenship question on the census.[6]

But Al Green pulled a trigger.[7] Once the trigger was pulled, the process needed to succeed at every step.

Now, the optics are horrible and this situation is now very likely worse than before. Trump will be insufferable as he claims vindication. As the resolution directly addressed his racism,[8] and was defeated by such a ridiculously large margin, [9] he will now consider himself even more free to be even more bigoted in his future statements and, even more worryingly, actions. Not that there was any restraining him before: As I’ve said before, there’s no bottom with the man; he’s a black hole. But our descent has been hastened.

Rachael Bade and Mike DeBonis, “House votes to kill impeachment resolution against Trump, avoiding a direct vote on whether to oust the president,” Washington Post, July 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/democrats-divided-as-house-to-vote-on-whether-to-consider-impeachment-of-trump/2019/07/17/dacd1c0e-a8a3-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html

John Cassidy, “Trump’s Overt Racism Is Uniting Democrats and Unnerving Some Republicans,” New Yorker, July 15, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-overt-racism-is-uniting-democrats-and-unnerving-some-republicans

John Bresnahan, “House thrown into chaos after Pelosi decries Trump’s ‘racist’ tweets on floor,” Politico, July 16, 2019, https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/07/16/pelosi-trump-racism-resolution-1417365

Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney, “Why Democrats’ oversight machine is moving so slowly against Trump,” Politico, July 17, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/17/democrats-oversight-strategy-mueller-1417908

Jonas Ekblom and Jan Wolfe, “In rare rebuke, dozens of Republicans hit Trump over ‘racist’ tweets,” Euronews, July 17, 2019, https://www.euronews.com/2019/07/17/in-rare-rebuke-dozens-of-republicans-hit-trump-over-racist-tweets

Jeremy Herb and Manu Raju, “Democrat says House likely to vote on impeachment resolution Wednesday,” CNN, July 17, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics/trump-impeachment-house-vote/index.html

  1. [1]John Cassidy, “Trump’s Overt Racism Is Uniting Democrats and Unnerving Some Republicans,” New Yorker, July 15, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-overt-racism-is-uniting-democrats-and-unnerving-some-republicans↩
  2. [2]Rachael Bade and Mike DeBonis, “House votes to kill impeachment resolution against Trump, avoiding a direct vote on whether to oust the president,” Washington Post, July 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/democrats-divided-as-house-to-vote-on-whether-to-consider-impeachment-of-trump/2019/07/17/dacd1c0e-a8a3-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html↩
  3. [3]Jeremy Herb and Manu Raju, “Democrat says House likely to vote on impeachment resolution Wednesday,” CNN, July 17, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics/trump-impeachment-house-vote/index.html↩
  4. [4]David Benfell, “Calls for impeachment are the latest displays of the naturalistic fallacy and system justification,” Not Housebroken, May 23, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/05/23/calls-for-impeachment-are-the-latest-displays-of-the-naturalistic-fallacy-and-system-justification/↩
  5. [5]Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney, “Why Democrats’ oversight machine is moving so slowly against Trump,” Politico, July 17, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/17/democrats-oversight-strategy-mueller-1417908↩
  6. [6]Felicia Sonmez, “House votes to hold Attorney General Barr, Commerce Secretary Ross in contempt for failing to comply with subpoena on 2020 Census,” Washington Post, July 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-to-vote-to-hold-barr-ross-in-contempt-over-2020-census-citizenship-question/2019/07/17/8dbeb35c-a89c-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html↩
  7. [7]Rachael Bade, “Rep. Green files articles of impeachment against Trump despite pushback from Democratic leaders,” Washington Post, July 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rep-green-to-file-articles-of-impeachment-against-trump-despite-pushback-from-democratic-leaders/2019/07/16/63b4c0b6-a800-11e9-ac16-90dd7e5716bc_story.html↩
  8. [8]Rachael Bade, “Rep. Green files articles of impeachment against Trump despite pushback from Democratic leaders,” Washington Post, July 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rep-green-to-file-articles-of-impeachment-against-trump-despite-pushback-from-democratic-leaders/2019/07/16/63b4c0b6-a800-11e9-ac16-90dd7e5716bc_story.html; Jeremy Herb and Manu Raju, “Democrat says House likely to vote on impeachment resolution Wednesday,” CNN, July 17, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/politics/trump-impeachment-house-vote/index.html↩
  9. [9]Rachael Bade and Mike DeBonis, “House votes to kill impeachment resolution against Trump, avoiding a direct vote on whether to oust the president,” Washington Post, July 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/democrats-divided-as-house-to-vote-on-whether-to-consider-impeachment-of-trump/2019/07/17/dacd1c0e-a8a3-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html↩

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