Making your children miserable (Update #4)

benfell

Updates

  1. Originally published, February 21, 10:23 am.

  2. February 21, 2021, 11:48 pm:

    • So I’m finally able to check in with my Trumpster in Duquesne (figure 1):


      Fig. 1. Photograph by author, February 21, 2021.

      This actually appeared pretty quickly as Donald Trump was banned from social media.[1] But yeah, s/he gets to say s/he told me so, as yes, I thought of this sign when I had my tangle with Twitter’s artificial idiots.

    • In a deathbed confession, a cop admitted that police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were involved in the murder of Malcolm X.[2]

    • The San Francisco Board of Education is backing down from its decision to rename schools and will focus on reopening schools instead.[3] I criticized the renaming decision in a recent blog post,[4] but I was far from alone.[5]

  3. February 22, 2021, 6:09 am:

  4. February 22, 2021, 10:18 pm:

    • I see ‘comity’ as hypocrisy so it certainly isn’t the argument I’d make against Neera Tanden though it seems to be the one that’s sinking her.[6] I’d argue instead that she is a neoliberal[7] when neoliberalism has been disastrous anyway,[8] but especially in the pandemic.[9] That said, her nomination is underwater and going down.[10] In my recollection, the way this usually happens is that a doomed nominee will concoct some excuse about not wanting to distract from the president’s agenda as s/he withdraws from consideration. Look for that to happen real soon.

K-12 education

There is a new blog post entitled, “How neoliberalism ruins primary school education.”

Donna Ferguson, “Home schooling: ‘I’m a maths lecturer – and I had to get my children to teach me,’” Guardian, February 20, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/feb/20/im-a-maths-lecturer-and-i-had-to-get-my-children-to-teach-me

Greg Keraghosian, “SF school board pauses renaming 44 schools, promises to consult historians in future,” SFGate, February 21, 2021, https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/SF-school-board-pauses-renaming-44-schools-15968504.php

Capitol coup

Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, “9 Oath Keepers charged with sweeping conspiracy for role in Capitol insurrection,” Politico, February 19, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/19/oath-keepers-capitol-insurrection-470308

Malcolm X

Al Jazeera, “US: Ex-policeman implicates NYPD, FBI in Malcolm X murder,” February 21, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/21/ex-new-york-policeman-implicates-nypd-and-fbi-in-malcolm-x-murder

Texas

Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, and Ivan Penn, “His Lights Stayed on During Texas’ Storm. Now He Owes $16,752,” New York Times, February 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-bills.html

Reis Thebault, Paulina Firozi, and Brittany Shammas, “58 people died in last week’s frigid weather. Some of them were just trying to stay warm,” Washington Post, February 21, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/18/winter-storm-deaths/

Joe Biden

Marianne Levine and Burgess Everett, “Collins and Romney to oppose Tanden for OMB, further jeopardizing her nomination,” Politico, February 22, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/22/collins-oppose-tanden-jeopardize-nomination-470801

  1. [1]Margi Murphy, “Facebook, Instagram and Twitter lock Donald Trump’s accounts after praise for Capitol Hill rioters,” Telegraph, January 7, 2021, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/01/06/calls-twitter-facebook-mute-donald-trump-violence-breaks-capitol/; Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin, “Trump banned from Facebook indefinitely, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says,” Washington Post, January 7, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-resignations-25th-amendment/2021/01/07/e131ce10-50a3-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html; Nitasha Tiku, Tony Romm, and Craig Timberg, “Twitter bans Trump’s account, citing risk of further violence,” Washington Post, January 8, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/08/twitter-trump-dorsey/↩
  2. [2]Al Jazeera, “US: Ex-policeman implicates NYPD, FBI in Malcolm X murder,” February 21, 2021, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/21/ex-new-york-policeman-implicates-nypd-and-fbi-in-malcolm-x-murder↩
  3. [3]Greg Keraghosian, “SF school board pauses renaming 44 schools, promises to consult historians in future,” SFGate, February 21, 2021, https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/SF-school-board-pauses-renaming-44-schools-15968504.php↩
  4. [4]David Benfell, “It’s fine to highlight other people. But don’t cite historical falsehoods when you do,” Not Housebroken, February 6, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/02/06/its-fine-to-highlight-other-people-but-dont-cite-historical-falsehoods-when-you-do/↩
  5. [5]Isaac Chotiner, “How San Francisco Renamed Its Schools,” New Yorker, February 6, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-san-francisco-renamed-its-schools; Greg Keraghosian, “SF school board pauses renaming 44 schools, promises to consult historians in future,” SFGate, February 21, 2021, https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/SF-school-board-pauses-renaming-44-schools-15968504.php↩
  6. [6]Marianne Levine and Burgess Everett, “Collins and Romney to oppose Tanden for OMB, further jeopardizing her nomination,” Politico, February 22, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/22/collins-oppose-tanden-jeopardize-nomination-470801↩
  7. [7]Jake Johnson, “Progressives Spurn Tanden’s Nomination to Office of Management and Budget,” Truthout, November 30, 2020, https://truthout.org/articles/progressives-spurn-tandens-nomination-to-office-of-management-and-budget/↩
  8. [8]David Benfell, “A piper needs paying,” Not Housebroken, January 29, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/12/19/a-piper-needs-paying/; Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford, UK: Oxford University, 2013); David Fickling, “The Gig Economy Compromised Our Immune System,” Yahoo!, July 25, 2020, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gig-economy-compromised-immune-system-000048670.html; Amir Fleischmann, “The Myth of the Fiscal Conservative,” Jacobin, March 5, 2017, https://jacobinmag.com/2017/03/fiscal-conservative-social-services-austerity-save-money; Jason Hickel, “Progress and its discontents,” New Internationalist, August 7, 2019, https://newint.org/features/2019/07/01/long-read-progress-and-its-discontents; Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2012); Robert Kuttner, “Austerity never works: Deficit hawks are amoral — and wrong,” Salon, May 5, 2013, http://www.salon.com/2013/05/05/austerity_never_works_deficit_hawks_are_amoral_and_wrong/; Dennis Loo, Globalization and the Demolition of Society (Glendale, CA: Larkmead, 2011); Thomas Piketty, Jeffrey Sachs, Heiner Flassbeck, Dani Rodrik and Simon Wren-Lewis, “Austerity Has Failed: An Open Letter From Thomas Piketty to Angela Merkel,” Nation, July 6, 2015, http://www.thenation.com/article/austerity-has-failed-an-open-letter-from-thomas-piketty-to-angela-merkel/; John Quiggin, “Austerity Has Been Tested, and It Failed,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 20, 2013, http://chronicle.com/article/Austerity-Has-Been-Tested-and/139255/; David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, “How Austerity Kills,” New York Times, May 12, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/opinion/how-austerity-kills.html; David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, “Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills,” Salon, May 19, 2013, http://www.salon.com/2013/05/19/paul_krugmans_right_austerity_kills/↩
  9. [9]David Benfell, “Imagine a malicious elite,” Not Housebroken, December 30, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/12/18/imagine-a-malicious-elite/↩
  10. [10]Marianne Levine and Burgess Everett, “Collins and Romney to oppose Tanden for OMB, further jeopardizing her nomination,” Politico, February 22, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/22/collins-oppose-tanden-jeopardize-nomination-470801↩

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