DEMOCRATIC CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

NYC construction firm reportedly linked to FBI raid on Mayor Adams' fundraiser is major player, has ties to Turkey

2023/11/03

NEW YORK — A Brooklyn construction firm reportedly identified as part of a federal corruption inquiry into Mayor Eric Adams’ 2021 campaign has an extensive real estate portfolio across New York City and ties to Turkey, whose government has also been named as a potential player.

KSK Construction Group, a Brooklyn-based firm, has real estate interests in the commercial, residential and hospitality fields across New York City. The firm has overseen at least 39 projects, including luxury properties in Manhattan and Brooklyn, a shopping center in Harlem and a Marriott Courtyard Hotel.

As first reported by The New York Times, a search warrant authorizing the early Thursday raid at the home of Adams campaign fundraiser Brianna Suggs instructed the FBI to search for evidence of allegations that Adams’ 2021 campaign conspired with KSK and the Turkish government to funnel foreign cash into the campaign’s coffers via straw donors.

Neither Adams nor Suggs has been accused of any wrongdoing as part of the FBI probe that prompted the raid at Suggs’ home.

In a statement Friday afternoon, Adams said he’s “outraged and angry if anyone attempted to use the campaign to manipulate our democracy and defraud our campaign.”

“I want to be clear, I have no knowledge, direct or otherwise, of any improper fundraising activity — and certainly not of any foreign money,” his statement said. “We will of course work with officials to respond to inquiries, as appropriate—as we always have.”

KSK, which has its office on North 10th St. near Williamsburg’s McCarren Park, was incorporated in 2010, according to state business records. City records show 11 KSK employees gave nearly $14,000 to Adams’ campaign on the same day in 2021, with nearly all of them listed as donating $1,250 each. Among the KSK executives who contributed was Erden Arkan, who’s listed in records as the company’s owner.

KSK has a number of links to Turkey, the New York Daily News has found.

According to state commercial code records, KSK holds debt with the New York branch of Vakiflar Bankasi, Turkey’s second largest government-owned bank. The records do not make clear how much debt KSK holds.

Arkan states on his LinkedIn profile that he received his education at Istanbul University in Turkey.

There are also links between KSK and a major Turkish construction company, Kiska, which has not been named in connection with the investigation or accused of any wrongdoing.

One of Arkan’s fellow principals at KSK, Ulgur Aydin, told the trade publication Construction Today in 2021 that he, Arkan and a third partner, Selim Akyuz, launched the company after working together at KiSKA Construction, a Turkish-based firm that’s completed big projects for Turkey’s government.

“KSK is a company that was born from KiSKA Construction,” Aydin told the trade publication at the time.

KiSKA is one of Turkey’s largest construction companies, with offices in New York City and Ankara. On its website, KiSKA says it has carried out 91 public works projects in Turkey, including work for Turkey’s Ministry of Defense, General Directorate of Provincial Bank and General Directorate of State Airports Authority, according to the website.

KiSKA also has a major footprint in New York City real estate. The company owns Marmara, a hotel chain with two locations in Manhattan, and has worked on iconic construction projects in the city, including the High Line in the Meatpacking District, KiSKA’s founder Oguz Gursel told the Turk Of America magazine in 2014.

Representatives for KSK and KiSKA did not return requests for comment Friday.

There are also additional ties between the two entities beyond the fact that KSK’s partners used to work at KiSKA, according to records reviewed by the Daily News.

State business records show KiSKA Development Group, one of several limited liability corporations used by KiSKA Construction, was housed at the same Williamsburg address as KSK between 2008 and 2017.

On LinkedIn, Arkan, KSK’s owner, still lists himself as a “principal” at Kiska Group. His partner, Aydin, lists himself as a principal of KSK on his LinkedIn profile, but notes that KSK was “formerly known as Kiska Group.”

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© New York Daily News

MOB CROONER 

‘You’ll find out that Chicago’s a very small town’: Evidence in ex-Alderman Edward Burke trial to lay bare inner workings of one of city’s last machine politicians

2023/11/04

Then- Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, right, listens to a City Council discussion on Nov. 7, 2022. -

 E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/TNS

CHICAGO — Five years ago this month, decades of political dominance by a pair of old school Chicago Democratic politicians began to unravel when FBI agents descended on City Hall on an otherwise quiet Thursday morning.

Even in a town accustomed to high-profile public corruption probes, the sight of brown butcher paper taped over the windows and glass doors of a storied seat of power such as alderman Edward Burke’s office suite was stunning.

But it was also just the beginning. In the ensuing months, the dominoes continued to topple, first with Burke’s indictment, then raids on a host of politicians and lobbyists connected to then-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, followed by the indictment in March 2022 of Madigan himself.

Now, with the corruption trial of Burke and two co-defendants set to begin Monday, the inner workings of one of Chicago’s last machine politicians will be laid bare in a federal courtroom.

Burke, 79, who served more than 50 years before stepping down earlier this year, was long considered the dean of the City Council, a master parliamentarian who used his positions as fundraiser, chair of the Finance Committee, and Cook County judicial slate maker to wield enormous influence over the city’s politics.

But unlike the indictment against Madigan, which alleges a high-level scheme involving secret payments funneled from utility giants Commonwealth Edison and AT&T Illinois to Madigan-connected lobbyists, the allegations against Burke involved a decidedly more earthy, “where’s mine?” type of graft.

For all of Burke’s power, the trial evidence is expected to show him in the late stages of his career fretting about relatively mundane matters, including a driveway permit for a Southwest Side Burger King, a pole sign for a liquor store in Portage Park, and an overlooked application submitted by his good friend’s daughter for an unpaid internship at the Field Museum.

Even the centerpiece scheme alleged in the indictment, which involves the $800 million renovation of the Old Post Office, is, at its core, a well-worn scenario in Chicago: A politician with his hand out, allegedly leveraging the power of his elected office for a fairly modest personal gain.

“It’s a pleasure to deal with people who are so dedicated to the city, to have been here for so long,” the post office developer, Harry Skydell, told Burke in a September 2016 video-recorded meeting after Burke had allegedly pitched his private law firm for Skydell’s property tax appeals. “Almost half a century. It’s unbelievable.”

“You’ll find out that Chicago’s a very small town,” Burke told Skydell later in the meeting. “Everybody that’s anybody knows one another, and generally speaking, everybody gets along.”

Burke’s high-powered defense team, meanwhile, will try to show that Burke’s maneuvering was nothing more than politics as usual. In fact, Burke is not charged with performing a single official act as alderman in exchange for anything of value, and some of the projects he allegedly put his thumb on the scale for weren’t even in his ward, his attorneys have argued.

But the crux of Burke’s defense will likely be to knock down former alderman Daniel Solis, who was caught in his own corruption scheme before agreeing in 2016 to become an FBI mole and secretly record Burke and others over a period of nearly two years.

In exchange, Solis earned an unprecedented deferred prosecution deal from the U.S. attorney’s office that will not only leave him without a criminal conviction, but also allow him to continue to collect his nearly $100,000-a-year city pension.

Prosecutors left Solis off their witness list and said they’d introduce the recordings he made through other means. But Burke’s attorneys, Joseph Duffy and Christopher Gair, have promised to call Solis as their own witness in an effort to show to the jury he was desperate to help the feds land Burke and save his own skin.

“The jury cannot be presented the tape recordings Solis made without an understanding of who he is and why he cooperated,” Duffy and Gair wrote in a recent court filing. “To do so would be both confounding and misleading to the jury.”

Outlining the charges

Jury selection is set to get underway Monday morning in the 25th floor courtroom of U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, a former federal prosecutor who inherited the case after the previous judge took a job with the U.S. Supreme Court.

A pool of more than 100 prospective jurors who were prescreened for their ability to sit for the potentially six-week trial filled out lengthy questionnaires at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on Friday, answering questions about their knowledge of the case, their feelings about politicians, and other potential biases.

Live questioning of the jury pool will be done in groups of 50 and will likely take at least two days, with Kendall asking initial questions and each side getting the chance to follow up with specific issues. Opening statements in the case could come as soon as Wednesday.

Monday’s proceedings will mark the first time Burke has stepped foot in the federal courthouse since his arraignment on the indictment on June 4, 2019, shortly after Burke had been sworn in for a record 13th full term as alderman.

On that day, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot reiterated calls for Burke to resign, but he refused, hanging on to his longtime seat in the City Council until finally stepping down in May after deciding not to run for reelection.

Burke, 79, is charged with 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity.

Burke’s longtime ward aide, Peter Andrews Jr., 73, is charged with one count of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, two counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity, and one count of making a false statement to the FBI.

A third defendant, real estate developer Charles Cui, 52, of Lake Forest, is charged with one count of federal program bribery, three counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity, and one count of making a false statement to the FBI.

All three have pleaded not guilty.

The allegations

At the heart of the indictment are four separate schemes.

The first, which is the only one to involve Solis, alleged Burke threatened to use his official office to corruptly induce the post office developer to hire his law firm, Klafter & Burke.

In that first meeting with Skydell, Solis recorded Burke telling the developer it would “be an honor to do business” with him, while also dropping remarks about his influence in the city, according to prosecutors.

“There aren’t too many people around town that we don’t know,” Burke said at one point.

“I’d be surprised if you don’t know somebody here,” Skydell replied. “If you don’t know somebody, he’s a nobody.”

According to the indictment, the post office project needed help negotiating with Amtrak over air rights the rail company had over part of the post office site. Burke repeatedly assured Skydell on the wiretaps that he had friends on the Amtrak board and could make any issues go away, according to the charges.

Months later, when Burke was told Skydell may need some help from the Water Department over access to water at the site, the alderman allegedly set up a meeting to discuss the issue.

But he abandoned the idea when the Tribune ran a March 21, 2017, story that reported possible ethical violations with the post office project, including an effort to help get access to Amtrak-controlled space beneath the building.

Burke backed out of the meeting, explaining he was “nervous” about the water commissioner and worried about whether his planned intervention could be kept discrete, prosecutors have alleged in court filings.

“In light of the Chicago Tribune expose, Burke was conscious that his activities were unlawful and that he would seek to exert his influence indirectly, including over the telephone,” according to prosecutors.

In the end, Skydell never did pay Burke for any property tax work, according to court records.

Hiring Burke’s firm

Another of the four alleged schemes in the 59-page indictment promises to give jurors an in-depth look at Chicago’s byzantine zoning and building processes that were allegedly threatening Cui’s development in the Six Corners area of Portage Park.

According to prosecutors, in mid-2017, liquor store chain Binny’s Beverage Depot had drastically cut its lease with Cui’s development at 4901 W. Irving Park Road because the city had denied use of an old, stand-alone pole sign previously used by a bank at the location.

Cui stood to lose $750,000 in the renegotiated lease deal, which could have in turn affected his $4 million in tax-increment financing from City Hall, according to prosecutors.

So in an attempt to get the Buildings Department to approve use of the sign, he decided to enlist Burke, leaving a voicemail on Aug. 23, 2017, about needing help with a “legal matter” and emailed him seeking advice about the pole sign dilemma, according to court records.

The next day, Cui emailed the attorney who had been doing his property tax appeals and asked if Burke could handle the Portage Park project, at least for the next year, records show.

“I have TIF deal going with City, and he is the Chairman of the Finance Committee,” Cui wrote. “He (handed) his tax appeal business card to me, and I need his favor for my tif money. In addition, I need his help for my zoning etc for my project. He is a powerful broker in City Hall, and I need him now.”

Cui also emailed Burke asking him for representation from Klafter & Burke, records show.

On Aug, 25. Burke responded to Cui’s email saying someone from his firm will reach out. Over the next week, Burke was caught on wiretaps telling his assistant to call then-Buildings Commissioner Judy Frydland about the pole sign, according to court records.

After Frydland talked about it with Cui, he had his zoning attorney submit a photoshopped image of the sign to the Buildings Department purporting to show the sign had been in recent use.

On Sept. 5, less than two weeks after his first outreach to Burke, Cui signed contingent-fee paperwork hiring Klafter & Burke for the Portage Park development, according to records.

By that time, however, Cui’s photoshopped image was red-flagged by a Buildings Department design specialist, who brought it to Frydland’s attention, according to court records.

Cui tried to claim the image came from a real estate broker who could vouch for the image’s accuracy, and, after learning about the issue, Burke allegedly had his assistant contact a zoning administrator to help resolve it, according to court records. Both efforts failed, and City Hall’s denial of the sign permit became final on Nov. 6.

Over the next several weeks, however, Burke voted in favor of several other measures involving Cui’s property that came before the City Council, including a permit for a different sign board and an ordinance granting a privilege “in the public way,” according to prosecutors.

Burger King ‘hard ball’

A third alleged scheme in the indictment accused Andrews, Burke’s longtime political aide, of assisting the alderman in attempting to shake down two Texas-based business owners after they came to him for help with a Burger King restaurant they were renovating in the 14th Ward.

According to the charges, Burke was captured in dozens of conversations from May 2017 to January 2018 talking bluntly about the alleged extortion of the executives, whose Dhanani Group is one of the country’s largest franchisees for Popeyes and Burger King restaurants.

In June 2017, the FBI intercepted a phone call between Burke and one of the executives, who still seemed caught off guard over the purported shakedown and uncertain how to react. At one point, Burke said he needed assurances that he’d get the business before “we can expedite your permits,” according to the allegations.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Burke. What was that last part?” the executive said, according to court records.

Later, after Burke drove by the restaurant on South Pulaski Road and realized they had moved forward with construction without hiring his law firm as promised, Burke was recorded strategizing with his staffers on how to play “hard ball,” according to prosecutors.

“I took ‘em to lunch,” Burke allegedly told Andrews in a phone call in October 2017. “I was playing nice with ‘em — never got back.”

“All right, I’ll play as hard ball as I can,” Andrews replied, according to court records.

Burke had a stop-work order placed on the project and also sent a Chicago Department of Transportation inspector to the site to issue tickets for failure to procure a permit for a driveway at the restaurant that actually had been previously obtained, according to the charges.

In October 2017, an architect for the Dhanani Group sent an email to the Department of Buildings complaining about the harassment, according to the charges. “This does not seem right that Burke can shut this project down considering we have our permit,” the architect wrote. “Please advise as soon as you can.”

That same month, a field representative for the restaurant company sent an internal email to company executives warning that Burke’s interference with the project could have a ripple effect that would cost them a lot of money.

“I know these guys are very powerful, and they can make life very difficult for all of our Chicago stores,” the rep allegedly wrote.

In December 2017, both executives traveled to Chicago again to meet with Burke to try to smooth things over. At the meeting, Burke reiterated his demand for business with his tax appeal firm and also encouraged them to “get involved with other politicians in Chicago” and attend an upcoming fundraiser for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who at the time was running for mayor.

The executive couldn’t attend because of bad weather but “felt it necessary” to donate $10,000 to the politician in order to keep Burke happy, according to the charges. The donation was later amended to $5,600 because of limits on contributions.
The internship

The fourth major scheme alleged in the indictment involved Burke threatening officials at the Field Museum to hold up their request for a fee increase at City Hall because he was angry they had ignored an application for an unpaid internship submitted by the daughter of Burke’s longtime friend, former alderman Terry Gabinski.

According to court records, on Sept. 8, 2017, Burke took a call from an museum official about the fee issue and “immediately chastised” the person for not getting back to him about the internship, saying he was disappointed and surprised.

As the caller began to speak, Burke interjected, “So now you’re going to make a request of me?”

“Well, uh, what I wanted to do was, uh,” the caller responded, only to be cut off again by Burke.

“I’m sure I know what you want to do,” Burke said. “Because if the chairman of the Committee on Finance calls the president of the Park Board your proposal is going to go nowhere.”

Afterward, Burke received an apologetic call from the museum, asking if the Gabinski’s daughter still wanted the internship. Burke allegedly retorted, “That ship has already left the dock.”

“I’m really sorry and now that I have her name, maybe we could find in emails or something what the hell happened here, because when you call Ed, everyone knows, we jump,” the museum official said.

The indictment alleged that after Burke’s dressing down, the museum emailed Gabinski’s daughter details about the job opportunity and how to set up an informational interview for later that week.

The next day, the Park District board approved the $2-a-person hike in the entrance fee for the Field. A few days later, Gabinski’s daughter declined the interview, according to the indictment.

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© Chicago Tribune

MOB CROONER 

2 former football players describe their experiences with racism at Northwestern: ‘The toxic culture has not changed’

2023/11/03

Running back Noah Herron of Northwestern breaks away from a Wisconsin tackler on Oct. 25, 2003, at Ryan Field at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois

. - Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images North America/TNS

CHICAGO — Two more former Northwestern University football players have come forward to allege they experienced racist treatment during their playing days.

Former student-athletes Noah Herron and Rico Lamitte described intense pressure to conform to the “Wildcat Way” at a news conference Friday hosted by Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard, a law firm that is representing over 50 players. The pair highlighted forced haircuts and unfair punishments allegedly imposed on Black players.

While white players were allowed to wear their hair long, players of color with long or braided hair were told they’d need to cut it, said Herron, a running back who played for Northwestern from 2000-2004 and was a team captain, all-Big Ten selection and NFL draft pick.

“Northwestern not only treated players of color differently than our white teammates, but they tried to conform us in our appearance to resemble our white teammates, or what Northwestern would consider, ‘the Wildcat Way,’” Herron said.

Herron also alleged Black teammates were punished more severely than others, recalling one particular instance at a bowl game apparently ordered by a former head coach.

“The head coach told two white position coaches that if these two Black players were able to walk off the field after their punishment, that they themselves would be fired,” Herron said. “The physical punishment was so severe that one of my brothers, a grown man, defecated himself and needed to be carried off the field.

“That was the culture,” he said. “And the toxic culture has not changed.”

As Lamitte shared similar allegations, he recalled being near teammate Rashidi Wheeler at practice when Wheeler died in 2001. The team was never given closure or space to heal after the death, Lamitte said.

“That set the tone for what I would experience over the next 4 1/2 years of my life,” he said.

Lamitte played from 2001-2005, was a team captain and played under the name Rico Tarver, he said.

The team’s football staff told him and other Black players they needed to change the way they dressed, acted and styled their hair, Lamitte said. If players didn’t cut their hair themselves, staff would instruct upperclassmen to hold them down and forcibly cut it, he alleged. Lamitte decided to cut his hair “to avoid humiliation and embarrassment,” but saw other teammates get forced haircuts, he said.

“If we were all held to the same standard, maybe it would not have stung so much, but fellow white teammates were allowed to grow their hair long,” he said. “Northwestern’s culture must be exposed, they must be held accountable and the culture must change.”

When asked about the new allegations, the university Friday highlighted the independent investigation into its athletics programs it initiated being led by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

“Hazing has no place at Northwestern. Any claims of racially motivated hazing are not only disturbing but completely antithetical to our educational and athletics mission,” Northwestern spokesperson Eliza Larson wrote. “We are and will always be committed to diversity, and we investigate any specific hazing allegation we receive to confirm that every Northwestern student feels safe and included.”

Attorney Patrick Salvi Jr. said his firm has filed seven lawsuits against Northwestern. The university now faces over 20 lawsuits related to hazing on its sports teams, with more likely, he said.

Statutes of limitations may make it difficult for many former student-athletes to win lawsuits, but the large number of players who have come forward to describe alleged mistreatment at Northwestern can still act as witnesses, Salvi Jr. said.

The firm’s lawsuits are still in their early stages and significant discovery has not begun, he said.Lamitte and Herron are not currently among the plaintiffs that have filed lawsuits, he added.

Attorney Parker Stinar argued the broad hazing allegations that first beleaguered the school’s football program this summer have been overlooked as the football season started.

“We demand that this story is not silenced by the football season or time,” Stinar said.

The university’s football team, which has a 4-4 record, will play Saturday against Iowa at Wrigley Field.

© Chicago Tribune

Editorial: No more fine tuning: Fed is right to stay the course on interest rates

SAME WITH BOC, BOE, ECB

2023/11/06

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference after a Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Sept. 20, 2023, at the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.. - 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America/TNS

Last week, the Federal Reserve did the right thing by leaving well enough alone, keeping the benchmark interest rate at about 5.4%. With the acute pressure that the board and Chair Jay Powell in particular have faced in the past several months, we’re glad they’ve had the wisdom to know when to step back.

There have been those that, wedded to formulaic understandings about the economy, have insisted it’s all but mechanically impossible for inflation to come down into acceptable ranges without seriously harming the economy. We’ve even heard that we need a recession, that a recession is the inevitable endpoint of a sadly necessary effort to wrangle inflation under control, and that the Fed should not have relented on its campaign to sharply raise rates.

These critics pointed to the 1970s and the reign of Paul Volcker. When things looked grim, the story goes, Volcker stepped up and did what had to be done, pushing the economy into a recession with prolonged unemployment but in the process saving it from a worse spiral of soaring prices that threatened to derail the country’s prosperous postwar climb. The horrifying prospect that this approach may not really have been necessary is something the conventional economic view all but put out of mind.

We should all be mightily thankful that Powell and his Fed colleagues didn’t listen to the naysayers, in part because of some powerful and clear-headed voices bucking the trend, including Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee. We now find ourselves right where they said we couldn’t be: not only have we avoided a recession, but by most metrics, the economy is doing great. Unemployment is low, wages are gaining after a virtual decadeslong standstill, inequality is a bit down.

None of that is to say that it’s milk and honey for everyone out there; that we haven’t had a recession doesn’t mean that rising interest rates and inflation haven’t both hurt households, and the majority of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck. The job certainly isn’t done, and a combination of factors including President Joe Biden’s continuing commitment to robust industrial policy and the resurgent power of labor organizing can keep pulling things in the right direction.

Is this graceful landing the product of the particular circumstances of the contemporary economic picture? Maybe, but what isn’t? The point is that it worked, and what definitely won’t help now is if the Fed busies itself fixing what ain’t broke.

Though the interest rates were kept steady this time around, Powell has repeatedly insinuated that he envisions a potential additional hike in the near term. This doesn’t sound like too big of a deal given that the Fed’s earlier series of successive rate increases did not drive us into recession already; what’s another few basis points?

Yet the primary distinction between a healthy economy and a recession isn’t whether interest rates were hiked — pretty much everyone agreed they had to be hiked — but how aggressively and how quickly; the problem is that once a recession sparks, it’s next to impossible to get it back under control before it inflicts massive damage, and why would we play with fire when things are fine now?

The Fed should instead revel in pulling off what some thought impossible.

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© New York Daily News

Neil DeGrasse Tyson says he wants to meet the aliens, but there’s a catch
2023/11/06


By Ian Krietzberg

Though the world is starting to take aliens more seriously, debates about the veracity of alien evidence are far from settled.

The UFO conversation reached a fever pitch in June when former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch told NewsNation that the U.S. government was in possession of crashed UFOs, including the dead bodies of their pilots.

Grusch and two other former military whistleblowers testified before a Congressional hearing in July, discussing their first-hand experiences with such unidentified aerial phenomena.

Related: Neil DeGrasse Tyson reveals startling facts about recently discovered alien evidence

In the wake of this, both NASA and the Pentagon have additionally begun expanding their research efforts into the UFO vertical, aiming to gather more evidence around such sightings that is of a higher quality.

A September NASA report, while unable to tie UFO sightings in with alien activity, was also unable to say definitively what exactly these alleged UFOs were.

"The top takeaway from the study is that there is a lot more to learn," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.

Two alleged alien corpses were shown to the Mexican Congress in September. Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), meanwhile, recently released a report detailing its efforts to investigate each of the roughly 800 UFO claims the office had received. The bulk of these sightings, the report concluded, are likely just the result of insufficient data, rather than an alien invasion.

"With an increase in the quality of data secured, the unidentified and purported anomalous nature of most UAP will likely resolve to ordinary phenomena," the report reads.

The head of AARO testified in April that the agency has uncovered "no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology or objects that defy the known laws of physics."
Neil DeGrasse Tyson wants to 'meet aliens'

Famed astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, speaking to Bill Maher on a recent episode of his "Club Random" podcast, said that he, like NASA and the Pentagon, needs much more evidence.

"I want to meet the aliens, I just need better evidence than what has been presented," he said. "If there are aliens, I would like better evidence than simple eye-witness sworn testimony. In science, what you swear on is not the measure of what is true, it's just the measure of what you think is true. I need better data than that."

Related: Whistleblowers Unveil Details of 'Incredible' UFO Experiences

NASA, through artificial intelligence, crowdsourcing and collaborations with the Federal Aviation Administration, is making an effort to increase the quality and quantity of data surrounding UFO sightings.

The Agency said in September that eyewitness accounts, while numerous, remain inconsistent and lacking in important detail. Such accounts can't be used to make "scientific conclusions" about alien life.

"All of the abduction stories, they all went away in the era of the smartphone because we can record that and we don't," Tyson said. "Now, you can stream whatever is in your phone to the internet, while it's happening. And we don't have any shots."

The truth of the matter, he said, is that, when it comes to aliens, "We don't know."

"The weight of that evidence is not magnified by someone swearing to tell the truth," Tyson added.

Following the July Congressional hearing, the Mexican Congress held a similar hearing in September that featured alleged alien corpses. Tyson, commenting on the demonstration in October, noted that it is "odd" that the supposedly alien mummies are humanoid in shape.

Still, Tyson has often said that visible evidence, provided scientists are given access to it, is the best thing that could happen; if accessible, such things can be studied, allowing for a more objective, substantiated conclusion.

"The universe," Tyson said, "Brims with mysteries."

How banks' racist loan policies shape bird populations in Los Angeles

DPA
2023/11/06

A hummingbird hovers while collecting nectar from flowers. They are a rare sight in some areas, less so in others, say observers. 

Juan Carlos Hernandez/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

On a recent afternoon in LA’s Boyle Heights neighbourhood Christian Benitez and Eric M. Wood stood outside a corner liquor store searching for birds.

The researchers spotted a house sparrow and pulled binoculars to their eyes. “They’re all over the shrubbery in Boyle Heights,” said Wood, an associate professor of ecology at Cal State Los Angeles.

Among the most ubiquitous and abundant songbirds in the world, house sparrows are urban creatures that thrive where people do. They’re resilient, adaptable and aggressive, and are found around buildings and streets, scavenging food crumbs or nesting in roof tiles.

But less than 10 miles to the northeast, in the wealthy city of San Marino, house sparrows were nowhere to be heard.

Instead of the sparrows, ravens, common pigeons and a Cooper’s hawk the bird watchers spotted in Boyle Heights, the manicured lawns and mature trees of San Marino bristled with a very different assortment of birds.

“There goes a band-tailed pigeon right over there,” Wood exclaimed, turning his attention from a red-tailed hawk. They also recognized acorn woodpeckers, a California towhee, dozens of turkey vultures circling overhead, a dark-eyed junco, a mockingbird, an Anna’s hummingbird and a black phoebe.

It was, the researchers said, a vivid illustration of the so-called luxury effect — the phenomenon by which wealthier, and typically whiter, areas attract a larger and more diverse population of birds.

“That huge difference in wealth, separated by only a few miles, really surprised me when I first moved here,” said Wood, who is from Santa Rosa, in the Bay Area.

In fact, when it comes to the Los Angeles Basin, the researchers say that bird species are remarkably segregated.

In a new study, the researchers argue that the difference in bird populations is a lasting consequence of racist home lending practices from decades ago, as well as modern wealth disparities.

Historically redlined nonwhite communities, such as Boyle Heights, have less tree canopy and greater housing density than greenlined neighbourhoods. As a result, these areas have less bird biodiversity and larger populations of synanthropic birds — species adapted to dense urban environments such as house finches and sparrows, European starlings, common pigeons and northern mockingbirds.

Greenlined areas, on the other hand, have more trees and vegetation cover, which attract more birds and a greater diversity of them. Forest birds such as yellow-rumped warblers, band-tailed pigeons, acorn woodpeckers and black-throated gray warblers are more abundant in these areas, researchers found.

“The legacy of our discriminatory practices is still written into the city itself,” said study co-author Travis Longcore, an adjunct professor with the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “Even though those practices explicitly are outlawed, this city is an accretion of its history, and it doesn’t just go away because time has passed.”

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the government-sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was established to stabilize the nation’s housing market. It helped struggling families prevent foreclosures by swapping mortgages that were in, or close to, default with new ones that homeowners could pay for.

As part of the program, the corporation created security risk maps to evaluate mortgage lending risks. Greenlined areas were considered “best” for investment and tended to be white neighbourhoods Redlined zones were deemed “hazardous” and were disproportionately Black and other nonwhite communities.

Those maps were among the starting points for the authors. Between 2016 and 2018, twice during the non-breeding season from October to March, researchers conducted bird surveys across 132 locations in 33 residential communities in L.A. that had been greenlined, redlined or excluded from the risk assessment maps. In each location, they’d set a five-minute timer and jot down every bird they could see or hear.

The authors amassed data on race and ethnicity, residential housing patterns, the percentage of buildings, paved areas and tree canopy cover, and more. Their results, they wrote, verified that “patterns of income inequality, both past and present ... carry over to influence urban biodiversity.”

For Laura Redford, a history professor at Brigham Young University, the findings were no surprise.

“[The security risk maps] are indicative of trends that were already happening, and they codified things that were already in place,” said Redford, who has researched real estate development in L.A. from the early 20th century. “So the discrepancy in green space or in shrubbery, or the number of trees, those kinds of things, I think goes all the way back to how these spaces were developed and marketed in the first place.”

Although the lending program ended in the 1950s, its segregationist legacy still shapes the environment — and health — of area neighbourhoods.

Other researchers have found strong links between historically redlined communities and increased risks of diabetes, hypertension and early mortality from heart disease. Redlined communities are also hotter and have more pollution and less canopy cover and green spaces than non-redlined regions, studies show.

San Marino and Pasadena, for example, have average tree canopy coverage of nearly 26% and 24% , respectively, according to an L.A. County tree canopy map. The median household income in San Marino between 2017 and 2021 was $174,722 , according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Pasadena’s was $89,661 .

In comparison, Boyle Heights’ canopy cover is 12.6% , and the median income within the same time period was $69,778.

The availability of nature and its correlation with socioeconomic differences are patterns researchers have seen “over and over again globally” and are not unique to L.A. or California, said Danielle F. Shanahan, chief executive of Zealandia Ecosanctuary in New Zealand.

“People who live in more affluent areas have more tree cover, not just in the green spaces, but actually in their backyards as well,” said Shanahan, an adjunct professor with Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. “And of course, that correlates with the biodiversity metrics, so things like birds.”

Though few studies have examined the relationship between self-reported well-being and the diversity of plant and bird species in an area, they have shown conflicting results. In one, researchers found a positive effect; in another, no effect; and in a third, people reported feeling better when they thought an area was rich with species diversity.

“Nonetheless, such studies suggest that variation in nature itself, not just the general levels of provision of green space, has an important role in enhancing population health,” wrote Shanahan and authors of a paper on how urban nature benefits human health.

As plant pollinators and seed spreaders, birds are “really crucial to ensure that our natural systems are healthy and can continue and thrive in the future,” she added. “And that has a feedback loop for our own well-being.”

It’s a perspective Marcos Trinidad tries to impart to students and the L.A. communities he works with.

A senior forestry director for TreePeople and former director of the Audubon Center at Debs Park, Trinidad said that a neighbourhood’s bird abundance and biodiversity speaks volumes about the health of its human residents.

“If we see an abundance of birds, and we have that connection with what those birds need, which food they eat, what shelter they require, what habitat they need to thrive, we can now start looking at our own environment and making those relationships to what we need to thrive and what we need in our own neighbourhoods,” he said.

As a kid, Benitez also noticed the stark differences between his South Gate neighbourhood and wealthier ones. But in his child’s mind, it was just the way things were.

Now he realizes there were larger systemic forces at play.

“I never looked at birds and trees the way that I do now,” he said. “Coming into the lab and being able to understand more deeply how different socioeconomic factors can impact things like birds, people, trees and the environment, that really turned the light on for me.”

In the paper, the authors write that if promoting urban biodiversity is a goal, “cities across the U.S. and the world must work to understand their racist and segregationist histories, which is a necessary step toward creating conditions that support urban wildlife along with a more equitable experience of wildlife for a city’s inhabitants. Otherwise, urban wildlife — in our case, birds — will likely continue to be as segregated as a city’s population.

“Without strong, yet careful intervention,” they continued, “residential urban biodiversity will continue to be primarily for the affluent in the City of Angels.”

Among the most abundant songbirds in the world, house sparrows are urban creatures that thrive where people do. Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert/dpa

An acorn woodpecker flies away from a fencepost on a hillside in Oregon. Researchers say where you see certain birds reflects racist city planning practises from decades ago. 

Robin Loznak/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

GREEN CAPITALI$M
Forest chump? Scientists take a closer look at tree planting projects

2023/11/06

There are many forestation projects underway and while these are a good idea, some make more sense than others, say researchers. 

Thomas Warnack/dpa

If your work and lifestyle leave a heavy carbon footprint, you can have trees planted to compensate. Companies do the same, because trees store carbon dioxide (CO2), which helps the climate, right?

Mostly yes, though it can be more complicated. Even if planted trees benefit the climate, the degree to which they do so is often impossible to quantify, say scientists.

In the worst case, planting trees can even have the opposite effect, though in principle, the idea is not a bad one, says Christopher Reyer of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

"We need more forests," is the bottom line, after all.

Researchers in Britain recently analysed the sustainability reports of 100 of the world's largest companies. Of these, 66 said they implement ecological measures and 44 plant trees, Science magazine reports.

The study shows that more than 90% did not report any ecological results. Moreover, none of the reports quantified the social or economic impact on local stakeholders.

"At the moment there is very little transparency, which makes it hard for anyone to assess if projects are delivering benefits for ecosystems or people," says lead study author Tim Lamont from Lancaster University.

"When a business says it has planted thousands of trees to restore habitat and soak up carbon – how do we know if this has been delivered, if the trees will survive, and if it has resulted in a functioning ecosystem that benefits biodiversity and people?"

In many cases, the evidence provided by large corporations to support their claims was insufficient, Lamont adds. Large international corporations could play a key role in restoring ecosystems, but accountability is key, the study concludes.

Trees remove CO2 from the air and store carbon. How much carbon they capture depends on the species, site conditions and the trees' lifespan. The heavier and denser the wood, the more carbon is stored.

For photosynthesis - the process by which plants turn sunlight into sugars and then emit oxygen - trees also take CO2 from the atmosphere, using the carbon to form roots, trunks and leaves. Much is stored in the tree, while the oxygen is released into the air.

A tree's carbon storage capacity also depends on its age. Young forests store less than old ones. Geographical location also plays a role, writes the Hamburg-based Forest Enterprise Foundation, which promotes nature conservation and forest research.

Tropical forests grow faster than forests in Europe and therefore store more CO2 over the same period of time. Generally, the foundation says one hectare of forest stores about six tonnes of CO2 per year across all age classes.

Planting to faciliate carbon storage does work, says PIK's Reyer, who researches effects of climate change for forests and possible countermeasures. "But in practice it's just often not done so well."

When companies plant trees, that doesn't mean those trees will survive, he notes. Planting only one type of tree usually makes no sense as monocultures have little resistance to storms or drought and fall victim to pests more quickly.

Some forestation projects can also destroy local ecosystems, for example moors or steppes. Elsewhere, planting can involve the clearing of illegal settlements, prompting people to build new dwellings elsewhere, damaging intact ecosystems.

A newly planted forest could also dry out the soil or have other side effects, he says.

"Ultimately, you have to keep an eye on the overall climate balance," says Reyer.

This data is not new and there are many great projects that take these factors into account, he says. But consumers, trying to ease their conscience with an "indulgence trade-off" through planting, cannot distinguish between the projects out there.

Reyer is critical of the numerous certification systems on the market as there is no legal framework for tree planting campaigns, just a lot of uncontrolled growth.

Instead, he favours reforestation over new planting, because that at least ensures the site is suitable for a forest.

Even if tree projects alone won't save the climate, forests can contribute a lot to climate protection, according to a 2022 report by the European Forest Institute.

The EU aims to be climate-neutral by 2050 – an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

But a more holistic approach is needed that avoids deforestation, increases afforestation and reforestation and employs different uses of wood and recycling, the institute says.

Combine all that with action in other sectors, say the authors, and reaching climate neutrality by 2050 might be possible.

The world needs forests but not all forestation projects are equal.

Avoiding monocultures is important when it comes to reforestation. 

Trees grow at different rates and absorb differing amounts of carbon, scientists say. 

Daniel Vogl/dpa

© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

IRS free tax filing rollout faces hurdles after multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign

AMERIKANS SAY; TAXATION IS THEFT

INTERNATIONALISTS SAY; PROPERTY IS THEFT

Anna Massoglia, OpenSecrets
November 4, 2023 

J. D. Montgomery holds a sign on the street outside of the James C. Corman Federal Building encouraging motorists to express their anger at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in Van Nuys, Calif.

 David McNew/Getty Images

New legislation could throw a wrench in IRS plans to launch a free government-run tax filing program after millions of dollars in lobbying by for-profit tax prep service providers.

On Monday, newly-minted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) introduced a bill making $14.3 million in aid to Israel contingent on reducing funding for the IRS. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which President Joe Biden signed into law last year, set $15 million aside for the IRS to develop the free service. Leading for-profit tax prep companies oppose the program.

While Johnson framed the proposed cut as an attempt to offset the cost of the military aid package and reduce the national debt, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office found that defunding the IRS would actually increase the federal deficit by $12.6 billion over the next decade.

The House is expected to vote on the legislation this week.

But Senate Democrats, who hold a narrow majority in the chamber, have called the bill a “non-starter.” The White House has also promised to veto the bill, favoring a joint package with military aid for both Israel and Ukraine.

Still, IRS cuts could resurface in future proposals to send military aid to Ukraine — a priority for Democrats who need buy-in from Republicans.

The proposal to use IRS funds to cover military aid to Israel is new, but it follows a multiyear fight pitting the IRS against for-profit tax prep companies as the industry makes billions of dollars helping Americans file taxes each year. Tax prep companies in turn pour millions back into lobbying to preserve the status quo.


The tax prep services industry has poured over $90 million into lobbying on the Free File Program and other issues since the program’s inception in 2003, a new OpenSecrets analysis found.

Intuit, the company that owns TurboTax, and H&R Block lead in lobbying spending but are bolstered by groups like the American Coalition for Taxpayer Rights, a tax prep, software and financial services trade association whose members include Intuit, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, TaxSlayer and Liberty Tax Services.

Intuit spent about $2.8 million on federal lobbying in the first three quarters of this year, outpacing the prior year and putting the tax prep company on track for a new record.

The TurboTax parent company — which also owns QuickBooks and Credit Karma — spent $910,000 on federal lobbying in the third quarter of this year alone, new lobbying filings show. The company spent nearly $3.3 million on federal lobbying in 2021 and another $3.5 million in 2022.

"Intuit strongly believes in advocating on behalf of its customers. As our business grows so does our engagement and education of policymakers on various issues, from AI and innovation that benefits individuals and small businesses to stronger consumer protections and tax simplification,” an Intuit spokesperson told OpenSecrets.

The company lobbied for "intellectual property protections" as well as "AI and innovation to benefit consumers and small businesses," according to Intuit’s most recent lobbying disclosures, which cover activity during the third quarter of 2023. Intuit lobbyists also reported advocating for "consumer and small business prosperity related to data privacy.”

Over the two decades since the launch of the IRS Free File program, Intuit has poured over $46.2 million into federal lobbying, an OpenSecrets analysis found.

The Free File Alliance, a coalition of tax prep companies, reached a deal with the IRS in 2003 to offer free tax prep services to a larger portion of taxpayers.

The deal, negotiated by Intuit lobbyists, required companies to provide some tax filing services at no cost to certain individuals but also allowed those same companies to charge for other tax-filing products.

In turn, the IRS promised not to develop its own tax prep software or e-filing services. But a December 2019 addendum to the public-private partnership’s original memorandum of understanding lifted that restriction, despite tax prep companies spending heavily on lobbying to bar the government from creating its own e-filing software.

The December 2019 addendum also prohibited companies in the alliance from thwarting Free File internet search results.

Multiple companies have since pulled out of the agreement with the IRS, including Intuit in 2021 and H&R Block in 2020.

The lobbying intensified following passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and a December 2021 executive order instructing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to consider “expanded electronic filing options,” spurring the development of Direct File, a pilot program to provide government-run tax filing services.

“Direct File is not free tax preparation, but rather a thinly veiled scheme where billions of dollars of taxpayer money will be unnecessarily used to pay for something already completely free of charge today – free to the taxpayer and actually free for the government,” an Intuit spokesperson told OpenSecrets. “The Direct File scheme is a solution in search of a problem, and that half-baked solution now has the potential to become a financial nightmare for tens of millions of taxpayers.”

“Direct File is asking Americans to file their taxes directly with the IRS after the organization publicly acknowledged systemic inequities that see low-income filers and Black taxpayers targeted for audit at a higher rate than non-Black taxpayers,” the Intuit spokesperson added, referencing a recent Stanford University study that found Black taxpayers are audited at a higher rate than non-Black taxpayers. After pressure from lawmakers, the IRS acknowledged the study’s findings in May and committed to “doing the work to understand and address any disparate impact of the actions we take.”

Despite the tax prep companies’ heavy lobbying spending, the IRS plans to launch the pilot program next year.

The agency announced in October that the initial rollout will be limited to taxpayers in 13 states with relatively simple returns and specific income types but indicated that the program’s scope could change.

According to the IRS, four of the 13 states — Arizona, California, Massachusetts and New York — will adopt the Direct File program for both state and federal taxes while residents in nine other states that don't have an income tax may also be able to participate in the pilot for federal taxes.

Taxpayers in other states — or whose filing needs are more complex, such as contractors — will not qualify for the services in 2024.

While the pilot program will only cover some taxpayers, a wider rollout could threaten the primary source of tax prep companies’ revenue. In August, Intuit announced that its annual revenue was over $14.3 billion for its 2023 fiscal year, which ended July 31, 2023 — a 13% increase from 2022.

H&R Block’s annual revenue was around $3.5 billion for its 2023 fiscal year, which ended June 30, representing a more modest increase of $9 million — or 0.3% from the prior year.

OpenSecrets is a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research and news organization tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.

OUT OF POWER THIS IS WHAT MAGA DOES

Moms for Liberty Is Riding High. It Should Beware What Comes Next.
Yelling about schools gets people riled up. The outcome can be unpredictable.

BY ADAM LAATS 

SLATE

AUG 29, 2023
A

 member of Moms for Liberty protests at a meeting of the Brevard County School Board in Viera, Florida, on June 6.

 Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Everyone loves moms. Everyone. And that’s a problem for groups like Moms for Liberty.

The group revels in its inflated reputation as a “national powerhouse,” but its century-old playbook has always had a fatal flaw.

As the 1970s story of Alice Moore shows, white conservative mothers have always had great initial political success, but that appeal tends to spiral quickly out of their control.

Moore’s story might sound familiar. She rocketed into national prominence in 1974 by taking over her local school board, blocking books and fighting for “parents’ rights.” She ran as a nonpartisan “mother,” but in truth, she was an experienced activist for conservative causes. Long before she ran for school board, she had fought against abortion rights and against sex education in schools. She railed against public schools’ alleged progressive agenda, accusing them of “destroying our children’s patriotism, trust in God, respect for authority and confidence in their parents.”

Once on the school board of Kanawha County, West Virginia, Moore ignited a dramatic boycott of a new series of textbooks. She inflamed conservative opinion nationwide by claiming that the books trampled on parents’ rights. Moore warned that the new books would force white kids into feeling guilt and anguish about America’s racism.

Moore did not invent her powerful political persona. She modeled her career on that of Texas’ Norma Gabler. Gabler had become a national powerhouse in the 1960s by blocking history textbooks and forcing publishers to tell a more conservative story. Though Gabler always called herself just a “Texas homemaker” or “Longview housewife,” she ran a staff of eight, combing through textbook copy to sniff out progressive content.

Gabler, in turn, modeled her organization on that of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As far back as the 1920s, DAR leaders campaigned to keep America’s public schools “fundamentally Anglo-Saxon.” Back then, DAR claimed almost 200,000 members. Anne Rogers Minor, DAR’s national leader at the time, claimed that it was their role as patriotic mothers to “Guard well your schools.” Minor warned that too many teachers taught ideas that parents might not like. As Minor put it, “We want no teachers who say there are two sides to every question.”

DAR’s activism was powerful and lingered for decades, but their sprawling, angry organization always ranged beyond the control of the national leaders. In 1963, one DAR member in Mississippi humiliated the group with her violent opposition to a widely used children’s book. The book, The New Our New Friends (1956), had been read for years in Mississippi public schools. It told cheerful moral stories about cute baby animals, as when Bobby Squirrel discovered he could get a nut just by asking for one. One local DAR leader, though, accused the book of spreading subversive socialism by teaching children, like Bobby Squirrel, to expect a “collective welfare system.” DAR had worked hard to maintain their reputation as America’s maternal conscience. This kind of strident, frenzied activism, however, opened up the group to mockery from all sides, as when historian James Silver sarcastically praised the Mississippi DAR for keeping the state’s children safe from the dangerous “story of the squirrel storing nuts.”

By the 1970s, Alice Moore’s career repeated the pattern. Just like Norma Gabler and DAR, Moore attracted huge support, seemingly overnight. Her warnings about new textbooks led to a boycott of local public schools. The fledgling Heritage Foundation scrambled to send support. The White House, too, voiced its enthusiasm for Moore’s vision. President Ford’s commissioner of education, Terrel Bell, opposed any textbooks that “insult the values of most parents.”

As Alice Moore quickly found, however, her meteoric success came at great cost. Her inflammatory language about public schools and teachers led to a spate of bombings and shootings. The school board building was rocked by a dynamite bomb. Two elementary schools were firebombed. Nonconservative members of the school board were physically attacked and pummeled at a public meeting. The district’s superintendent went into hiding, moving from couch to couch every night to escape incessant death threats. Soon school buses came under hails of sniper fire. Along the turbulent picket lines, two people were shot; thankfully, both survived.

Moore disavowed the violence, but she couldn’t escape the fact that her rhetoric had directly caused it. Similarly, when the Ku Klux Klan rolled into town to support the boycott, Moore insisted she had nothing to do with their campaign. She also said she had nothing to do with the burning cross outside the school district’s headquarters in 1975, and it seems very likely she was telling the truth. Yet when the Klan’s local leader articulated his vision for public schools, his language was the same as Moore’s. Just like Alice Moore, the Klan promised to “return patriotism and Christianity to our schools.” They claimed to be joining the national campaign to stop “the breakdown of morals among our children.”

Alice Moore denounced it all, but the damage was done. The boycott—now indelibly associated with the Klan—fizzled. A student march in favor of the controversial books attracted thousands of supporters. The books remained in schools, though parents had to sign a permission slip for a few of the titles.

The lesson for Moms for Liberty is clear. It is easy to get quick support by standing up for children and parents’ rights. It is simple to spread alarm about teachers as “groomers” and the possibility that white children might feel guilty about racism. But that support can be dangerous.

The political dangers have become painfully obvious. Moms for Liberty has always struggled to control its message. One local group in Tennessee embarrassed the organization in 2021 by calling for a ban on a book about seahorses because the book was “too sexy.” More recently, another local chapter infamously quoted Adolf Hitler. The national leadership scrambled to explain the obvious. The quote was not meant to endorse Hitler, but rather to endorse parents’ rights.

But the backpedaling only underlined the obvious point: The Moms were out of control. It’s not only about embarrassing gaffes. Just as earlier conservative women attracted the support of violent right-wing men, today’s Moms are also supported by militant right-wing groups. At some school board meetings, Moms have been backed up by menacing ranks of Proud Boys. The Proud Boys have threatened and fought with parents for wearing COVID masks or supporting the rights of LGBTQ+ children.

With or without intimidating backup from the Proud Boys or other right-wing organizations, threats have become an ominous part of the Moms’ playbook. Local leaders have been convicted of harassment for threatening their neighbors. As one victim described on the witness stand, a local Mom “said she’d find my family.” In Livingston County, Michigan, the chair of the local Moms chapter made no attempt to soft-pedal her warning. As she told the school board: “We’re coming after you. Take it as a threat. Call the FBI. I don’t care.”

Moms for Liberty has found that, like Alice Moore before them or DAR before that, speaking in the name of “Moms” can lead to rapid growth. But it is frighteningly easy for that growth to spread out of control, making it difficult to avoid violence and the threat of violence.

By maligning schools and smearing teachers as sexual predators, Moms for Liberty is playing with the same ideological dynamite that wreaked havoc in Alice Moore’s Kanawha County. It is terrifyingly easy to predict what’s in store: more violent extremists will heed the Moms’ call to seize control of schools, using whatever means necessary.

BACKGROUNDER

The DeVos Family: Meet the Super-Wealthy Right-Wingers Working With the Religious Right to Kill Public Education

Alternet.org

May 07, 2011

IN 2016 BETSY DEVOS BECAME TRUMP'S  SECRETARY OF EDUCATION

Since the 2010 elections, voucher bills have popped up in legislatures around the nation. From Pennsylvania to Indiana to Florida, state governments across the country have introduced bills that would take money from public schools and use it to send students to private and religious institutions.

Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But "school choice," as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system.


The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business.

By now, you've surely heard of the Koch brothers, whose behind-the-scenes financing of right-wing causes has been widely documented in the past year. The DeVoses have remained largely under the radar, despite the fact that their stealth assault on America's schools has the potential to do away with public education as we know it.

Right-Wing Privatization Forces

The conservative policy institutes founded beginning in the 1970s get hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy families and foundations to develop and promote free market fundamentalism. More specifically, their goals include privatizing social security, reducing government regulations, thwarting environmental policy, dismantling unions -- and eliminating public schools.

Whatever they may say about giving poor students a leg up, their real priority is nothing short of the total dismantling of our public educational institutions, and they've admitted as much. Cato Institute founder Ed Crane and other conservative think tank leaders have signed the Public Proclamation to Separate School and State, which reads in part that signing on, "Announces to the world your commitment to end involvement by local, state, and federal government from education."

But Americans don't want their schools dismantled. So privatization advocates have recognized that it's not politically viable to openly push for full privatization and have resigned themselves to incrementally dismantling public school systems. The think tanks’ weapon of choice is school vouchers.

Vouchers are funded with public school dollars but are used to pay for students to attend private and parochial (religious-affiliated) schools. The idea was introduced in the 1950s by the high priest of free-market fundamentalism, Milton Friedman, who also made the real goal of the voucher movement clear: “Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system." The quote is in a 1995 Cato Institute briefing paper titled “Public Schools: Make Them Private.”

Joseph Bast, president of Heartland Institute, stated in 1997, “Like most other conservatives and libertarians, we see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling. In fact, after careful study, we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.” Bast added, “Government schools will diminish in enrollment and thus in number as parents shift their loyalty and vouchers to superior-performing private schools.”

But Bast's lofty goals have not panned out. That's because, quite simply, voucher programs do not work.

The longest running voucher program in the country is the 20-year-old Milwaukee School Choice Program. Standardized testing shows that the voucher students in private schools perform below the level of Milwaukee’s public school students, and even when socioeconomic status is factored in, the voucher students still score at or below the level of the students who remain in Milwaukee’s public schools. Cleveland’s voucher program has produced similar results. Private schools in the voucher program range from excellent to very poor. In some, less than 20 percent of students reach basic proficiency levels in math and reading.

Most Americans do not want their tax dollars to fund private and sectarian schools. Since 1966, 24 of 25 voucher initiatives have been defeated by voters, most by huge margins. Nevertheless, the pro-privatization battle continues, organized by an array of 527s, 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, and political action committees. At the helm of this interconnected network is Betsy DeVos, the four-star general of the pro-voucher movement.

The DeVos Family Campaign for Privatization of Schools

The DeVoses are top contributors to the Republican Party and have provided the funding for major Religious Right organizations. And they spent millions of their own fortune promoting the failed voucher initiative in Michigan in 2000, dramatically outspending their opposition. Sixty-eight percent of Michigan voters rejected the voucher scheme. Following this defeat, the DeVoses altered their strategy.

Instead of taking the issue directly to voters, they would support bills for vouchers in state legislatures. In 2002 Dick DeVos gave a speech on school choice at the Heritage Foundation. After an introduction by former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett, DeVos described a system of “rewards and consequences” to pressure state politicians to support vouchers. “That has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible,” stated DeVos. He described how his wife Betsy was putting these ideas into practice in their home state of Michigan and claimed this effort has reduced the number of anti-school choice Republicans from six to two. The millions raised from the wealthy pro-privatization contributors would be used to finance campaigns of voucher supporters and purchase ads attacking opposing candidates.

Media materials for Betsy DeVos’ group All Children Matter, formed in 2003, claimed the organization spent $7.6 million in its first year, “impacting state legislative elections in 10 targeted states” and a won/loss record of 121/60.

Dick DeVos also explained to his Heritage Foundation audience that they should no longer use the term public schools, but instead start calling them “government schools.” He noted that the role of wealthy conservatives would have to be obscured. “We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities,” said DeVos, and pointed to the need to “cut across a lot of historic boundaries, be they partisan, ethnic, or otherwise.”

Reinventing Vouchers

Like DeVos, several free-market think tanks have also issued warnings that vouchers appear to be an “elitist” plan. There's reason for their concern, given the long and racially charged history of vouchers.

School vouchers drew little public interest until Brown v. Board of Education and the court-ordered desegregation of public schools. Southern states devised voucher schemes for students to leave public schools and take the public funding with them.

Author Kevin Michael Kreuse explains how this plan was supposed to work in White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. “At the heart of the plan to defend school segregation, for instance, stood a revolutionary scheme called the ‘private-school plan.’ In 1953, a full year before Brown, Governor Talmadge advanced a constitutional amendment giving the General Assembly the power to privatize the state’s entire system of public education. In the event of court-ordered desegregation, school buildings would be closed, and students would receive grants to attend private, segregated schools.”

Given the racist origins of vouchers, advocates of privatization have had to do two things: obscure the fact that the pro-privatization movement is backed primarily by white conservatives, and emphasize the support of African American and Democratic lawmakers where it exists.

In 2000, Howard Fuller founded the Black Alliance for Education Options. The group was largely funded by John Walton and the Bradley Foundation. Walton, a son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, contributed millions to the Betsy DeVos-led All Children Matter organization, including a bequest after his death in a plane crash in 2004.

A report by People for the American Way questions whose interest was being served in the partnership between the Alliance and conservative foundations. The summary of the report reads, “Over the past nine months, millions of Americans have seen lavishly produced TV ads featuring African American parents talking about school vouchers. These ads and their sponsor, the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), portray vouchers as an effort to help low-income kids. But a new report explores the money trail behind BAEO, finding that it leads directly to a handful of wealthy right-wing foundations and individuals that have a deep agenda -- not only supporting the school voucher movement, but also backing anti-affirmative action campaigns and other efforts that African American organizations have opposed or considered offensive.”

Black Commentator.com was more blunt, describing vouchers as “The Right’s Final Answer to Brown” and tracking the history of vouchers from die-hard segregationists to the Heritage Foundation’s attempt to attach vouchers to federal legislation in 1981. The article stated, “The problem was, vouchers were still firmly (and correctly) associated with die-hard segregationists. Memories of white “massive resistance” to integration remained fresh, especially among blacks, who had never demanded vouchers -- not even once in all of the tens of thousands of demonstrations over the previous three decades.”

The article continues, “Former Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett understood what was missing from the voucher political chemistry: minorities. If visible elements of the black and Latino community could be ensnared in what was then a lily-white scheme, then the Right’s dream of a universal vouchers system to subsidize general privatization of education, might become a practical political project. More urgently, Bennett and other right-wing strategists saw that vouchers had the potential to drive a wedge between blacks and teachers unions, cracking the Democratic Party coalition. In 1988, Bennett urged the Catholic Church to 'seek out the poor, the disadvantaged…and take them in, educate them, and then ask society for fair recompense for your efforts' -- vouchers. The game was on.”

In this winning formula, vouchers or “scholarships” are advertised as the only hope for under served and urban minority children. Those who dare to defend public education from voucher schemes are, ironically, implied to be racist. Glossy brochures published by the DeVos-led entity All Children Matter show smiling faces of little children as well as those of the African American and Democratic politicians who have joined the campaign. Kevin Chavous, a former D.C. city councilman who takes credit for “shepherding” vouchers in D.C. and New Orleans, served as senior advisor to All Children Matters and now leads the BAEO and sits on the board of the DeVos-led AFC and Democrats for Education Reform.

All Children Matter was fined $5.2 million dollars in Ohio for breaking campaign finance laws, and lost an appeal in early 2010. The fine has not been paid. The DeVos-led organization also received bad press due to a fine in Wisconsin for failing to register their PAC as well as complaints in other states. In 2010 the entity began working under the name American Federation for Children (AFC) and registered new affiliate PACs across the nation, just in time for the 2010 elections.

The 2010 effort included a state that was not even included in Dick DeVos’ list of potential targets when he spoke to the Heritage Foundation in 2002 -- Pennsylvania. An affiliate of AFC registered a PAC in Pennsylvania in March 2010 and less than a year later a voucher bill, SB-1, was sponsored in the Senate.

Throughout this well-coordinated campaign, the Pennsylvania press never once mentioned the name Betsy DeVos.

The Religious Right Foot Soldiers

The strategy in Pennsylvania in 2010, like efforts in other states, benefited from years of previous efforts to build alliances in the voucher movement. The conservative policy institutes have limited reach in the general public. In order to win the battle for hearts and minds, a larger public relations effort is required. The Religious Right fills this role with their tremendous broadcast capability and growing access to churches and homes. The partnership between free market fundamentalists and social conservatives is often contentious, but they share a common goal -- to end secular public education. The free marketers object to the “public” aspect while the Religious Right objects to the “secular” component of public education.

A significant forum that brings together free-market power brokers and Religious Right leaders is the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive group that has met several times annually behind closed doors since 1981. Richard DeVos described CNP as bringing together the “donors and the doers.” This partnership gives the Religious Right access to major funders, including Richard Mellon Scaife, who are not social conservatives.

Many of the free-market think tanks are secular, but there is a trend toward merging free-market fundamentalism with right-wing religious ideology. The Acton Institute is described by religious historian Randall Balmer as an example of the merging of corporate interests with advocates of “dominion theology.” Dominionism is the belief that Christians must take control over societal and government institutions. The Acton Institute funds events featuring dominionist leaders including Gary North, who claims that the bible mandates free market capitalism or “Biblical Capitalism.”

Betsy DeVos has served on the board of Acton, which is also funded by Scaife, Bradley and Exxon Mobil. A shared goal of this unlikely group of libertarians and theocrats is their battle against environmental regulation. One of the Acton Institute fellows leads a group of Religious Right organizations called the Cornwall Alliance, which is currently marketing a DVD titled Resisting the Green Dragon. The pseudo-documentary describes global warming as a hoax and claims environmentalism is a cult attacking Christianity. Another shared goal of the free marketers and Christian dominionists is eradicating secular public education.

Gary North explains why getting students out of public schools is key to the Christian dominionist camp. “So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”

And the Christian Right has been busy enacting this vision. One of the first goals of the Christian Coalition was to take control of 500 local public school boards, and it's a strategy the Religious Right has continued. One prominent example is Cynthia Dunbar, one of the members of the Texas State Board of Education which made controversial changes to the state’s social studies curriculum in 2010. Dunbar, who was advised by right-wing self-styled "historian" David Barton, is author of One Nation Under God and has described sending children to public schools as “throwing them into the enemy’s flames, even as the children of Israel threw their children to Moloch.”

In addition to getting Trojan horses on school boards, the Religious Right has played a significant role in disseminating anti-public school propaganda and forming alliances to support vouchers for private schools. Family Research Council (FRC), one of the entities funded by the Prince and DeVos families, documents the effort in Pennsylvania to cultivate a partnership between Protestants and Catholics who wanted public funding for their sectarian schools.

The data accompanying proposed bill SB-1, indicates that the majority of the public school funds that will be spent on vouchers will pay tuition for students already enrolled in private schools. In Milwaukee 80 percent of voucher program schools are religiously affiliated, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In Cleveland, 52 percent of the students in the 29 Catholic diocesan schools are using taxpayer-funded vouchers, according to the Plain Dealer.

FRC’s Web site includes a 1999 speech by one of Pat Robertson’s biographers, in which he describes the school choice alliance in Pennsylvania of Protestant and Catholic leaders along with the Commonwealth Foundation and REACH Alliance. Commonwealth is a state think tank funded by the Scaife foundations. REACH Alliance is the statewide pro-voucher activist organization funded by the DeVos-led Alliance for School Choice (now also renamed American Federation for Children). This alliance is further described in the speech as forming "ties to black legislators based in Philadelphia, including Dwight Evans. This was big news for the Pennsylvania education reform movement because Evans is a powerful legislator and community leader."

Evans would indeed become key to expanding vouchers in the Philadelphia area, and he and state Senator Anthony Williams (not to be confused with the D.C. mayor by the same name), both Democrats, serve as directors of the BAEO.

The Battle for Pennsylvania

By the 2010 election, the groundwork had been laid and the heavy artillery brought into the state of Pennsylvania. First, a PAC was registered in March 2010 by Republican strategist Joe Watkins under the name Students First. Affiliated with the DeVos and Chavous-led AFC, the PAC shared the name with the organization founded by Michelle Rhee, a star of the popular pro-privatization movie Waiting for Superman. The Web site of Students First PAC touts the African-American Watkins' experience as an adviser to a president and pastor. There is no mention of the fact that the president was George W. Bush. The bio also neglects to include Watkins' ties to the Republican Party or his role in attack ads run on Fox News against presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

Students First PAC received over $6 million in donations for use in the 2010 elections, much of that donated by three mega-donors whose names were unfamiliar to most Pennsylvanians. The three mega-donors, Joel Greenberg, Jeffrey Yass and Arthur Dantchik, also contributed over a million dollars to the AFC-affiliated PAC in Indiana and $6,000 dollars each to the gubernatorial campaign of Scott Walker. The Indiana PAC total was raised to almost $6 million by a few contributors, including Betsy DeVos herself and several Walton family members. Most of that money did not stay in Indiana but was distributed to affiliated PACs in six other states, including over a million sent back to Pennsylvania’s Students First.

Much of the Students First money went to the long-shot gubernatorial campaign of Anthony Williams. Williams lost in the primaries, but he brought statewide attention to his primary campaign cause -- school vouchers. Among Students First’s millions of expenditures was a $575 payment for conference registration to the Council for National Policy.

Pennsylvania press did not pay much attention to the background of the donors of the unprecedented millions pouring into the election in support of a single issue, describing them simply as supporters of school choice. Greenberg serves on the board of the Betsy DeVos-led AFC; Yass on the board of the pro-privatization think tank Cato Institute; and Dantchik on the board of the Institute for Justice, which describes itself as a merry band of libertarian litigators and is perhaps best known for its battles against affirmative action. It’s funded by Koch, Bradley, Olin, Scaife and Walton foundations and has now become a champion of school vouchers. The organization was credited by Dick DeVos in his 2002 speech as serving a significant role through challenges to the Blaine Amendments in numerous states, which disallow public funds to be spent supporting religious schools.

Money continues to be spent on attack ads against both Republican and Democratic senators opposed to SB-1. The Scaife-funded Commonwealth Foundation has created a webpage to pressure wavering Republicans. The Koch-funded FreedomWorks sponsored mailers attacking Republican state Senator Stewart Greenleaf. The mailer is headlined, “There’s a battle in Harrisburg over our children’s future. Who will win? Our children or the powerful teacher’s union?” A Students First PAC mailer attacks Democratic state Senator Daylin Leach as opposing the bill because, “he is listening to teacher union leaders who oppose SB-1 and have contributed a fortune to people like Leach.”

Much of the Indiana PAC money was also used in media campaigns, including funds sent to Florida for media purchases. AFC was the sole funder of a pro-voucher group that ran ads in Jewish publications attacking Dan Gelber, a Jewish candidate for Florida attorney general who opposed vouchers. Full page “wanted ads” were purchased in Jewish publications accusing Gelber of “crimes against Jewish education.” Other ads purchased just prior to the election described Gelber as “Toxic to Jewish Education” in red Halloween-style letters.

Dick DeVos’ model for “rewards and consequences” as described in his 2002 speech, is at work in Pennsylvania, Florida, and elsewhere, and it's a project funded by a few mega-donors. The voucher warriors with their unlimited funding are trying to create the absurd impression that they are the altruistic David in battle against the teachers’ union Goliath.

Betsy DeVos has announced that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker are scheduled to speak at the National Policy Summit of the American Federation for Children on May 9. Walker wants to expand vouchers in Milwaukee despite the program's failure, made clear by disappointing standardized test results. Walker’s response? To halt the testing. Pennsylvania voucher supporters have already taken care of the pesky issue of accountability by defeating an amendment that would require the students using vouchers to take standardized tests.

During the AFC’s summit, it’s doubtful there will be speeches about eradicating public education but there will certainly be public relations-produced media everywhere, showing the beautiful faces of the little children these voucher proponents are supposedly saving. And Betsy DeVos, the four-star general of the voucher wars, will continue to advance a stealth campaign against American communities and working families -- the battle to eradicate public education.