US official rejects Amazon challenge to New York union vote

Agence France-Presse
September 02, 2022

Union leaders are joined by community group representatives, elected officials and social activists for a rally in support of unionization efforts by Amazon workers in the state of Alabama on March 21 in Los Angeles, California (AFP)

A US official Thursday rejected Amazon's efforts to overturn a worker vote in favor of unionization at a New York warehouse, dismissing the retailer's election complaints as groundless.

Lisa Dunn, a hearing officer with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), who oversaw a 24-day hearing on Amazon's complaints earlier this summer, concluded the firm's objections "should be overruled in their entirety," according to a statement released by the NLRB's press office.

"The Employer has not met its burden of establishing that Region 29, the Petitioner, or any third parties have engaged in objectionable conduct affecting the results of the election," the NLRB said, adding that Amazon should recognize Amazon Labor Union as the bargaining representative for the facility, JFK8.

Amazon has until September 16 to contest Dunn's conclusion. The NLRB regional director would then decide whether to rerun the election or certify the vote in a determination that could be appealed to the board itself.

Dunn's decision is the latest development since Amazon Labor Union's (ALU) shock victory in April in which New York workers voted to establish the first Amazon union in America at a facility in Staten Island, New York.

Amazon criticized the decision and said it intends to appeal.

"As we showed throughout the hearing with dozens of witnesses and hundreds of pages of documents, both the NLRB and the ALU improperly influenced the outcome of the election and we don't believe it represents what the majority of our team wants," spokesperson Kelly Nantel said.

Amazon has asserted that union members intimidated workers into voting for the union and that local NLRB staff were biased against the retail colossus.

But the ALU has said these claims are groundless, accusing the company of using delay tactics to put off talks on a on a contract in an attempt to quash the labor movement.

© Agence France-Presse

Biden’s support of California farmworker bill makes it ‘complicated’ for Newsom

2022/09/07

Joe Aguilar of Sacramento waves a United Farm Workers flag in front of the state Capitol in Sacramento after the union finished a 24- day march on Aug. 26, 2022, to call on Gov. - Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee/TNS

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — As Gov. Gavin Newsom weighs whether to veto another California farmworker union bill, he has a new and unexpected voice in his ear: President Joe Biden, who has decided to inject national politics into a state labor battle.

Over Labor Day weekend, Biden issued a statement backing a bill that would allow farmworkers to vote by mail in union elections. Supporters say the measure would make it easier and less intimidating for them to organize.

“Farmworkers worked tirelessly and at great personal risk to keep food on America’s tables during the pandemic,” Biden said. “In the state with the largest population of farmworkers, the least we owe them is an easier path to make a free and fair choice to organize a union. I am grateful to California’s elected officials and union leaders for leading the way.”

Presidents seldom intervene in state legislative fights. But underlying Biden’s involvement is the tension between an unpopular incumbent and a rising national Democratic star. Newsom has criticized party leadership for failing to aggressively push back against Republican policies on abortion, climate change and other issues. Biden’s support for the bill is a little pushback of his own, some political professionals say.

“There’s some back-room positioning between the two of the biggest Democratic politicians in the country,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican Latino political consultant. “The president has taken on a much more aggressive posture with all of his critics, whether they’re Republicans or whether they’re Democrats and this is another sign of that. There’s no other reason for the president to weigh in on this other than to put Gov. Newsom in his place.”

Assembly Bill 2183, sponsored by the United Farm Workers and authored by Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Monterey Bay, passed in the final days of the legislative session. Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.

He vetoed a similar measure in 2021, citing technical issues. This year, the governor has been facing pressure to sign from labor advocates backing UFW, which led a 335-mile march across California to demonstrate in support of the bill.

Biden’s involvement in the farmworker debate adds another layer to Newsom’s already complex decision, political consultants and communications experts say.

“Joe Biden just made Gavin Newsom’s life a whole lot more complicated,” said Dan Schnur, a political communications professor at the University of California, Berkeley and USC and former spokesman for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. “It’s not unheard of for a president to weigh in on state legislation. But it’s relatively rare to put the squeeze on a governor of your own party like this.”

Newsom’s office did not respond to requests Monday for comment.

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, project director for the UCLA Labor Center, could not recall the last time a sitting president weighed in so strongly on a state labor issue.

It’s yet another “message” sent in Newsom’s direction, said Rivera-Salgado. Lorena Gonzalez, new head of the California Labor Federation, did a similar move when she invited UFW back into the fold of the state’s labor movement.

“I would read it as trying to put some political pressure on Gavin Newsom to come through,” he said.

Rivera-Salgado added that Biden has put Newsom in an “interesting” position and further open to criticism that the governor has a “soft spot” for growers. The winery Newsom co-founded just bought a Napa vineyard for $14.5 million.

Some labor leaders were not surprised by Biden’s support. He is widely seen as the most outspokenly pro-union president in decades and made headlines in early 2021 for the 22-inch-tall bronze bust of farm labor leader Cesar Chavez behind his desk.

The UFW also endorsed Biden for president in 2020, banking on hopes he would implement farmworker safety protections and immigration reforms. And in March 2021, first lady Jill Biden visited Forty Acres in Delano, the storied birthplace of UFW.

“This shows his commitment to farmworkers.… And it shows that the farmworkers have done a really good job using their voices to share their struggles directly with individuals,” Gonzalez said.

Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro have also urged Newsom to sign the bill.

UFW President Teresa Romero said the union had been in communication with the “different people” in the administration, sharing farmworker challenges to organizing. Biden’s White House director of Intergovernmental Affairs is Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Chavez’s granddaughter.

“It’s very meaningful to us and to the workers, to know that we have the support of the president,” Romero said.

Romero remains “50/50” on whether the governor will support the bill. She notes there has been no communication with Newsom’s office since the bill was approved by the Senate last Tuesday.

AB 2163 continues to face staunch opposition from the agricultural industry and grower associations. They argue UFW no longer prioritizes organizing and is ineffective in advocating for better working conditions. In its 1970s heyday, the union had 80,000 members in California and other states. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, it now numbers a little over 6,000.

Rob Roy, president and general counsel for Ventura County Agricultural Association, called the union “virtually nonexistent.” He pointed to the last five years during which UFW has not successfully filed for an election to represent California farmworkers.

“I think the president ought to keep his nose out of state laws dealing with unionization,” Roy said. “But given his background, being pro-union, I guess he just can’t help himself.”

Roy said he expected Biden to have no effect on Newsom’s decision.

During the last few days of the legislative session, Newsom signaled he may veto AB 2183 and has not taken a public stance on the measure since lawmakers approved it.

“Gov. Newsom is eager to sign legislation that expands opportunity for agricultural workers to come together and be represented, and he supports changes to state law to make it easier for these workers to organize,” Erin Mellon, Newsom’s communications director, told The Fresno Bee in August.

“However, we cannot support an untested mail-in election process that lacks critical provisions to protect the integrity of the election and is predicated on an assumption that government cannot effectively enforce laws.”

The main sticking point is whether growers would be notified about an impending union election. UFW staffers say doing so would allow employers to union bust and take action against workers for organizing, including deporting those who are undocumented.

Newsom’s office says not notifying growers about upcoming union elections goes against national labor organizing standards.

Stone, the bill’s author, said his office worked closely with both Newsom and UFW on the bill, which he thinks the governor largely supports, except for “a piece of it he does not like.” He said that’s why the bill includes a five-year sunset provision that would allow lawmakers to reconsider it.

“It was really an attempt to try and say, ‘We know we’re not completely there, but we’re willing to continue to work,’” Stone said.

William Gould IV, former head of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board and the National Labor Relations Board, said he had respect for Biden, but that the president was given “bad information” on the bill.

“President Biden does not understand farm labor law situation in California. … This is complete make believe. I’m sorry the President has fallen for this lie,” Gould said.

He echoed Roy’s sentiments and shared that, as chairman of the NLRB, UFW only filed one election petition in three years. He said farmworkers deserve protection and was in favor of more organizing. However, Gould said this bill would not help improve unionization rates.

“No one is trying to organize the farmworkers,” Gould said. “They should be organized and hopefully, at some point there will be a union that will try to organize them.”

Newsom has shown support for organized labor in certain situations. On Monday, he signed a bill that will create a fast-food council to help low-wage employees improve their working conditions. This could help to soften some of the criticism from labor if he vetoes the farmworker union bill, Schnur said.

“Newsom (doesn’t) need to sign the farmworkers’ bill in order to shore up his labor credentials this year,” he said. “He took care of that with the fast-food legislation.”

Biden’s support for the farmworker union bill could give Newsom political cover to sign it, or it could make the optics worse if he vetoes it.

Madrid said it’s dangerous for Biden or other politicians to view policies like AB 2183 as a way to appeal to the Latino community. It’s unfair to stereotype Latinos as farmworkers or undocumented residents who care only about border issues, he said.

“When you poll Latino voters ... these are not issues of huge concern,” Madrid said. “They are of symbolic concern. But when you’re the governor that has to actually deal with these issues, you have to deal with substance as much or more than symbolism.”

———

© The Sacramento Be

While hoping for a deal, Seattle teachers vote to strike on the eve of first day of school

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams
September 07, 2022

Fans hold up a banner expressing support for teachers and students at a Seattle Sounders soccer match on September 4, 2022 in Seattle. (Photo: Seattle Education Association/Twitter)

Members of the union representing roughly 6,000 Seattle teachers voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to strike the following day—a move the labor group says it hopes to avoid, as public school classes are set to resume on Wednesday.

The Seattle Education Association (SEA) announced Tuesday that of the 75% of its members who voted, 95% elected to authorize a strike, which is set to begin at 7:30 am Wednesday absent an agreement with Seattle Public Schools (SPS) officials.



"None of us want to strike. SPS has forced us to because of its repeated refusal to provide our students with the supports they need to thrive," SEA explained in a statement. "Our bargaining team continues to work at the table and we still hope to announce an agreement rather than a strike tonight."

Jamillah Bomani, a fourth grade teacher at Leschi Elementary School, told KING-TV that "we want to come to school for our students, we want to be here on Wednesday, we want to be ready. But we want to make sure we are coming back to school with everything we need and everything our students need."

"So we are still holding out hope that something will happen and we can come tomorrow," she added, "but we are ready and willing, if we need to, to let the district know that we're not going to show up if we don't have everything our students need."

SEA's strike priorities are:

Supports for students in special education and multilingual education, for students in the schools with highest needs, and for interpretation and translation;

Workload, caseload, and class size controls to prevent educators from burnout; and

Respectful, competitive pay so that educators can live in the communities where they work.

"Our students' needs are greater than I've seen in my career, yet the SPS wants to pursue a distraction rather than an agreement to improve student supports," SEA president Jennifer Matter said in a statement.

"We call on SPS to stop the distractions and instead match our urgency to get to a tentative agreement that better serves our students," she added.

SEA paraprofessional president Marla Rasmussen, who is apart of the union's bargaining team, told KING-TV that "we have been here every day, putting in the hours from early in the morning to late at night."

"We will continue to do so; we're prepared to stay all night as long as it takes, we've done it before and we'll do it again," she added. "It's really important that we have your support and backing and understanding that we are all in this together in solidarity."

SPS said in a statement that the district asked SEA to consider a memorandum of understanding (MOU) "that would have guaranteed an on-time start to school, while allowing negotiations to continue in earnest. At this time, SEA has rejected the proposed MOU."

"Starting school on Wednesday is what is best for our students," the statement added. "We understand this uncertainty about a delay is difficult and unsettling for our students, staff, and families. We hope that SEA will reconsider this MOU and sign it before Tuesday."

The looming strike comes as teachers in nearby Kent—who are seeking higher pay and more manageable caseloads—continued a strike that began August 25.

Teachers in Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula are set to strike if a deal on a new contract is not reached by the end of Tuesday.

White supremacist group crashes New Jersey Labor Day parade and tries to march
Matthew Chapman
September 06, 2022

Members of the National Socialist Movement (Neo-Nazis) during

 a 2010 march to the Phoenix Federal building (John Kittelsrud/Flickr)

On Tuesday, The Daily Beast reported that members of a white supremacist group crashed a Labor Day parade in South Plainfield, New Jersey, and tried to march with their own banner promoting their group's ideology.

"South Plainfield Mayor Matthew Anesh says the group of racists, part of the New Jersey European Heritage Association, tried to sneak into the back of his city’s annual parade but were quickly stopped by police. The group never registered with the city and were treated as protesters, Anesh said," reported Josh Fiallo. "The group’s unofficial status didn’t stop pissed off parade goers from heckling and recording the men, however. 'You know these guys are racist pieces of sh*t, you know who they are right?' one man says on the video. 'You guys are not welcome here. Not welcome.'"

"The group donned matching white tees, sunglasses and wore American flag bandanas over their faces, all while holding a massive sign that read, 'DEFEND AMERICAN LABOR … CLOSE THE BORDER.' They stayed quiet as parade goers heckled them, though, one member briefly stepped to the front to snap a photo of the sign before the recording cut out," said the report. "It’s unclear how long the group was on the parade route, as video only shows them standing silently as police flanked them, no floats in sight. Mayor Anesh did not answer a phone call or text from The Daily Beast on Tuesday afternoon seeking clarification."

“In no way shape or form did I, the Governing Body, the Public Celebrations Committee or any other group or organization in South Plainfield condone or welcome this group to the Parade,” said Anesh in a written statement after the incident.

The New Jersey European Heritage Association are best known for their flyer campaigns; according to their report, their flyers feature QR codes that direct to a site showing photos of pregnant white women and espousing the "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory, which states that there is a deliberate plot by elites — sometimes depicted as Jews — to flood majority-white countries with nonwhite immigrants and breed white people out of existence. Some of these flyers were even found in the U.S. Capitol after January 6.

This comes amid new reporting on efforts by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups — who had been laying low after the blowback from the deadly 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia "Unite the Right" rally — to redouble their recruiting efforts. Some of these groups have been focused on recruitment in the Northeast, with Boston a particular target for hate groups like Patriot Front and NSC 31.

Analysis shows 'quiet fleecing' of workers — not 'quiet quitting' — is the real problem

Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams
September 10, 2022

Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash

"Quiet quitting"—an allegedly new trend characterized by workers performing only their required job duties and no more—has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks, but the defining trend of the past 40 years of U.S. economic history is "quiet fleecing," and we should be talking much more about it.

"The reality is workers have long been going 'above and beyond' and not getting paid for it."

That's the argument put forth Friday by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a progressive think tank with a long track record of popularizing research on wage suppression and runaway inequality.

"Everyone's obsessed with a post-pandemic phenomenon called 'quiet quitting,'" EPI wrote in an email. "It's basically defined as workers just doing the basic requirements of their jobs and not going 'above and beyond.'"

"But the reality is workers have long been going 'above and beyond' and not getting paid for it," EPI continued. "We're calling this phenomenon 'quiet fleecing.'"

To illustrate what is meant by "quiet fleecing," EPI pointed to an animated chart showing that between 1948 and 1979, the nation's economy and working-class wages grew largely in tandem. Although wages began to flatline during the 1970s crisis of stagflation, a 118% increase in productivity during this 31-year period—when Keynesianism was still dominant—was mirrored by a 107% increase in typical worker pay.

But ever since former President Ronald Reagan's neoliberal counterrevolution against unions, public goods provided by the welfare state, and other fixtures of the New Deal era—a pro-corporate and anti-labor agenda that became bipartisan and has only recently lost some of its hegemony—the gap between productivity and typical worker pay has widened dramatically.
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According to EPI, net productivity rose 61.8% from 1979 to 2020. Hourly pay, meanwhile, increased by just 17.5% during those 41 years, meaning that productivity grew 3.5 times as much as wages over the past four decades, after adjusting for inflation.

"Workers are more productive than ever," EPI noted Friday, "but employers haven't been sharing the wealth. In fact, they've been fleecing workers for 40 years when it comes to having pay rise with productivity."

"Who's reaping the benefits if workers are getting quietly fleeced?" the think tank asked.

At the same time that typical worker pay has remained largely flat despite climbing productivity, the share of income captured by the top 1% has soared. From 1948 to 2019, the top 1% enjoyed a 407% increase in compensation, with the bulk of those gains coming after 1979.

In a more detailed analysis on the topic, EPI noted that the growing gulf between productivity and typical worker pay represents "income going everywhere but the paychecks of the bottom 80% of workers."

That wedge of income "went into the salaries of highly paid corporate and professional employees," EPI pointed out, "and it went into higher profits (i.e., toward returns to shareholders and other wealth owners)."

"This concentration of wage income at the top (growing wage inequality) and the shift of income from labor overall and toward capital owners (the loss in labor's share of income) are two of the key drivers of economic inequality overall since the late 1970s," the think tank added.

The link between productivity and typical worker pay was deliberately broken by neoliberal policies. As EPI tells it:
Starting in the late 1970s policymakers began dismantling all the policy bulwarks helping to ensure that typical workers' wages grew with productivity. Excess unemployment was tolerated to keep any chance of inflation in check. Raises in the federal minimum wage became smaller and rarer. Labor law failed to keep pace with growing employer hostility toward unions. Tax rates on top incomes were lowered. And anti-worker deregulatory pushes—from the deregulation of the trucking and airline industries to the retreat of antitrust policy to the dismantling of financial regulations and more—succeeded again and again.
In essence, policy choices made to suppress wage growth prevented potential pay growth fueled by rising productivity from translating into actual pay growth for most workers. The result of this policy shift was the sharp divergence between productivity and typical workers' pay shown in the graph.

"There is something fundamentally wrong with the way our current economy distributes wealth and rewards work," the think tank concluded on Friday. So-called quiet quitting "is a symptom of a much bigger and deeper problem."

According to EPI's latest research on the subject, top CEOs in the U.S. were paid 351 times as much as typical workers in 2020.

EPI found that the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989. Between 1978 and 2020, researchers noted, CEO pay soared by 1,322% while typical worker pay grew by just 18%.

"For future productivity gains to lead to robust wage growth and widely shared prosperity, we need to institute policies that firmly connect pay and productivity and build worker power," the think tank has argued. "Without policy interventions, economic growth will continue to sputter, and the growth we do see will largely fail to lift typical workers' wages."

Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) unveiled the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act, a proposal to raise taxes on corporations that pay their CEOs over 50 times more than the median worker.

The legislation "would incentivize corporations to both rein in pay at the top and lift up wages—all while generating an estimated $150 billion over 10 years that could be invested in ways that reduce inequality," explained the Institute for Policy Studies' Sarah Anderson, one of many economists who attribute the worsening pay gap to the decadeslong assault on the labor movement and the rise of stock-based compensation for CEOs.

The U.S., Sanders warned when introducing his legislation, is "moving toward an oligarchic form of society where the very rich are doing phenomenally well, and working families are struggling in a way that we have not seen since the Great Depression."

"At a time of massive income and wealth inequality," he added, "the American people are demanding that large, profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes and treat their employees with the dignity and respect they deserve."

Here is one of the most revealing lines in Jared Kushner's self-serving memoir

The Conversation
September 09, 2022

Jared Kushner participates in the signing ceremony 

of the Abraham Accords between Israel, UAE and 

Bahrain at the White House. (Shutterstock.com)


Jared Kushner is not the first presidential son-in-law to have held high office. President Woodrow Wilson leaned heavily on his talented and experienced Treasury Secretary, William McAdoo, who just happened to be his daughter’s husband.

McAdoo, however, was a skilled politician, and his appointment had to be ratified by the US Senate. Kushner, who spent much of Donald Trump’s period in office as a senior advisor, and even at times a de facto chief of staff, was previously a real estate developer.

Kushner’s marriage to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, was facilitated by Rupert Murdoch and his former wife. But that friendship had its limits, as Jared would discover when Rupert refused to override the call made by Fox News in its coverage of the 2020 elections that gave Arizona to Trump’s adversary, Joe Biden.

Kushner was one of Trump’s inner circle, with a wide-ranging set of briefs that appeared to cut across half a dozen departments. Breaking History reads rather like a dutiful student’s account of “what I did on my summer holidays”, except in this case Jared actually influenced US policies in a number of areas.

While making sure to properly acknowledge the pater familias, Kushner claims some big personal achievements:

Across four years, I helped negotiate the largest trade deal in history, pass bipartisan criminal justice reform, and launch Operation Warp Speed to deliver a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine in record time … In what has become known as the Abraham Accords, five Muslim-majority countries signed peace agreements with Israel.

Some of these claims are justified. In particular, the Trump administration did support some relaxing of the draconian penal restrictions that mean the US leads the world in incarcerations. Kushner’s account of building a bipartisan movement to modify some of these laws is important, even as it reminds us of the barbarity of much of the US justice system.

Kushner spent considerable time working with selected gulf states to develop what became the Abraham Accords, which saw four Arab states recognise Israel. His insight was that the various royal despots would ultimately collaborate in abandoning the Palestinians in the greater interest of building an anti-Iranian alliance, where they shared common concerns with Israel. It seems Kushner never met a ruler he didn’t like, nor one whose record on human rights was worth questioning.

Kushner seems blithely oblivious to the fact his close ties to Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which go back to childhood, and his own strong support for Israeli ambitions, might have restrained Palestinian enthusiasm for his peacemaking efforts.

In this he reminds one of his father-in-law, who never let sentiment get in the way of enthusiasm for making a deal. Remember how well that went with Kim Jong-un – and, yes, Jared and Ivanka were there when the two presidents met at the Demilitarised Military Zone between the two Koreas, but tactfully no more is said about the beautiful friendship Trump claimed was established.

Telling silences and a magic touch

After the outbreak of COVID, Kushner became a central player, along with Vice-President Mike Pence, in organising the national response. As with his account of the Abraham negotiations, there is a great deal of fascinating detail obscured by his need to be centre-stage.

That the US suffered among the highest COVID death rates within rich countries is apparently not worth mentioning beside the achievements of our hero in mobilising the private sector and pharmaceutical giants.

In Kushner’s world everyone is at fault, except the Trump family. President Trump, it seems, was constantly let down by his advisers, the Republican establishment, foreign leaders – by everyone, in fact, but Jared and Ivanka. Donald’s wife and sons barely appear (thankfully Melania, Eric and Donald Jr were hardly noted for their interest in policy).

Nor, one might note, do either of the Australian prime ministers who dealt with Trump rate a mention. Kushner seems largely uninterested in democratically elected governments, although he does tell us of his friendship with former UK prime minister Boris Johnson. It seems that for four years, only the steady hand of President Trump, supported by his daughter and son-in-law, steered the US through perilous waters.

Breaking History suggests there were few areas of government where Jared’s magic touch was not required. As he says, when the president calls, you answer, even if it means missing sleep and meals. He notes the rapid turnover of officials in the administration, and has little praise for most of the cabinet, other than former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and treasurer Steven Mnuchin.

But sycophancy has its limits. One of the most revealing lines in the book comes in a reflection on the days after the 2020 elections: “Like millions of Americans, I was disappointed by the outcome of the election.”

Kushner makes no attempt to support claims the election was stolen, and passes over the attack on the Capitol by Trump’s supporters, which he acknowledges was “wrong and unlawful”. His claim that had Trump anticipated violence he would have prevented it from happening has been essentially disproved in the recent hearings into the January 6 attack.

Analysing a morally corrupt presidency

Donald Trump is known to be a lazy reader, although Kushner claimed last month his father-in-law had started reading his book. Will he wade through the 400 or so pages of praise that come before the admission of electoral defeat?

One wonders whom else the book might attract. The prose is flat but grammatical, far removed from the overblown rhetoric and denunciations so beloved of the MAGA crowd. The book has been predictably panned by the New York Times and Washington Post, and largely ignored by Trump’s true believers, who far prefer the fiery speeches of Don Junior. But it would be wrong to ignore the insights into Washington and Middle Eastern policy-making that Kushner provides.

Even a morally corrupt presidency leaves a mark on the world that needs to be analysed. The plethora of books that have already appeared around the Trump presidency bear out Kushner’s claim to have been a key player across a number of crucial portfolios.

Indeed, the only other person to remain in “the room where it happened” through the entire four years was Pence, until his final break with Trump over the results of the 2020 elections. Now there’s a story Lin Manuel Miranda might consider as a follow-up to Hamilton.


By Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Florida ranked No. 1 for 'education freedom' — by right-wing group that wants to privatize it all

Kathryn Joyce, Salon
September 10, 2022

Ron DeSantis on Facebook.


A new education report released Friday by the Heritage Foundation, an influential right-wing think tank, ranks Florida as the best state in the country for "education freedom," with Arizona a close second, and Washington, D.C., New York and most of the Northeast falling to the bottom.

That claim, along with the fact that the list's top 20 states are mostly deep "red" and its bottom 10 are almost all dark "blue," might come as a surprise to education watchers who are familiar with more traditional assessments of education performance. But in the Heritage Foundation's inaugural "Education Freedom Report Card," the think tank is grading according to a different metric entirely: not things like average student funding, teacher salary or classroom size, but how easily state legislatures enable students to leave public schools; how lightly private schools and homeschooling are regulated; how active and welcome conservative parent-advocacy groups are; and how frequently or loudly those groups claim that schools are indoctrinating students.

Florida's Department of Education was quick to celebrate its No. 1 Heritage ranking, but digging into the four main categories the report assessed — "school choice," "regulatory freedom," "transparency" and "return on investment" — illuminates both what that ranking means and, perhaps more important, what conservatives' long-term goals for public education are.

In the category of education choice, Heritage's primary focus is on education savings accounts (ESAs), a form of school voucher that allows parents to opt out of public schools and use a set amount of state funding (sometimes delivered via debit card) on almost any educational expenses they see fit. ESAs can be used towards charter schools, private schools, parochial schools and low-cost (and typically low-quality) "voucher schools," as well as online schools, homeschooling expenses, unregulated "microschools" (where a group of parents pool resources to hire a private teacher) or tutoring. The report's methodology also notes that the percentage of children in a state who attend these alternatives to public schools figures into its rankings, implying that families who choose traditional public schools are not considered examples of educational "freedom." The "choice" category also awards points based on how non-public schools are regulated, docking states that require accreditation or the same level of testing mandated for public schools.

In terms of "regulatory freedom," Heritage weighs whether states enforce "overburdensome regulations … in the name of 'accountability.'" The chief concern here appears to be teacher certification credentials, since states that encourage "alternative" credentialing or that employ more teachers without teaching degrees are ranked higher than those where more educators have traditional qualifications. This section also penalizes states where a high percentage of school districts employ chief diversity officers, since, the report claims, such positions primarily exist to "provide political support and organization to one side of the debate over the contentious issues of race and opportunity."

In the third category, "transparency," the report rewards states that have "strong anti-critical race theory" laws, high rates of engagement by groups like Parents Defending Education — which has ties to the Koch network — and laws requiring school districts to provide exhaustive public access to any student curricula or educational materials. States where Parents Defending Education have reported more "indoctrination incidents" — which usually means conflicts regarding teaching about racism or LGBTQ issues — are ranked lower.

Lastly, in terms of spending, the report compares per-pupil spending not just to learning outcomes but also to matters like the future tax burden created by teacher pensions, which Heritage sees as a reflection of concentrated "teacher union power" and "deficient political leaders."

The report also included a section containing model legislation written by the Goldwater Institute, the libertarian law firm Institute for Justice and the Heritage Foundation itself, covering more "anti-CRT" proposals, more requirements for schools to publicize their training materials for students and staff and more or bigger ESA voucher programs. In its own model bill, "Protecting K-12 Students from Discrimination," Heritage proposes that schools teach an "aspirational and inspirational take on America's history, debunking the misguided argument that present-day problems of black Americans are caused by the injustices of past failures" and holding that no teachers or students can be compelled "to discuss public policy issues of the day without his or her consent."

What's especially noteworthy about this report — which Heritage says it will release on an annual basis — is how closely most of its ranking criteria track with the right's broader education agenda. Over the last few months, almost all the issues addressed in this report have been highlighted as key action items for conservative education reformers, from the promotion of ESAs, as a preferred pathway to universal school vouchers, to alternative teacher credentialing to the expansion of the anti-CRT movement, which now encompasses anything related to "diversity, equity and inclusion."

In late June, Arizona passed a sweeping expansion of its own ESA policies, instantly creating the most wide-reaching school privatization plan in the country and sparking immediate calls for other Republican-led states to follow suit. (Although Florida ranked first overall in Heritage's report, the authors note with evident enthusiasm that Arizona's new ESA law will "certainly give Florida a run for its money next year.")

Likewise, the report's emphasis on alternative teacher credentialing underscores a major new focus of conservative activism. In February, the right-wing bill mill American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, declared "alternative credentialing" to be one of 2022's "essential policy ideas." Two months later, anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo called on state lawmakers to rescind requirements that teachers hold education degrees, saying that university education programs serve only to indoctrinate teachers in left-wing ideology. In early July, Arizona passed a law decreeing that public school teachers don't even need college degrees in order to begin teaching. And in August, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did the same, arguing that teacher certification requirements were "too rigid" and announcing that military veterans who were halfway to a college degree could now be hired to teach in public schools.

Individually and together, these education "reform" proposals tie back to larger calls to privatize education — which is sometimes acknowledged out loud, as when Rufo declared this April that increased controversy around public schools would help create the environment for "universal school choice." The Heritage report is part of a similar long game, declaring in its opening paragraphs that "America has never been closer than it is today to realizing Milton Friedman's vision for universal education choice."

Framing the report by invoking the libertarian economist Friedman — who, over the course of his controversial career, proposed eliminating Social Security, the Food and Drug Administration, the licensing of doctors and more — is a telling choice. In a foundational 1955 essay, as Heritage notes, Friedman famously argued that "government-administered schooling" was incompatible with a freedom-loving society, and that public funding of education should be severed from public administration of it — which would end public education as the country had known it for generations.

Milton Friedman claimed that school vouchers would solve all the "critical problems" faced by schools. In fact, says Carol Corbett Burris, they haven't "delivered on any of his promises ... [and] all evidence shows they have made segregation worse."

As Duke University historian Nancy MacLean writes, Friedman's call for "education freedom" came at the same moment that Virginia segregationists were pioneering the use of school vouchers to enable their "regionwide strategy of 'massive resistance'" to integration. Critics have long pointed out that, in that same 1955 essay, Friedman acknowledged that school vouchers might be used to uphold segregation, creating a system of "exclusively white schools, exclusively colored schools, and mixed schools" that parents could choose between. Friedman's defenders, including at EdChoice, the school privatization advocacy organization he founded in the late 1990s, counter that this quote must be considered within the larger context of Friedman's professed belief that free-market educational competition would eventually mean that "the mixed schools will grow at the expense of the non mixed, and a gradual transition will take place." (Assuming that integration advocates managed to successfully "persuade others of their views.")

"Friedman may have been an accomplished number-cruncher, but when it came to social issues, he was a crackpot," said Carol Corbett Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education. He claimed that "vouchers 'would solve all of the critical problems' faced by schools," from discipline, to busing to segregation, Burris continued. "He presented no evidence, just claims based on his disdain for any government regulation."

This theory has been tested, Burris said, and proven false. "The jury is in. School choice in the form of charters and vouchers has not delivered on any of his promises; in fact, all evidence shows they have made segregation worse."

By 1980, Friedman was declaring that vouchers were merely a useful waypoint on the road to true education freedom, which would include revoking compulsory education laws. In 2006, shortly before his death, Friedman told an ALEC audience that it would be "ideal" to "abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it."

For Heritage to use Friedman as its ideological lodestar, public education advocates observe, makes clear what the report values most in the state education systems it's ranking.

"The fact that the Heritage Foundation ranks Arizona second in the country, when our schools are funded nearly last in the nation, only underscores the depraved lens with which they view the world," said Beth Lewis, director of the advocacy group Save Our Schools Arizona, which is currently leading a citizen ballot referendum against the state's new universal ESA law. "Heritage boasting about realizing Milton Friedman's dream reveals the agenda — to abolish public schools and put every child on a voucher in segregated schools."

"This is a report that celebrates states not funding their students," agreed Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the state's largest union. Noting that Florida in fact ranks 45th in the nation in average per-student funding, Spar continued, "In their report, it seems like the states that fund their students at a higher level have a worse ranking than those who invest less in their children."

This amounts, Spar continued, to "the Heritage Foundation celebrating the rankings of how well you underfund public schools, how well you dismantle public schools. I don't think we should celebrate the fact that we're shortchanging kids."

"With this report," added Burris, "the Heritage Foundation puts its values front and forward — that schooling should be a free-for-all marketplace where states spend the least possible on educating the future generation of Americans, with no regulations to preserve quality." It's no accident, Burris added, that Heritage's top two states, Florida and Arizona, were ranked as the worst on the Network for Public Education's own report card this year.

"These two states now have such a critical teacher shortage, due to their anti-public school agenda, that you do not even need a college degree to teach," said Burris. "Parents who are looking for the best states in which to educate their children should take this report card and turn it on its head."

DeSantis ban on ‘woke’ investments could hurt state pension fund, experts say
2022/09/01

Ron DeSantis announces the Florida SunPass Savings program at the Florida Turnpike Headquarters on Aug. 25, 2022, in Orlando, Florida. - Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel/TNS

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — After banning CRT in the classroom and board room, Gov. Ron DeSantis has a new target in his culture war against “wokeness” with another acronym most folks have never heard of — ESG.

DeSantis says he views investment policies that take “Environmental, Social and Governance” issues into consideration as an existential threat to Florida’s people and economy, just as he sees Critical Race Theory undermining the state’s social and cultural values.

“This is a movement to harness economic power to move an agenda that doesn’t have enough appeal to win at the ballot box,” DeSantis said on Aug. 23 after voting to ban investments in what he and others call “woke” investments. “Those policies are dead on arrival in the state of Florida.”

He and the other two members of the State Board of Administration Board of Trustees – Attorney General Ashley Moody and Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis – passed a resolution ordering the state to prioritize “the highest return on investment for beneficiaries, without consideration for non-pecuniary beliefs or political factors” when considering future investments in the state employee pension fund.

ESG is an investment strategy used to calculate the risk of long-term investments. For instance, fund managers could consider whether climate change will affect a business’ profits in the future. Governance factors examine conflict of interest policies, executive compensation and other safeguards to protect against corporate scandals. Social factors take into account whether employees are paid equitably.

The move against it comes as Florida’s pension fund dropped from a high of almost $200 billion a year ago to $179 billion in June as the stock market fell, according to a monthly SBA report to the trustees.

Financial analysts said it could affect millions of retired state employees because ESG issues do impact investment returns.

“It is pension money that runs the most significant financial risk if they don’t take ESG into account,” Sasja Beslik, chief investment officer at NextGen ESG, told Bloomberg News. “ESG — when done for real — is first and foremost a risk-management tool. Politicians run for four years, maybe eight. But pension money is very long-term.”

Deborah Jepson, who retired from teaching debate and journalism at Oviedo High in 2016, doesn’t understand why a policy change is needed.

“The fund has been well managed up until now. The last thing I want is for my pension to be politicized,” Jepson said. “Can the fund cover the pensions that are in there now and the ones that are coming up?”

The proposed changes seem arbitrary, she said. Current SBA investment policy for the state pension plan only requires its investment managers to ensure returns on investment cover the timely payment of promised benefits to current and future participants.

Jepson also likened the ESG ban to the governor and Legislature banning critical race theory in schools. “It doesn’t exist. He invented a problem, talked about it with the media, then passed laws,” she said. “It’s an imaginary problem.”

It also goes against what most employees want, according to a Harris poll conducted last year for investment manager Nuveen, which found two-thirds of the respondents want their companies offering retirement plans that include ESG principles.

DeSantis claimed that many ESG funds don’t perform as well as traditional ones.

But a recent Bloomberg News report cited a Morningstar Inc. study that said over the past five years U.S. sustainability funds with a capitalization of $10 billion or more that focused on growth averaged an annual return of 14% while conventional non-ESG funds grew 11% a year.

DeSantis’ resolution directs the State Board of Administrationto update the board’s investment policy based on financial factors that affect the rate of return — not social, political or ideological issues. DeSantis said he envisions Florida and other red states uniting and voting as one to act as a “counterweight” to ESG policies.

Critics said it’s a distraction from more pressing issues and political theater in DeSantis’ efforts to drum up his base for his reelection in November and with an eye on a possible run for president in 2024.

“It’s another culture war issue,” Adam Hattersley, a Democrat running for chief financial officer. “They are distracting from the disaster of property insurance in Florida that is costing everyone money. That’s the problem they should be focusing on.”

Critics said the battle against CRT, which argues that racism is systemic in American society, was another manufactured problem. CRT isn’t a part ofFlorida’s K-12 public school curriculum and is mostly taught in graduate and law schools.

But the resolution itself doesn’t explain how the rule would be applied, or how funds would be analyzed to determine whether they are in compliance.

Nor does it specify whether something like climate change has a legitimate impact on the bottom line. It also doesn’t offer any instructions on whether to divest from existing investments that follow ESG principles or how it would differ from existing investment policy.

“The governor’s assertion is common sense,” Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary, said in an email. “If investment decisions are being made using any factors other than the fiduciary and pecuniary interest of the beneficiary, then the best financial decisions aren’t being made.”

The rule will apply to all future investment decisions, he added, after the rule is approved and the SBA completes a review of governance policies and files its report to the Board of Trustees, no later than Dec. 15, 2023.

A lot hinges on how this policy directive is ultimately carried out, said Josh Lichtenstein, a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray who has been tracking the ESG issue.

ESG factors can be used to help determine whether a company is a sound long-term investment, he said.

For instance, some studies have shown more diverse corporate boards are less prone to scandals, corruption and bribery, all of which can hurt a company’s stock price.

Climate change and sea-level rise could make beachfront property worth less in the future. The state has approved a $1.5 billion program to protect coastal communities against flooding.

And the Legislature and governor also approved a $100 million program for homeowners to harden their homes against the ever-growing threat of hurricanes.

“The chilling effect is exactly what the concern is,” Lichtenstein said. “The worry is you end up with fiduciaries who are afraid to consider the full range of what they believe is prudent to consider.”

Jonathan Webber, political and legislative director for Florida Conservation Voters environmental group, said it was inappropriate to exclude a huge sector of the business community from the investment fund because they embrace ESG.

“It ties the hands of financial investors when they’re trying to do what’s right for their constituents,” Webber said. “The governor talks about freedom but prevents the freedom of corporations to do what their employees and consumers want.”

It also doesn’t square with the state’s own environmental policies or desires of Floridians, Webber added. “Everyone knows we all share a role in protecting that. It really doesn’t make sense.”

© Orlando Sentinel

The decaying politics of white boomer men

John Stoehr
September 09, 2022

Donald Trump holds a press conference at Trump Turnberry. (Shutterstock.com)

On Monday, David Brooks, the Times columnist, wrote about No Labels, a third party. He could have been talking about himself, though. He could have been talking about the cycles of political time in which the old political order gives way to a new, fresh one.

What will we do, he asked, if the major parties nominate, in 2024, a redhat fascist on the one hand or a Bernie-Bro progressive on the other? No Labels provides an escape from both extremes, Brooks said. Unfortunately, it’s a pixie-dust alternative to stone-cold reality.

Brooks understands better than most that third parties never win. Yet he clings so tightly to an imaginary “moderate middle” that he can’t accept, apparently, that the Democratic Party represents the full spectrum of legitimate politics. The actual moderate middle is somewhere between Joe Manchin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

For a “conservative” pundit who’s been watching politics for around three decades (nearly 20 years at the Times), this new political reality must be intolerable – so intolerable that hyping a third party as if it were a serious alternative does not sound deranged. That it is deranged tells us more about Brooks than it does No Labels.

It tells us that Brooks is outside the center.

The politics of white boomer men

The best way to understand Brooks, age 61, is not as an individual, unique though he is, but as an avatar of a political consensus that emerged from the mid-1960s – when the civil rights movement triumphed and the federal government conceded that the claims of the Declaration of Independence applied equally and universally.

Another good way to understand Brooks: as the personification of a white-power reaction to the rise of nonwhite, female power. By 1980, that reaction had lifted a D-list actor and Goldwaterite to the Oval Office. With a white conservative Christian finally in charge, no one talked anymore about women’s liberty or Black rights. As a result, Tom Brokaw told us, America could feel good about itself again.

Brooks embodies his generation’s politics.

The politics of white boomer men.

I risk looking like I care about Brooks. I don’t. I find him useful, though. He can help us see clearly that the old political order, which centered white boomer men like him, is falling beneath a new one, like a tectonic plate grinding overtop another, creating a landscape so new that no one remembers what the old one looked like.

For this reason, we shouldn’t see his inanity as maddening. To the contrary, we should see it as exciting. The greater the inanity, the greater the irrelevance of white boomer politics. The more he struggles to comprehend – the more he refuses to accept new realities – the more the current political order is losing its grip.

Huzzah!

“The boomers … ruined everything”

I am not in any way overstating things when I say that white boomer politics has constituted America’s political order for the last 50 years.

Since 1976, majorities of white boomers have voted for the GOP presidential candidate. They endorsed endless culture wars as well as real forever wars. They endorsed rapacious market capitalism. They endorsed starving government of, by and for the people. White boomers were and still are the richest cohort in US history. Yet their lifetimes have seen their country decay and fade in every conceivable way, whether it’s education, infrastructure, climate or equality.

In an interview with a promising young office seeker, CNN anchor Jake Tapper said: “I don't blame Generation Z. Let me give you a secret. It's all the fault of the boomers. They ruined everything."

TV = Trump

Since Tapper’s comment last month, his employer has dramatically pivoted from a neutral source of news to a network similar to Fox. That shift reflects, I think, something old turning into something new. And it points to an essential element of white boomer politics.

Television.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that its power is weakening at the same time that the Republicans’ half-century dominance is too.

According to a former senior executive, writing on Twitter, CNN “printed money,” in the 1990s. “Cash. Hand over fist. Then MSNBC and Fox News came along. The race was on. MSNBC went velvet rope. Fox News went diner. CNN got caught in no man’s land.”

It profited from the Iraq War, but between 2008 and 2016, he said, CNN lost 60 percent of its 50-plus audience. “We didn’t … take a look at what was happening. The viewership started to splinter to MSNBC because some folks wanted a left bent. But a lot went to Fox News.” Indeed, Fox executives double-, then triple-downed on the olds, thus increasing their viewership by 70 percent over the same period.

Then came Donald Trump. Profits returned, but they were illusory, the former executive said. The over-65 set had fled to Fox. By the time CNN+ came along, its failure was foretold. The former executive said: “What 65-year-old is going to download and subscribe to a news streaming service with a basketball star, Rex Chapman.”

People under 50 cut the cord.

They stopped watching cable news.

Only boomers do.

I need not remind you there would not have been a President Trump without television power. White boomers watch TV. Most voted for Trump, twice. But as the television’s influence on the electorate decays and fades, so will the influence of white boomer politics.

It’s just a matter of time.

Never happened before

Is that time now?

Given that things that used to be true are no longer true, and that things that never happened before are happening, yeah, maybe.

Consider the conventional wisdom about midterms. They never go the president’s way. Joe Biden is supposed to lose the House.

But Amy Walters, of the Cook Political Report, said: “Poll after poll shows Democrats winning among voters who rate Joe Biden ‘somewhat unfavorably.’ That’s not happened before. In five midterms for which Pew Research had data, ‘somewhat disapprovers’ have never been this supportive of his party in the upcoming election.”

No one knows why this is happening, but it surely links up with the criminal former president who packed a renegade Supreme Court.

For now, let’s ask: what does something that’s never happened before tell us about our moment? Maybe that the political fundamentals in which things used to happen – like the president losing the Congress – have changed so profoundly that something that’s never happened before can really happen, like the president holding the Congress.

It’s no wonder David Brooks is confused.

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

MSNBC host flips the script on royal coverage to document British colonial brutality

Tom Boggioni
September 10, 2022

Coronation of George V in India, (Via1911 | Wikimedia Commons)

Following up on a contentious interview with a British historian over his country's dark history of colonialism, MSNBC host Ali Velshi took time out from coverage of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II to elaborate on his earlier accusations.

Noting that he was getting blowback on social media over the inappropriateness of his mentioning the touchy topic so soon after the queen's death, Velshi suggested Britain's history of brutal suppression should not be glossed over.

"How about we talk a little bit more about colonialism," he began. "The first Elizabethan era ended when Queen Elizabeth the First died in 1603. Her 45 year reign was, quote, 'a golden age,' though I guess that depends on your perspective which marked England's emergence as an ambitious and ruthless global power."

"Elizabeth the First heavily encouraged privateering, granting charters or trading and exploration rights to private companies which paved the ways for an intercontinental empire," he continued.

He then added, "Centuries later, the second Elizabethan era has just ended with the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The two reigns invite easy comparison and they are tethered by their unique position in the timeline of British colonialism; the beginning and the beginning of the end. In the 1920's, the British empire was at its zenith, ruling and controlling the natural resources and economic output of around a quarter of the world's entire population -- about 413 million people at the time."

"Nightfall for the empire was on the horizon by the time Elizabeth became queen," he continued. "It was ushered in by the colonized, not by the colonizer. In 1947, a few months after Queen Elizabeth II's 21st birthday, but five years before she became the monarch, Britain would lose one of its most crucial imperial possessions, India, and the newly partitioned Pakistan. For more than a century, Britain had exploited local rulers workers, and resources in India; flooding the British economy with cotton and cash."

"India not only paved the way for Britain's massive global rise, but funded the continued progress of the industrial revolution," he elaborated. "Remnants of colonialism in India continue in the conflict between India and Pakistan, and India's continued colonization of Kashmir. I don't need to make a metaphor here: the 105 carat diamond which sits in one of the three royal consort crowns is a spoil of war from India."

"The death between 20,000 and 100,000 people in the Mau Mau Uprising in my birthplace of Kenya in 1950s. The opium wars in China. Lesser known atrocities like civilian torture in Cypress. The continued mess which is Israel and Palestine today," he ticked off. "All of it is the legacy of British colonialism. Queen Elizabeth was widely respected and admired. But if you're having mixed feelings about the mourning of the queen and the institution that she represented for so many decades, that's valid, and you're not alone."

You can watch below 
MSNBC 09 10 2022 

 

Historian blows up on MSNBC's Velshi for bringing up British colonialism

Tom Boggioni
September 10, 2022

Ali Velshi, Andrew Roberts (MSNBC screenshot)

MNSNBC's coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II took a turn on Saturday morning when a British historian took exception with host Ali Velshi after he mentioning the brutal colonialism conducted under the crown -- and the two ended up in a shouting match.

In his intro, the MSNBC host explained the late queen, "Represented an institution that had a long, ugly history of brutal colonialism, violence, theft, and slavery. For many centuries the British robbed other nations of their wealth and power and exploited their people. Even as Queen Elizabeth's reign largely marks the beginning of the post-colonial era, the horrors that her long line of ancestors inflicted upon many generations of people across the globe continues to be the source of pain. That is now a legacy that her eldest son, King Charles II inherits."

That immediately set off his guest, historian Andrew Roberts, and the interview went off the rails with Roberts asking the MSNBC host where he was born and Velshi sarcastically closing by thanking Roberts for coming on the show to "whitewash" British history.

Roberts came right out of the gates chastizing Velshi.

Asked by the host if the royal institution needs to change, Roberts shot back, "I think that is wildly overstated frankly. When you look at all the opinion polls we are about 80 to 85% in favor of having a constitutional monarchy. Whoever is saying that on the throne, so I think this is extremely overdone."

"Frankly, I am afraid to say, as your introduction was -- it pains people throughout history -- why was she chosen by every single commonwealth country, many of which are former countries, as the head of the commonwealth?" he asked.

"Andrew, hold on a second. Are you really denying what I just said about racial colonialism? Are you really doing that, Andrew?" Velshi replied as Roberts continued to protest. "Andrew, Andrew, this is not a propaganda show. Andrew, I need you to stop. I need you to stop for a second. Are you really taking issue with the horrors of colonialism, Andrew?"

"I am certainly taking issue with your remarks about slavery," Roberts parried. "We abolished it 32 years before you did. We did not kill 600,000 people in a Civil War over it."

"So, you think that is fine," the MSNBC host challenged. "There are people all over the world were born in colonial countries, because, when I was born the British Empire still existed and, that is okay for everybody?"

After the host pointed out he was born in Kenya, Roberts raised his voice and claimed, "Why on earth do you want to concentrate on the only -- the negative things of an institution from 100 years ago now?" as the interview descended into the two talking over each other.

Watch below 

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