Last Call For Preschool Of Hard Right Knocks

Even if Biden's Build Back Better plan passes President Manchin's desk, there's zero reason to believe any Red states will implement any social policy in the legislation, including universal preschool.

The White House’s proposal to create universal prekindergarten would face enormous implementation challenges, as GOP lawmakers in at least a half-dozen states are already balking and others are likely to follow.

The plan, which is included in the social spending package that recently passed the House and is now before the Senate, would provide $110 billion in federal funding for states to offer free prekindergarten for millions of 3- and 4-year-olds across the United States.

Universal prekindergarten has the potential to become one of the most transformative education programs in the country and is considered a legacy goal for the White House. The initiative comes at a time when an unusually large number of women have dropped out of the labor force and have yet to return, in part because of pandemic forces that temporarily closed or in some cases shut down prekindergartens and day cares nationwide. Meanwhile, worker shortages have hamstrung similar programs across the country.

Yet the success of universal prekindergarten would heavily depend on whether states participated and picked up billions of dollars in additional costs. States have had a very uneven approach to implementing federal programs meant to assist Americans in the past year. Emergency housing aid was hardly disbursed in some states, for example, and in states largely led by GOP governors, enhanced federal unemployment assistance was cut off months before it would have expired.

The universal pre-K program would prove another key test of this design.

White House officials have repeatedly said their proposal would mean that all American parents could enroll their children in free pre-K. But these promises depend on state governments kicking in substantial sums on top of the new federal funds in the legislation to create or expand state programs. Partially as a result of these requirements, GOP officials have expressed deep reservations about participating in the new federal system, according to interviews with state lawmakers, conservative policy activists and other early-education experts interviewed by The Washington Post.

“Legislators in Republican-run states are expected to voice opposition to what they see as a highly flawed pre-K plan and take action to stop it,” said Patrick Gleason, vice president of state affairs for Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group working with conservative state lawmakers.

Republican lawmakers in Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina and Minnesota told The Post that they will reject or are troubled by aspects of Biden’s proposed pre-K expansion. GOP state lawmakers in Texas and Arizona have also strongly criticized the plan, according to conservative advocacy groups working closely with officials in those states.

In interviews, Republican lawmakers expressed concern about the new prekindergarten education standards that would be required for participating states, as well as the risk that funding would evaporate, leaving states scrambling to cover expensive programs.

There “absolutely is going to be opposition from Republican state lawmakers,” said Jonathan Bydlak, director of the governance program at the R Street Institute, a conservative group that advocates for free markets. “There’s a philosophical disagreement that this is not the proper role of the federal government and that this is federal meddling, similar to opposition to other education standards in the past.”

Biden’s proposal would come close to fully funding the expansion of prekindergarten programs with federal dollars only in its fourth year, counting on state governments to make up the difference in every other year. Estimates vary, but the federal government’s plan may pay less than half the costs of providing free pre-K to all children ages 3 and 4, which could make it easier for lawmakers in GOP-run states to opt out. The funding is set to expire altogether in the program’s seventh year, because Democrats have sought to reduce the overall cost of Biden’s spending plan to meet the demands of centrist lawmakers. 

Of course, centrist idiocy aside, if the GOP gets into power in 2025, we won't have a Department of Education to begin with.

Remember however that Republicans don't want an educated populace, they want a stupid, easily manipulated one. They've been winning this game for 25 years now and it shows. Don't expect Red states to touch it.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

As America braces for Omicron Winter, WaPo's Philip Bump points out that MAGA country has suffered the most from COVID and the refusal of vaccines approaching more than 50% of the population in some areas. The death gap in Trump counties versus Biden counties has only gotten worse, and this winter it will only become more pronounced, as well, more are pronounced dead from the virus.

 

It’s worth putting a fine point on a subject I raised earlier Monday: It is red America, Donald Trump-voting America, that has seen the worst effects of the pandemic. With divergent vaccination rates, with the unvaccinated population that’s most at risk being made up of Republicans at three times the rate of Democrats, that gap is poised to grow.

If we break down monthly case and death figures by county vote in 2020, we see that Trump counties have been hardest hit by the pandemic on a per capita basis since last year. If we throw in vaccination rates, we see that it is those same counties that have been the slowest to get vaccinated. As of April of this year, the most red and most blue counties in the country began to diverge on vaccination rates. As of writing, data compiled by The Washington Post suggests that the counties that voted most strongly for President Biden are fully vaccinated at a rate 40 percent higher than the rate in the counties that voted most strongly for Trump.

Those are cumulative. If we look at how the monthly total of cases and deaths has compared to vaccination rates over time, the picture is different. Since June, the number of cases in the most-blue counties has grown more slowly than the number of cases in the most-red ones. The gap on deaths is even wider — even as the vaccination rates have moved in the inverse relationship.

 

It's possible things won't be as bad as last winter as we have more tools now. But the main tool remains the vaccine.

There is no guarantee that this pattern will hold. Winter is almost upon us and, last year, the Northeast got hammered. The Sun Belt was hit hard during this summer’s fourth wave, spurred by the delta variant, and may be less likely to see a surge this winter. It’s also possible that the omicron variant spurs a fifth surge of the virus that slams more-blue counties pushed indoors for the winter months.

All of the data, though, suggest that vaccination plays an important role in preventing infection, illness and death. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the unvaccinated are at far more risk of those worst-case outcomes — which might help explain why more-vaccinated blue counties saw slower growth in deaths during the fourth wave than cases. Hence Biden’s call Monday to get vaccinated with the new variant looming.

But the problem, as always, is that the people who disproportionately need to be convinced to get vaccinated are also those least likely to follow Biden’s lead.

 

And they will die. They will blame Biden for not stopping the virus, as I predicted months ago.

 

It's hard to defeat people willing to die to stop you. 

But it's not impossible.

Gov. Charlie Baker expects a state-sanctioned COVID-19 vaccination passport program to be implemented in Massachusetts and several other states soon.

During an appearance on GBH News' Boston Public Radio, Baker said a scannable quick response code, commonly known as a QR code, would show a person's vaccination status and be made available for others to scan and verify.

"It's a universal standard and we've been working with a bunch of other states, there's probably 15 or 20 of them, to try to create a single QR code that can be used for all sorts of things where people may choose to require a vaccine," Baker said of the passport program.

Baker showed hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braude his code while in the GBH’s studios in Brighton.

"It's my proof that I've been vaccinated," he said.

 

The problem is where this will be needed the most is where it where never be allowed to be implemented.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

The big story today on Trump's January 6th insurrection conspiracy from The Guardian's Hugo Lowell is different: it directly implicates Donald Trump himself as the ringleader of the tragic events of that day.

Hours before the deadly attack on the US Capitol this year, Donald Trump made several calls from the White House to top lieutenants at the Willard hotel in Washington and talked about ways to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win from taking place on 6 January.

The former president first told the lieutenants his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go along with the plan to commandeer his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency for a second term.

But as Trump relayed to them the situation with Pence, he pressed his lieutenants about how to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January, and delay the certification process to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to Congress.

The former president’s remarks came as part of strategy discussions he had from the White House with the lieutenants at the Willard – a team led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn and Trump strategist Steve Bannon – about delaying the certification.

Multiple sources, speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, described Trump’s involvement in the effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

Trump’s remarks reveal a direct line from the White House and the command center at the Willard. The conversations also show Trump’s thoughts appear to be in line with the motivations of the pro-Trump mob that carried out the Capitol attack and halted Biden’s certification, until it was later ratified by Congress.

The former president’s call to the Willard hotel about stopping Biden’s certification is increasingly a central focus of the House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol attack, as it raises the specter of a possible connection between Trump and the insurrection.

Several Trump lawyers at the Willard that night deny Trump sought to stop the certification of Biden’s election win. They say they only considered delaying Biden’s certification at the request of state legislators because of voter fraud.

The former president made several calls to the lieutenants at the Willard the night before 6 January. He phoned the lawyers and the non-lawyers separately, as Giuliani did not want non-lawyers to participate on legal calls and jeopardise attorney-client privilege.

Trump’s call to the lieutenants came a day after Eastman, a late addition to the Trump legal team, outlined at a 4 January meeting at the White House how he thought Pence could usurp his role in order to stop Biden’s certification from happening at the joint session. 

 

This was an open conspiracy to overturn a duly elected President in Joe Biden in order to execute a  violent, insurrectionist coup that would allow Trump to remain in the Oval Office. It was the worst-kept secret in Washington DC. It was an attempt to end American democracy and to halt the peaceful transfer of power.

Trump was calling the shots from the top, giving orders, and wanting options in case Pence got cold feet. The goal was to keep power despite Biden's clear victory.

It almost worked. He had a cadre of followers working on the plan. It fell through because Pence chickened out.

And we're all acting like Trump should get another shot at the apple.

StupidiNews!

• CNN says it will conduct a "thorough review" of documents pertaining to host Chris Cuomo's advisor relationship with his brother, disgraced former NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
• The sex trafficking trial of former Jeffrey Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell begins this week in New York City, Maxwell faces decades in prison if convicted on all charges.
• Democrats in the House and Senate could vote as early as Wednesday on a continuing resolution that will fund the federal government into early 2022 as a shutdown looms on Friday.
• President Biden urged "caution but not panic" over the COVID-19 Omicron variant expected on US shores soon, urging all American adults to get booster shots as soon as possible.
• Harvard researchers are looking at 3D printer ink made from E.Coli that could have self-assembling and even renewable properties when it comes to forming carbon nanofibers.