Voters rejected the school deformer agenda

At least, majorities of them did, in a number of places.  Good deal.

The blue wave that swept the nation in the recent midterm elections was also a broad rejection of recent trends to privatize public education through school voucher programs and privately operated charter schools. From New York to California, new candidates ran and won on platforms opposed to privatization, big-money backers of charter schools suffered humiliating losses, and voters trounced efforts to expand voucher programs that drain public schools of the funding they need.

This spring’s teacher walkouts that made news across the country can take some credit for propelling the anti-privatization message to voters and prompting educators to take their support for public schools to the ballot box. But opposition to the privatization industry was also strong in states that did not experience teacher walkouts, and public education advocates are vowing to take their cause to state capitals and Congress to curb the flow of public money to unaccountable, privately operated education providers. - Jeff Bryant/AlterNet

MN-08: Stauber emails broke the law

Pete Stauber is the Republican candidate for the U.S. House in MN-08, which happens to be where I live. From today:

Today, St. Louis County officials finally released controversial emails that Pete Stauber has been hiding from the taxpayers. Jordan Hagert, Campaign Manager for Joe Radinovich, released the following statement: “These emails are clear evidence that Pete Stauber has been openly and knowingly violating the law and county policy to use taxpayer resources to advance his political agenda. Stauber then went on to lie about the fact that he had used county staff and resources for campaign purposes, and he knew it was illegal to do so. It’s part of a broader pattern of misleading the public. He’s been as slippery on his policy positions as he has been untruthful about these emails, and it's clear Stauber can’t be trusted to do the right thing when no one is looking.”

You may be wondering why I’m not calling Stauber a liar, in my own remarks. For me, lying is when someone is consciously aware that she is making a claim that’s not true. Years of careful observation have convinced me that right-wing politicians are so far gone in motivated reasoning and cognitive rigidity that they honestly believe every word of the pitiable nonsense they spout. The best example, these days, is of course Stauber’s big booster “President” Donald "Traitor" Trump. People whose minds “work” like that are certainly not what we should have running things.

But, hey, DFL candidate Joe Radinovich was a wild kid, a long time ago, and that’s what really matters here, right? In fact, the Stauber campaign has been atrociously hypocritical, throughout.

Yeah Pete. Hammer such scofflaw things as traffic tickets. The purity of the "hard workers who obey the law in CD8" is a tremendous thing to run on, when little else favors a Trumpster Congressional wannabe, with Trumpster cohort criminal pleas falling right, left and center; immunity grants included. Millionaires cheating the government, big time crime, and Stauber turning a blind eye to such true CRIME to talk traffic tickets. - Developers are Crabgrass

Just the other week I had occasion to take a drive across the south part of the district. That is, past a lot of corn and soybean fields. We’ll see whether, given the effects of Trump's trade policies, this area is less red than usual.