Tag: Right Wing Politics

Trump 2.0: The further dumbing down of America officially begins

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Donald Trump School Choice Executive Order: Here’s Who’s Impacted

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order to expand school choice across the country. While this policy could allow more students access to alternatives outside of public schooling, critics warn it might divert essential funding from public schools and exacerbate educational inequalities.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which provides a comprehensive measure of students’ academic achievement across the country, overall student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The percentage of eighth-graders reading below NAEP Basic is the highest in the assessment’s history, and the percentage of fourth-graders scoring below NAEP Basic is the largest in 20 years.

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Recent audits revealed that private school parents, and now voucher recipients, have used the funds for a slew of, at best, questionable expenses, including kayak lessons, horseback riding lessons, home gyms, televisions, and more. Earlier audits conducted prior to the most recent expansion revealed similarly questionable uses.”

Related:

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Capitalism, Transphobia, and Racism to Blame for Controversy around Olympic Boxers + Notes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Capitalism, Transphobia, and Racism to Blame for Controversy around Olympic Boxers

No restrictions exist for people with other genetic advantages, such as a limit on basketball or volleyball players in the 99th percentile for height, or people like Michael Phelps who have double-jointed ankles and unusually long arms. For reference, intersex women (i.e. people assigned female at birth but with abnormal hormone levels or chromosomes other than xx) make up about 1.7 percent of all women, whereas women at least six feet tall make up only 0.5 percent of all women, yet this didn’t prevent the U.S. women’s basketball team from filling up 2/3rds of their roster with women who have this rare genetic advantage.

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The Tokyo Olympics three years later saw the participation of two intersex Namibian runners, Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi. While both had previously found success in the 400m and 800m races, they opted to compete in the 200m to avoid having to artificially reduce testosterone. Mboma won silver in the event, while Masilingi placed sixth. World Athletics responded by tightening its rules again, setting a testosterone threshold of 2.5 nmol/L for all events. Mboma and Masilingi complied with the regulations by taking testosterone blockers, which significantly reduced their running speed, and thus neither qualified for the Paris Games in 2024.

Related:

Testosterone:

Normal measurements for these tests:

  • Male: 300 to 1,000 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL) or 10 to 35 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L)
  • Female: 15 to 70 ng/dL or 0.5 to 2.4 nmol/L

LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6%

Cis boys get gender-affirming surgeries more often than trans minors

Rolling Back Protections for Child Labor in the Name of ‘Parental Rights’ + Notes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

One hundred years ago this month, I was reminded by Portside’s “This Week in People’s History” feature (5/29/23), a constitutional amendment passed both houses of Congress, with large majorities, and went to the states for ratification. It remains a proposal, not a law, to this day, because the necessary three-quarters of states didn’t accept it.

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In April 2023, the Washington Post (4/23/23) reported on the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based think tank with a lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, that’s crucially behind these state-level moves to undermine rules to keep children from working long hours in dangerous conditions. The Iowa state senate had just approved an FGA-maneuvered bill letting children as young as 14 work night shifts.

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Does every story on child labor need to mention the advocacy group? Of course not. But if you consider the rollback of child labor laws a problem, connected to other problems, then calling groups like them out adds something key to understanding that problem and how to address it.

Rolling Back Protections for Child Labor in the Name of ‘Parental Rights’

Related SourceWatch Articles:

Foundation for Government Accountability

Opportunity Solutions Project

American Legislative Exchange Council

Atlas Network

Atlas Network, updated 4-3-2024Download

Bradley Foundation

Cato Institute

Ed Uihlein Family Foundation

Franklin News Foundation

Koch Family Foundations

Sarah Scaife Foundation

State Policy Network

The 85 Fund

There’s more, but I’m not going to beat a dead horse with this one. They’re basically the same groups that have been trying to privatize education, destroy unions, etc.

The Atlas Network and the Building of Argentina’s Donald Trump

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Yves here. We’re featuring a post from openDemocracy on Argentina’s primary results that had far-right candidate Javier Milei beating the candidates of the two parties that have been in power for two decades. The post is telling, and not in a good way. Milei does advocate extreme views (not that he can go as far as he likes since even if he won a plurality again, he would still be leading a coalition government). And too many commentators forget that voters regularly move to the right in bad economic times, which Argentina is certainly suffering. It’s that the piece depicts him as a Trumpian outsider/madman, when Nick Corbishley’s post right after the primary results were in describes Milei’s considerable, if sometimes seamy, establishment connections…including to the Kochs:

How Javier Milei Upset Argentina’s Political Status Quo

Previously:

Is Argentina’s presidential frontrunner Javier Milei US’ “boy?” Rejects China+Mercosur, embraces $$

Orinoco Tribune Editor: There Was a Coup Against Pedro Castillo in Peru + Some Notes

[2017] Libertarian Atlas Network Pushes Latin America Right