Treat: Who’s that knocking on your door?
Kids aren’t the only ones going door to door with a special seasonal request. Election Day is next week, a celebration of democracy across the country, and candidates are pounding the pavement alongside trick-or-treaters. While they don’t always get the love they deserve, off-year elections are often where things get real and real local: school levies, school board races, city council and mayoral races, and so on.
Trick: The Winkelvi are helping to erect Trump’s ballroom.
The Winkelvoss twins, the techbro actual bros who sued Mark Zuckerberg claiming he stole the idea for (the) Facebook from them, have joined Zuckerberg’s Meta and at least three dozen other companies and individuals in funding the destruction of the White House East Wing (and the construction of a ballroom). Amazon, Apple, Caterpillar, Comcast, Coinbase, Google, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Union Pacific Railroad, along with tobacco. CBS News has listed the donors, along with a to-the-point, must-read detailing of their connections to government contracts, investigations, and regulations.
Treat: Mississippi Rising
Bradley Roberson, superintendent of Mississippi’s Oxford School District and a former teacher, coach, and principal, reported that state’s schools are showing broad improvement. “Our state’s national ranking for K–12 achievement has climbed from 50th to 16th, and Mississippi now leads the nation in early literacy gains and fourth-grade reading growth,” he wrote in Mississippi Today, under the apt headline, Education is a Public Good, Not a Consumer Product. “These results were not achieved through privatization or vouchers. They were achieved through focus, consistency and intentionality by teachers and administrators across our state.”
Trick: Confluence of Influence
American Water and Essential – the two biggest US-based water utility corporations – announced a plan to merge to create a large US water monopoly. While the plan requires the approval of US state public utility commissions, based on past experience with utility mergers, it will likely face little government headwaters. Food & Water Watch released a statement, Water Mega-Merger Creates Dangerous, Anti-Consumer Monopoly in United States.
Treat: Food for Thought
Beginning this year, every student in New York State can get school breakfast and lunch for free–particularly important as (okay, this one includes a trick) SNAP benefits have been discontinued during the Federal shutdown. Let’s hope that includes a little Halloween treat.
Trick: Hall Monitors
What do you give your teacher when your teacher is an Apple? Or Google? Or ChatGPT? An Arizona charter school will use AI instead of teachers. Before being given approval to operate in the Grand Canyon State, Unbound Academy had been rejected by four other states.
Happy Halloween. Good luck out there.
Jeff Hagan
Communications Director