Author: A.T.

Next week your kids or grandkids start school, but here is the report card for Success Academy charter schools — #1 in New York State.

With 46 schools and 15,500 students this year, the Success Academy network is now the size of the state’s 7th largest school district. On this year’s state exams, 95% of Success students passed math and 84% passed [English] — making Success #1 for student achievement in New York State.

As long-time readers of this page know, over and over (and over and over): the Success Academy methods work, are replicable, and are free for the taking by any teacher or principal or school board member who wants to give them a try.

Consider this: with an average household income of just $32,191 — versus $291,242 for the kids in Scarsdale and $129,375 for the kids in Chappaqua — and with just 9% of its kids white or Asian versus 86% in Scarsdale and 88% in Chappaqua — the Success Academy public school kids outperformed both the Chappaqua and the Scarsdale kids.  Chappaqua and Scarsdale are outstanding school districts, deserving of high praise, ranked near the top in the state.  But Success Academy kids did better.

And consider this:  of all 2400 public elementary schools in New York State, Success had 14 of the top 30.

Citywide, just 29% of the kids of color (and 61% of the white kids) passed the English test — versus 83% of the kids of color at Success Academy schools.  In math, the results were even a little more dramatic.

New York’s 46 Success Academy schools are non-profit, public schools.  Students are selected by lottery — not aptitude.  With the Success results well known throughout the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods, almost every parent signs up for the lottery.

What Success Academy is accomplishing helps not just each student who succeeds (which is to say, almost all of them, and which would be important enough) but it also, thereby — and for all the generations that will follow — breaks the cycle of poverty and despair, of teenage pregnancy and crime, that so drag our society down.

What if all schools adopted variations of the Success methods — or any others that worked — so a lottery were not needed?

Imagine the impact on our nation’s future well-being if almost all her kids succeeded.

From the New York Post: Control Exactly How Much Google Knows About You.

Who knew?  I went to the link, as suggested.  It’s all there.

From the New York Times: Can you guess which of these would most mitigate climate change?   Building more wind farms, eating less meat, improving air conditioner efficiency, switching to mass transit?  “All of the above” would of course be best; but the Times reveals the answer.

Even if you guess right, refresh the screen to guess each of the other three, as well, for a thumbnail description of the impact it would have.

Of course, climate change is one of those “scientific” things of which so many Republicans — like Trump’s choice for USDA’s top scientist, a former radio talk-show host with no scientific background — are skeptical.

Have a great weekend!

Hey, listen: you know I periodically plug BrainHQ — “Brain Training That Works.”  There are three reasons for this: (1) I want you to get your money’s worth from this page, and the basic exercises are free.  (2) I want you to be happy, healthy — and to avoid dementia.  (A 10-year study of 2,800 subjects found that those who did just 14.5 hours in total with these exercises had a 48% reduced incidence of dementia.  Imagine the likely reduction for someone who did an hour a month every year instead of just the first!)  (3) If you convert from the basic free exercises to the monthly subscription, I will get rich because I own a small piece.

Here’s Fast Company’s review of the field, just out this week.

Because dementia is so expensive, what Medicare should do is similar to what some auto insurers should do:  At least one has made BrainHQ available to its seniors free, because it’s found that by increasing their acuity, it reduces their accident rates.  Medicare should offer $50 an hour for up to 10 hours successfully completed each year — the exercises are on-line, so progress could be seamlessly shared with the Medicare computer and rebates applied to the Medicare premiums.  This could get millions of people doing the exercises, both for the money, and because an offer so generous would persuade a lot of seniors that there must really be something to this: that it could meaningfully improve their lives, while lowering health care costs for the whole nation — and improving the lives of their loved ones (dementia is hard on more than just seniors).

And by the way?  Even relative youngsters may benefit.  One who swears by BrainHQ is Tom Brady.

Don’t say I never gave you anything.  Click here.

Here’s Michael Chabon’s compelling take on why Jews who still support Trump are not thinking clearly.

So should Gary Cohn and other competent Jewish members of the Trump administration leave?

Along with — for that matter — non-Jewish members equally appalled by his bullying vulgarity, instability, dishonesty, and incompetence?

Here, from Axios, is Why They Stay — and why it’s good that they do.  (Executive summary: we need competent, stable people doing their best to limit the damage.  “You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill.”)

That said, for non-essential high-profile people — like the business advisory councils, and members of the arts and religious advisory councils — to quit, and/or speak out . . . that tide should only pick up steam.

The sooner Trump declares victory and resigns — congratulating himself on having accomplished more in a mere 10 months (say), than any other president accomplished in a full eight years, fulfilling the mandate of the largest electoral victory since Reagan’s, cheered on by a larger throng on the Mall than even the possibly illegitimate Obama (Trump sent investigators to Hawaii “and you won’t believe what they’re finding”) — the sooner he can get back to overseeing the routine audit of his income taxes and not having any business ties to Russia.

In case you missed it, Frank Bruni argues Trump has already resigned.

What to do about America’s neo-Nazis?  As suggested in the New York Times, mocking may work best.

And speaking of neo-Nazis, here is the latest view of Trump from Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading newspaper.

In part:

. . . Ninety years ago, in the New York borough of Queens, around 1,000 members of the Klu Klux Klan clashed with police. Fred Trump was among those arrested. His case never reached trial because times were different back then. But Fred Trump raised his son Donald to believe that he belonged to a white elite. When asked about the ugly KKK episode in 2015, the presidential candidate answered, “This never happened. This is nonsense and it never happened. This never happened. Never took place. He was never arrested, never convicted, never even charged. It’s a completely false, ridiculous story.” Does this mean that something can only be true if it winds up in court?

. . . In November 2016, Americans elected this Trump as their president. The same man who had denounced Barack Obama as a Muslim and claimed he had been born in a foreign country. The same man who campaigned under the slogan “Make America Great Again” — in which “great again” means a social Darwinist U.S. where American-born locals rule over immigrants, heterosexuals over homosexuals, whites over blacks and men over women. Based on his speeches, his decrees and his hiring decisions, there is no other possible interpretation of what he stands for and who he is.  [He also kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.]

America Has Lost Its Moral Compass

Trump is a racist. He is a preacher of hate. Those who pretend he is not, those who portray him as merely being an unpolished, somewhat chaotic old man, as a person who explicitly sought to avoid becoming a slick politician, are merely enabling him. . . . In an uncertain time of change, the president has identified the scapegoats: immigrants and the elite. And just in case there is another terrorist attack in the U.S. in the future, Trump has already identified who is to blame — namely the liberal judges who are now allowing refugees into the country. The White House is supposed to be home to America’s moral compass. Instead, though, it currently houses the country’s chauvinist-in-chief.

. . . Everyday racism generally works in subtle ways. It starts with prejudice and discrimination: coins are thrown at Jewish children or blacks are subjected to police checks more often than whites. Then there are the racist activists on the dark fringes and, thirdly, politicians who openly service clichés. All those things can take place independently of each other. But there have repeatedly been phases when it all comes together in a perfect storm. That’s what happened with National Socialism in Germany and with apartheid in South Africa. Hungary has been experiencing such a phase in the last few years — and now Trump’s America has followed. During these phases, the full impact of racism is on display and inhibitions drop.

. . . David Duke, the leader of American racists, had good reason to thank Trump this week. When the president of the United States says that the victim is just as responsible as the murderer, or that the counterdemonstrator is just as guilty as the Nazi waving the swastika flag and shouting, “Jews will not replace us,” and when Trump’s own party doesn’t drop him even now, then Duke and Trump have already achieved a key goal. Tolerance, empathy, kindness and diversity of opinion are all disparaged as political correctness. It becomes OK to say anything else, and if you can say it, it becomes easier to justify violence. The wheel of civilization has made a turn in reverse.

But it can get back on track.  All we have to do is turn out massively 15 months from now and vote.  Democrats are not right about everything everywhere all the time.  But we’re right about putting people to work rebuilding America’s infrastructure, which the Republicans would not allow; and we’re right about wanting to allow student-loan refinancing at today’s low rates, which Republicans would not allow; and we’re right that the minimum wage should be raised, which the Republicans fight tooth and nail; and we’re right that the road to affordable health requires improving Obamacare, not sabotaging it — let alone carving out from it a massive tax cut for the wealthy.  And we’re right in being horrified by both the character of the President and his incompetence, which 79% of Republicans, including my friend Peter, still are not.

A lot of good folks think we should leave the statues where they are. (The numbers may surprise you.)

Our very own Jim Burt may have come up with the perfect solution:

“My wife and I are both originally from Memphis,” hew writes.  “Close to the downtown area, the city has a park now called ‘Health Sciences Park’ – because of the proximity of the University of Tennessee medical school – which used to be called ‘Forrest Park.’ It features a large equestrian bronze statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest.  The City of Memphis has been trying to remove it, but its efforts have been frustrated by a state historical commission empowered by the Republican state government to prevent such removals.  This is what I wrote to the city’s most prominent newspaper (for which my father worked for many years):

I am a white former resident of Memphis and have fond memories of playing as a toddler in Forrest Park. I did not at that age appreciate that the park was named after a monster.

Since the Tennessee Historical Commission is performing its assigned racist task of frustrating the removal of racist monuments, I suggest that the next best action — which should be entirely within the authority of the City of Memphis — is to correct the historical record on the Forrest statue. The name on the pedestal should have the word “Traitor” added in large letters, and the account on the pedestal of his deeds should be supplemented prominently with the information that he was a slave merchant, war criminal, and founder of the terrorist organization, the Ku Klux Klan. It should also note that the statue was erected in 1904 as an expression of the power of Jim Crow and the subjugation of African Americans.

After all, the supporters of keeping these statues claim that they’re about “history, not hate.” Just get all the history out there where it can be seen.

☞ What say you?

Three things for your weekend:

1. The VICE coverage of Charlottesville everyone is talking about — 22 minutes.
2. Senator Chris Murphy on how Trump is explicitly working to destroy health care — 2 minutes.
3. And if you haven’t already seen it, Jimmy Kimmel nails it — and has a solution: make America Great Britain again:

I want to speak to those of you who voted for Donald Trump. And first of all, I want to say I get it. I actually do. You’re unhappy with the way things were going. You wanted someone to come in and shake things up. You didn’t want business as usual. Nothing ever seems to get done. It’s always the same. These candidates make a lot of promises that go nowhere. It happens over and over again. And you’re sick of it.

And so this guy shows up riding down a golden escalator. He’s not part of the political establishment. In fact, he’s the opposite of that. He’s a billionaire — maybe. He’s written books. He’s not politically correct. He’s not even correct, usually. He talks tough. He wants to drain the swamp. Sometimes he can be funny. He rips into his opponents in a way politicians never do, have never done before.

And you thought, you know what? This guy’s different and that’s what I want. Different. Let’s roll the dice, let’s get him in there, have him run the country like a business. Cut the dead weight, toughen everyone up. Let’s shake this Etch-a-sketch hard and start over.

So you vote for him. You pick him over Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and John Kasich and a dozen other Republicans whose names we forgot. And ultimately he beats them. He strolls in, he beats all of these guys. These guys who have been in politics forever. And then he beats the ultimate political insider, Hillary Clinton, a woman who’s been running for office — a woman who ran for president of her mother’s uterus in the womb. He beats her.

Everyone said he wouldn’t. But he did. And it’s exciting because this is your guy. You picked a horse like 35-1 and somehow it paid off.

So now he’s the president. And it starts off okay. Meets with President Obama and they seem to have a nice conversation. Then he moves into the White House.

Right off the bat he’s angry at the media for reporting the crowd at his inauguration was smaller than he thought it was — which was weird, but not important, really. And he claimed it stopped raining when he was speaking at his inaugural address, which everyone could see it was raining. But okay. It was his first week. You give him a break.

So he gets in there, hires his daughter. He hires his son-in-law. Demands an investigation of voter fraud even though he won the election. He calls the prime minister of Australia and hangs up on him. He won’t shake Angela Merkel’s hand. He doesn’t know Frederick Douglass isn’t alive. He claims he can’t release his tax returns because they’re under audit, then says he’s not going to release them at all. He signs a ban on Muslims that he claims isn’t a ban on Muslims. He compliments the president of the Philippines for murdering drug addicts.

Hours after a terror attack in London he starts a fight with their mayor. After criticizing Obama for playing golf he plays golf every weekend. He accidentally shares classified intelligence with the Russians. He tweets a typo at midnight, then wakes up and claims it was a secret message. He praises Jim Comey in October, calls him a coward in June. He fires him. He lashes out at his own attorney general for recusing himself from an investigation.

He hires the Mooch, he fires the Mooch. He bans the transgender in the military without telling anyone in the military he’s doing it. He plays chicken with Kim Jong Un. And that’s just some of the list. If I went through all of it would be longer than the menu at the Cheesecake Factory. It would be huge.

So here he is by every reasonable account, and I’m using his own words here, he is a total disaster. He screws up royally every day. Sometimes two or three times a day. We can’t keep up with it. Things come out of nowhere. Every day there’s something nuts. But you’ve been trying to ignore it because you don’t want to admit to these smug, annoying liberals that they were right. That’s the last thing you want to do.

But the truth is deep down inside you know you made a mistake. You know you picked the wrong guy. And it isn’t getting better. It’s getting worse. So you can do one of two things. You can dig in like Chris Christie at a hometown buffet. Or, you can treat the situation like you would if you’d put “Star Wars” wallpaper up in the kitchen: “All right, I got caught up. I was excited. I made a mistake. And now it needs to go.”

Well, now he does need to go. So it’s time for especially you who voted for him to tell him to go. Please. Think about it. He doesn’t even want to be president. He’s miserable. But he won’t resign because his ego is too big. He can’t do it.

So either we impeach him, which could happen, but it might not, or we do what he would do in this situation. We negotiate. We make a deal. And I know this is going to sound nuts, but I have an idea. So hear me out on this. I think this could solve all our problems. We’re all going to have to be on board with this.

Instead of president we make Donald Trump king. Okay? We make him the first king of America. Think about it. England has a queen. She lives in a palace. Everyone makes a big deal when she shows up. She has no power at all. In the morning they put a crown on her head, she stands there and waves, she goes back to bed. That’s it. If the queen were to walk out on her balcony and open her shirt, nothing over there would change. The queen could be completely bonkers, it would make no difference at all. She’d still be queen, it would still be fine.

That’s what we need to do with Donald Trump. We need to set him up in a castle, maybe in Florida. Lead him to the top. And then lock the door to that castle forever. Everyone can call him your highness. Maybe we give him a scepter that he can hold. He can sit there watching ‘Fox & Friends,’ maybe chip golf balls out of the window of his tower.

There’s no way he turns that deal down, if we tell him he’s going to be the king. We’ve got to get creative here. Because enough is enough. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And I’m asking you, the people who supported Donald Trump, to step in and help for the good of this country.

Mike Pence is ready. He’s boring. He’s relatively sane. He looks like a neighbor you might borrow a lawnmower from. Let’s get him in there before it’s too late. Let’s “Make America Great Britain Again.”

I didn’t include the nearly six-minute lead-in to that piece, but well worth watching as well.  And sharing with folks like my friend Peter, who is a really smart, wonderful guy — whose mindset Jimmy Kimmel seems truly to have nailed.

But first . . .

Warren Kaplan died Saturday.  A reader I met through this website and who grew to become a wonderful friend, he was everything our president is not: gracious, thoughtful, modest, eloquent, deeply committed to justice and a better world — even lean and fit and a healthy eater.  He and Carolyn were enjoying two weeks in Italy as recently as two months ago, but after 15 years’ riding a wave of ever-improving medical treatment, the latest effort failed.  We need more Warren Kaplans in this world.  If my math is right, tomorrow he would have turned 83.

And a bit more on WheelTug . . .

“We were on a Delta flight to San Diego last night,” one of you writes, “when the pilot apologized for the 15 min delay.  The tug was having difficulties disengaging from the plane.”

There’s fifteen minutes that could have been saved with WheelTug.  But look at this: an entire article about saving five seconds per flight.  Granted, that would be time saved between take-offs, adding to the capacity of take-off constrained airports; the five to twenty minutes WheelTug should save each flight is mainly at the gate.  But the point is clear: airplanes do no good for anybody when they’re sitting on the ground.

Indeed, there’s a long article in the June/July issue of Aircraft Commerce (not yet up on the web) devoted to “Solutions For Improving Ground Operations Efficiency.”

“Ground operations can be a major contributor to flight delays, which can lead to dissatisfied customers and additional costs for airlines.  A number of technological solutions have been developed . . .” some of which — including WheelTug — are laid out for consideration.

Yesterday — before the President doubled-down on the “many fine people” marching with torches in Charlottesville — I wrote:

Now that Nazis are marching in the streets and our President is slow to call them out by name — listen, there are many, many sides to this — it may be worth mentioning yet one more time that Trump for years kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.

Clearly, the President was reluctant to come down too hard on the Nazis — and here is David Duke chastising him for eventually having done so.

It’s like Putin.  Sure, he murders journalists and political rivals, but — what? — “you think our country’s so innocent?”

How long will it be before the Republican Congress comes out squarely against a guy who will instantly and instinctively and viciously attack everyone except Nazis and autocrats?

While we wait — and in case I was not the last man on earth to discover this great TV series — you could entertain yourself binging on The Americans.  I’m only four episodes into Season One [now seven!], but I don’t think you can watch the pilot and not click to the next episode.  And the next and the next. All free, if you have Amazon Prime.

Of course, back then, the Russians were communists hoping to destroy our democracy.  It was all but treasonous for Americans to be “sympathizers.”

Now that they are merely klepto-autocratic billionaires out to destroy our democracy — and succeeding rather well thus far — we invite them and their photographers into the Oval Office with smiles broader and more genuine than reserved for anyone else.

When does that rise to the level of treason?  Or “misdemeanor.”

I forgot to mention that Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was one of seven men arrested in May of 1927 for his role in a 1000-person Ku Klux Klan march in Queens that turned into a riot.  Rachel tells all.

Now that Nazis are marching in the streets and our President is slow to call them out by name — listen, there are many, many sides to this — it may be worth mentioning yet one more time that Trump for years kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.

Clearly, the President was reluctant to come down too hard on the Nazis — and here is David Duke chastising him for eventually having done so.

It’s like Putin.  Sure, he murders journalists and political rivals, but — what? — “you think our country’s so innocent?”

How long will it be before the Republican Congress comes out squarely against a guy who will instantly and instinctively and viciously attack everyone except Nazis and autocrats?

While we wait — and in case I was not the last man on earth to discover this great TV series — you could entertain yourself binging on The Americans.  I’m only four episodes into Season One, but I don’t think you can watch the pilot and not click to the next episode.  And the next and the next. All free, if you have Amazon Prime.

Of course, back then, the Russians were communists hoping to destroy our democracy.  It was all but treasonous for Americans to be “sympathizers.”

Now that they are merely klepto-autocratic billionaires out to destroy our democracy — and succeeding rather well thus far — we invite them and their photographers into the Oval Office with smiles broader and more genuine than reserved for anyone else.

When does that rise to the level of treason?  Or “misdemeanor.”

Have you?

But when you read/watch a CNN report like this, I think whatever problems you’re facing today may seem a bit smaller.  And our country’s current position on refugees, a bit meaner.

Have you seen the Bob Hope compendium circling the Internet?  (Thanks, Mel.)

On his death bed they asked him where he wanted to be buried. His answer was, “Surprise me.”

ON TURNING 70
“I still chase women, but only downhill.”

ON TURNING 80

“That’s the time of your life when even your birthday suit needs pressing.”

ON TURNING 90

“You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.”

ON TURNING 100
“I don’t feel old. In fact, I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap.”

ON GIVING UP HIS EARLY CAREER, BOXING
“I ruined my hands in the ring. The referee kept stepping on them.”

ON NEVER WINNING AN OSCAR
“Welcome to the Academy Awards, or, as it’s called at my home, ‘Passover.'”

ON GOLF
‘Golf is my profession. Show business is just to pay the green fees.”

ON PRESIDENTS
“I have performed for 12 presidents but entertained only six.”

ON WHY HE CHOSE SHOWBIZ FOR HIS CAREER
“When I was born, the doctor said to my mother, ‘Congratulations, you have an eight pound ham.'”

ON RECEIVING THE CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL
“I feel very humble, but I think I have the strength of character to fight it.”

ON HIS FAMILY’S EARLY POVERTY
“Four of us slept in the one bed. When it got cold, mother threw on another brother.”

ON HIS SIX BROTHERS
“That’s how I learned to dance. Waiting for the bathroom.”

ON HIS EARLY FAILURES
“I would not have had anything to eat if it wasn’t for the stuff the audience threw at me.”

ON GOING TO HEAVEN
“I’ve done benefits for ALL religions.  I’d hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality.”