Republicans extend the Great Recession

A group of financial capitalists, represented primarily, but not exclusively by the Republican Party, looted  the banking system  in 2008/2009 and caused the Great Recession costing millions of people their jobs and their homes.  Now the same people are set upon doing it all again.  The all cuts budget imposed by the Republicans will make the recession longer and worse than it needs to be.

Meanwhile, Back in the Real Economy N.Y. Times. Opinion. July 30,2011.

The economy is in trouble, and Washington — fixated on budget slashing at a time when the economy needs more spending — seems determined to make matters worse.

…Indeed, they are bound to worsen if Congress approves deep near-term spending cuts as part of a debt-limit deal while letting relief and recovery measures expire.

We will leave it to the historians to figure out how both political parties, and many Americans, became convinced that austerity is the road to recovery. History provides evidence that it is not, including the premature budget tightening of 1937 that reignited the Depression.

For now, it is clear that the traditional drivers of recovery — consumer spending and residential real estate — have failed to rebound, with the latest report showing consumers extremely cautious about spending on anything and the housing market stuck at its post-bubble lows.

Weak demand leads to slow growth, and slow growth leads to high and rising unemployment, which then reinforces weak demand and slow growth, and so on, in a vicious cycle from which the economy, obviously, has found no escape.

Parents and teachers march for the public schools

            An estimated 5000 parents, teachers, and public education supporters marched in Washington, D.C. and in  eleven  support rallies in other cities including Sacramento, California  on July 30.  There were about 200 at the Sacramento event. The events were organized by parent groups, students,  and other pro public education groups and supported by teachers unions.  The rally, although small by Washington standards was at least 20 times larger than the Tea Party rally held in Washington this week in support of the Tea Party’s proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution to balance the budget.

            There was limited media coverage of the Save Our Schools rallies.  KCRA covered the Sacramento Rally as a Student Rally.   The Save Our Schools March was organized by a wide variety of local groups and education advocates.  Speakers  in Washington D.C., included Diane Ravitch, Jonathan Kozol, José Vilson, Deborah Meier, Monty Neill, Cornel West, and Pedro Noguera, among others.  Schools around the country are suffering from severe  budget cuts and teacher lay offs  imposed by the economic crisis and the  resultant decisions of legislatures to cut budgets.

In addition parents and  teachers  say they are fed up with so-called “reform” policies in No Child Left Behind  that falsely label more than 80% of U.S. public schools as failures.   They oppose several programs of the Obama Administration included Race to the Top including the proposed new amendments to the NCLB law that would increase competition between under funded schools.   March participants, including many teacher union members, oppose the shift to more for-profit charter schools rather than public schools,  the assault on the teachers’ unions,  and the emphasis on high stakes testing which has driven many public goals from the school curriculum.

The American People are Angry

Jonathan Kozol; Why I will march at S.O.S.

Our Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is fond of saying that "Education is the civil rights issue of our time." Is he right about that?

Arne Duncan is recycling exactly the same slogan George W. Bush invented. On its face, it sounds benign. But, in reality, Duncan's policies run directly counter to the purposes of civil rights.

Why have you decided to participate in the Save Our Schools March on July 30th?
California Rally and  March
Saturday, July 30, 11am-3pm
State Capitol Building
1315 10th Street, Sacramento

I'll be in Washington for S.O.S. because I'm sick of begging members of the Senate, even those among them who have been my friends for years, to move two inches in the right direction. I'm tired of complaining. And I'm too old to bite my tongue and mute my words out of politeness and respectfulness for politicians who tell me in private that they share my views about the practices and policies that demean our teachers and threaten the survival of our public schools, but then refuse to stand up and denounce these policies in public.

I think, like many of my oldest friends and youngest allies who will be at S.O.S., it's time for us to get up off our knees in front of this enormous juggernaut and stop bargaining for crumbs. I've begun to see a movement of resistance growing now for several years. I've seen courageous teachers speaking up and reaching out to others. And I've seen the tide of activism start to rise, and surge, among our students and the parents of those students.

I think a moment of critical energy has suddenly emerged. But moments like this come and go unless we seize them at their height.

Budget Deficits

From: The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html

Why We March- Save Our Schools

Monty Neil:My organization, FairTest, also endorsed Save Our Schools. True, in time more specifics are needed, but the most fundamental task is to save our schools from the education ‘deformers’ who have decided that tests (the standards don’t really matter except for the tests) and punishments are the core of a ‘solution’ to the very real problem that too many students do leave school not having learned enough to be effective citizens. It is a destructive ‘solution.’
California Rally and  March
Saturday, July 30, 11am-3pm
State Capitol Building
1315 10th Street, SacramentoJoin other Californians on the Capitol steps to support public education. Sponsored by California supporters of the Save Our Schools March, National Call to Action .

Finland, by contrast, decided to build a system based on having high-quality teachers who would be prepared well (not a BA and short training course, a la TFA), engage in ongoing shared professional learning, and be largely in charge of the shape of schooling. They have brief national standards, but those are not imposed through tests. Finland does far better than the US, which chose a disastrous detour through testland. Finland also has a child poverty rate under 5% while the US is now well over 20%. Finland is more homogeneous, but has growing numbers of immigrant students (15% if memory serves) with 43 different languages. But of course US poverty is an ‘excuse’ to the deformers, who have managed to simultaneously promote damaging education ideas while deflecting attention from massive poverty.

There are many reasons why the basic framework, the paradigm, of federal and state laws and policies must be changed – I use the US failures and Finnish success simply to highlight how a different approach has produced markedly different results, though the underlying social structures and poverty also matter.

Save our Schools March in Sacramento

By Duane Campbell

In addition to the extended public funding crisis caused by the Great Recession, parents, teachers  and families from around the country say they are fed up with so-called “reform” policies that falsely label more than 80% of U.S. public schools as failures.  A  coalition of individuals and organizations is mobilizing for a national day of action in support of public schools. 
  
On Saturday, July 30, 2011, thousands of people will gather at the White House in Washington, DC, in Sacramento,  and at locations around the nation for   “Save Our Schools” marches.   The  events are being organized by a network of teachers, parents and community activists. 
  You can contact the march efforts and locate your regional demonstration at  http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org,

 
“For too long, public school stakeholders have been treated like second class citizens in our own communities,” said Sabrina Stevens Shupe, a former Colorado teacher, who is a member of the March’s organizing committee. “Teachers’ knowledge has been dismissed because we are falsely presumed to be self-interested and incompetent.  Students and parents who vocally oppose the disruption and destruction of their schools are often entirely ignored.  At the same time, ideologues with little to no experience in public schools have made misguided decisions that devastate educational quality and equal opportunity.”

California Rally & March
Saturday, July 30, 11am-3pm
State Capitol Building
1315 10th Street, Sacramento
Join other Californians on the Capitol steps to support public education. Sponsored by California supporters of the Save Our Schools March, National Call to Action & the Student CTA. 
  

Progressive Dems issue warning to Obama.

Progressive Dems Threaten Obama over Inclusion of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid in Debt Talks

by Gabriella Schwarz

The liberal advocacy group Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered 200,000 pledges to President Obama's campaign headquarters Friday, demanding he hold their line in debt ceiling negotiations or lose their support.

The group wants a potential agreement to include tax increases on higher income earners instead of cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicaid, the committee's co-founder Adam Green said Friday. Members of the group said they will not contribute to or volunteer for the president's reelection campaign unless their conditions are met.

Green said they delivered the pledges, signed by those who supported Obama's candidacy in the 2008 election, to Obama's campaign headquarters in Chicago Friday morning.

"Democrats need to support the will of the American people," Green said in a conference call with reporters. "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid must be off the table."

"Our position is the middle class has sacrificed enough," Green added.

He said the signatories donated $17 million and 2.4 million volunteer hours to then-Sen. Obama's election effort in the 2008 election.

Congratulations Coburn

California schools in crisis: Republicans raise taxes

The financial crisis is hitting most of the nation’s public schools including those in most states- particularly California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida,  and others.   In California as of 2011, 30,000 teaches have already been laid  off as federal stimulus money runs out, and another 15,000 face possible lay offs depending upon what happens in the state budget conflict. More than 4.1 Billion $ has been cut from California school budgets in the last three years as a consequence of the national economic crisis and there will be at least a  $2.1B additional cut under the best case scenario.

State revenues for schools are in crisis around the nation.  School spending is expected to  bottom out  over the next two years as  states and districts run out of $100 billion in federal stimulus aid for education passed when Democrats controlled the Congress. The stimulus money saved about 368,000 school-related jobs during the 2009-2010 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Most school funding comes from the state and local levels.   Only about 11 % come from federal funds

At both the k-12 and the university level, California education is in a financial crisis.  On April 13, the California Faculty Association and student groups held concurrent  demonstrations on all of the 23 campuses of the California State University campuses where university fees have increased by over 250% since 2002.   Students organized by Students for Quality Education held sit ins and occupied university offices in Sacrament, Fullerton  and on other campuses.

The Democratic majority in the California legislature tried to limit additional cuts  to K-12 education by passing an extension of current temporary tax increases- but the Republican minority in the legislature blocks the attempt to put such an extension on the ballot for Californians to vote on.

At least half of California’s schools are in a mess: California’s students rank 48th out of the states in 4th grade reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 47th in math, and 43rd in science. California ranks 48th in 8th grade reading on the NAEP, 45th in math, and 42nd in science.  California now ranks 43^rd. in per pupil funding, almost $2,400 per student below the national average.

Moderate economists oppose Balanced Budget Amendment to Constitution

Dear President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Minority Leader Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid, and Minority Leader McConnell,

We, the undersigned economists, urge the rejection of proposals to add a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. While the nation faces significant fiscal problems that need to be addressed through measures that start to take effect after the economy is strong enough to absorb them, writing a requirement into the Constitution that the budget be balanced each year would represent very unsound policy. Adding additional restrictions, as some balanced budget amendment proposals would do, such as an arbitrary cap on total federal expenditures, would make the balanced budget amendment even worse.

1. A balanced budget amendment would mandate perverse actions in the face of recessions. In economic downturns, tax revenues fall and some outlays, such as unemployment benefits, rise. These so-called built-in stabilizers increase the deficit but limit declines of after-tax income and purchasing power. To keep the budget balanced every year would aggravate recessions.

2. Unlike many state constitutions, which permit borrowing to finance capital expenditures, the federal budget makes no distinction between capital investments and current outlays. Private businesses and households borrow all the time to finance capital spending. A balanced budget amendment would prevent federal borrowing to finance expenditures for infrastructure, education, research and development, environmental protection, and other investment vital to the nation's future well being.

3. A balanced budget amendment would invite Congress to enact unfunded mandates, requiring states, localities, and private businesses to do what it cannot finance itself. It also invites dubious accounting maneuvers (such as selling more public lands and other assets and counting the proceeds as deficit-reducing revenues), and other budgetary gimmicks. Disputes on the meaning of budget balance would likely end up in the courts, resulting in judge-made economic policy. So would disputes about how to balance an unbalanced budget when Congress lacks the votes to inflict painful cuts.

Respond to the Gang of Six

Have you been watching the debate over whether we'll default on our national debt? Week after week, politicians from both parties have used it as an opportunity to tell us that deficit reduction requires "tough choices" and "shared sacrifice" and "taking on sacred cows." 

But as AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently said, "So far, the only sacred cows being gored by budget proposals coming out of Washington are working people, the middle class, seniors and the poor."

Tell your senators and the White House: No cuts to the social safety net. Focus on creating jobs, and make corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share: [ http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2565 ].

One recent bipartisan proposal in the Senate cuts Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It chokes job-creating public investments. It slashes education for disadvantaged students. It whacks workers with taxes on our heath care benefits and tax credits. And it kills American jobs--by switching to a "territorial taxation system" that gives corporations incentives to ship jobs overseas and shift profits to offshore tax havens. 

The Lesser Depression

By PAUL KRUGMAN. NY Times.

These are interesting times — and I mean that in the worst way. Right now we’re looking at not one but two looming crises, either of which could produce a global disaster. In the United States, right-wing fanatics in Congress may block a necessary rise in the debt ceiling, potentially wreaking havoc in world financial markets. Meanwhile, if the plan just agreed to by European heads of state fails to calm markets, we could see falling dominoes all across southern Europe — which would also wreak havoc in world financial markets.

We can only hope that the politicians huddled in Washington and Brussels succeed in averting these threats. But here’s the thing: Even if we manage to avoid immediate catastrophe, the deals being struck on both sides of the Atlantic are almost guaranteed to make the broader economic slump worse.

In fact, policy makers seem determined to perpetuate what I’ve taken to calling the Lesser Depression, the prolonged era of high unemployment that began with the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and continues to this day, more than two years after the recession supposedly ended.

Let’s talk for a moment about why our economies are (still) so depressed.

Education Under Fire: Introduction

Education Under Fire: Introduction

Save Our Schools March- Sacramento

March in Sacramento.  July 30.  State Capitol.
California Rally & March
Saturday, July 30, 11am-3pm
State Capitol Building
1315 10th Street, Sacramento

Join other Californians on the Capitol steps to support public education. Sponsored by California supporters of the Save Our Schools March, National Call to Action & the Student CTA.

Financial Transaction tax

Hello.

This morning we have the usual conservative politics with a new wave.  We have had the Tea Party /Right wing effort to stop an extension of the debt ceiling.

Now we have "moderate" proposal from the Gang of Six, which is essentially the Simpson-Bowles plan. That is another conservative, not so crazy, right wing assault on benefits and working people.   See the post below by Dean Baker, And, since it is not the crazy Tea Party, the press is picking up on it.

Get as many posts up as you can, letters to the editor, responses on web news stories.  In each case argue for the opposite- a financial transaction tax.  The information you need is on the DSA site;  here. http://www.dsausa.org/docs/taxday.html

intro; 

A: Yes.  Despite what conservatives often say, there are several potential sources of money to pay for the needs of our country.  Perhaps the most promising is a tax on the trading of financial assets, a financial transaction tax, often called an FTT or a “Tax on Wall Street Speculators.”

Q:  How would an FTT work?

A: An FTT would be a small tax on all trading in stocks, currencies, and debt products such as treasury bills and bonds (and futures and options contracts on all of these). Think of it as a very small sales tax. It could be a tax of $1 on every $400 of stocks traded (0.25%); one-quarter of one percent, and $1 on every $800 dollars of currency or debt traded (0.125%), one-eighth of one percent.

Statement on the Gang of Six Plan

Statement on the Gang of Six Plan

By Dean Baker.  A progressive economist.

Washington, D.C.- Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), issued the following statement on the Gang of Six deficit plan:

"The budget plan produced by the Senate’s “Gang of Six” offers the promise of huge tax breaks for some of the wealthiest people in the country, while lowering Social Security benefits for retirees and the disabled.  Despite claiming that they will "reform" Social Security on a "separate track, isolated from deficit reduction," the plan includes cuts to Social Security that would be felt in less than six months, as the plan calls for a new inflation formula that will reduce benefits by 0.3 percentage points a year compared with currently scheduled benefits. The plan also calls for a process that is likely to reduce benefits further for future retirees.

"The proposed cuts to Social Security are cumulative. This means that after ten years, a beneficiary in her 70s will see a cut of close to 3 percent. After 20 years, the cuts for beneficiaries in their 80s will be close to 6 percent, while the reduction in annual benefits will be close to 9 percent by the time beneficiaries are in their 90s. For a beneficiary in her 90s living on a Social Security income of $15,000, this means a loss of more $1,200 a year in benefits.

Why U.S. Teachers Work the Most But U.S. Students Stay Average - Business - The Atlantic Wire

Why U.S. Teachers Work the Most But U.S. Students Stay Average - Business - The Atlantic Wire

President Obama's unusual education summit

By Valerie Strauss
Posted at 03:41 PM ET, 07/18/2011

President Obama hosted an education roundtable at the White House on Monday and I’ll give you one chance to guess who wasn’t high on the guest list.

Educators.

Below is a list of people who were invited to the event, which was described on the president’s schedule this way:

“The President hosts an education roundtable with business leaders, Secretary Duncan, Melody Barnes, and America’s Promise Alliance Chair Alma Powell and Founding Chair General Colin Powell.”

The invitees, according to a news release from the White House, include:

· Marguerite Kondracke, president & CEO, America’s Promise

· Alma Powell, chairwoman, America’s Promise

· General Colin Powell, founding chairman, America’s Promise

· Craig Barrett, former president & CEO, Intel

· Glenn Britt, CEO, Time Warner Cable

The Federal Deficit Crisis

	Fact Sheet Questions and Answers on the Federal Budget

Q: Why do we now have such a large federal budget deficit?

A:    1. Ten years of the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 have accumulatively cost $2.5 trillion dollars in federal revenues.  The tax cuts primarily benefited wealthy individuals and corporations, turned the modest budget surpluses under the Clinton administration into growing deficits, but failed to promote economic growth. Tax revenues remain depressed as even fewer workers are employed at decent wages following the onset of the Great Recession.

2. The costs of the lengthy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being paid for by borrowed money rather than taxes.   See also; http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/12-3 by James Gailbraith. 

3. When the great recession broke out following the financial collapse caused by reckless speculation on the housing derivative markets, the federal government borrowed more money to bail out banks and other financial institutions.  The Obama Administration also administered a modest but costly economic stimulus program that alleviated the worst consequences of the crisis, especially for state and local governments and for the unemployed.  However that stimulus funding has lapsed, threatening millions of vital jobs in education and other public services at the state and local levels.

Q: What is really at stake in the Budget Debate in DC?

A: A manufactured crisis over raising the debt ceiling is being used by Republicans and conservative Democrats to attack Social Security and Medicare, which are highly popular, cost efficient and vitally needed government “entitlement” programs. Our values as a nation are expressed in the national budget, in how we raise our national revenues and prioritize our spending. 

Q: What are Republicans Up To in DC?

A:  Republicans are holding the country hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling; they will only do so if the federal government caps domestic spending at a fixed percentage of GDP and passes a balanced budget amendment. Both of these policies would have disastrous long-term results for the U.S. economy.  The Republicans also refuse to raise taxes, even by permitting the last set of “temporary” Bush-era tax cuts to lapse.  Their real aim is to hamstring government from having any positive role in society.

The Republicans’ concern for the “deficit crisis” is hypocritical. Conservative policies of tax cuts for the rich and deficit-financed military expenditure are the real causes of our deficit problem, not excessive government spending on health, education, and child care. Nearly half of the total $14.2 trillion total debt owed by the United States government derive from loss in government revenue due to the Reagan and Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and by their administration’s huge increases in military spending.

Starving Our Public Schools

Our Broken Escalator

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF: New York Times.

   THE United States supports schools in Afghanistan because we know that education is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to build a country.

Alas, we’ve forgotten that lesson at home. All across America, school budgets are being cut, teachers laid off and education programs dismantled.

My beloved old high school in Yamhill, Ore. — a plain brick building that was my rocket ship — is emblematic of that trend. There were only 167 school days in the last school year here (180 was typical until the recession hit), and the staff has been reduced by 9 percent over five years.

This school was where I embraced sports, became a journalist, encountered intellectual worlds, and got in trouble. These days, the 430 students still have opportunities to get into trouble, but the rest is harder.

For the next school year, freshman and junior varsity sports teams are at risk, and all students will have to pay $125 to participate on a team. The school newspaper, which once doubled as a biweekly newspaper for the entire town, has been terminated.

Business classes are gone. A music teacher has been eliminated. Class size is growing, with more than 40 students in freshman Spanish. “It’s like a long, slow bleed, watching things disappear,” says the school district’s business manager, Michelle Morrison.....

 The school still has good teachers, but is that sustainable with a starting salary of $33,676?

Yamhill is far from alone. The Center on Education Policy reports that 70 percent of school districts nationwide endured budget cuts in the school year that just ended, and 84 percent anticipate cuts this year.

In higher education, the same drama is unfolding. California’s superb public university system is being undermined by the biggest budget cuts in the state’s history. Tuition is set to rise about 20 percent this year, on top of a 26 percent increase last year, which means that college will become unaffordable for some.

The immediate losers are the students. In the long run, the loser is our country.

Republicans prepare the next noose !

 Like their crazy willingness to cause a new financial meltdown by refusing to extend the debt limit – which they did repeatedly under George Bush- the Congressional Republicans now propose a balanced budget amendment to the constitution as a part of the deficit “deal”.

  They claim it would be positive based on the reality that most states have such laws. Well now lets see.  In 2007/2009 when finance capital looted the economy, the U.S. government bailed out the banks and prevented a second great recession.  The U.S. government used deficit financing to keep 100,000 teachers in classrooms and over 25,000 police on the streets. They did this by deficit financing.  That is, they did not balance the budget.  If they had balanced the budget we would have had a second Great Depression. 
 

  ( Recall that they created the conditions for the great finance robbery by their prior fantasy that finance capital would regulate itself in a free market and we did not need a Glass-Steagal law any longer.)

  Republicans are holding the country hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling; they will only do so if the federal government caps domestic spending at a fixed percentage of GDP and passes a balanced budget amendment. Both of these policies would have disastrous long-term results for the U.S. economy. 

Republicans raise taxes in California

   The  12 % tuition increases passed on Tuesday at the CSU added to the prior 10% increase, as well as the expected increase in tuition at the U.C. are tax increases imposed upon students and their families by the Republican strategy in the legislature of no new taxes- on corporations and the rich.  But, yes new taxes ( called tuition) on students.  Students are correctly offended by this tax increase.   So, Republicans are in favor of raising some taxes, just not taxes on the business community and their constituents.

    The  tax increases ( tuition increases) were decided upon by the Board of  Trustees, but forced upon the CSU by the economic collapse of 2008 when the banking industry took some 13 Trillion $ from the U.S. economy.  The economic collapse engineered by Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others, created the foreclosure crisis, the loss of jobs and homes, and  led directly to a drop in the state sales tax and property taxes which in turn produced a 150  million dollar budget cut to the universities. – Thus the tution increases.

  Lilian Taiz, President of the California Faculty Association described the decision this way,

“The devastating cuts contained in this budget are a direct result of the unwillingness of legislative Republicans to allow the people of California to vote on tax extensions. While these Republicans proudly proclaim that they held the line on taxes, they also opened the door for a middle class tax increase that targets working families throughout the state in the form of higher student fees for the CSU.

“As we have seen year after year, it’s the students and the working families – in Republican and Democratic districts alike – who will pay the price for these cuts. According to CSU officials, this fall students could be paying fees that are 23% higher than they were this year; an additional 12% increase means that student fees will have increased 283% since 2002.”

The trustees blamed the tuition increase - the second in less than a year - on a $650 million reduction in their state funding for the 2011-12 fiscal year.

CSU receives about the same state funding as it did in 1998, yet educates about 72,000 more students  The trustees blamed the tuition increase - the second in less than a year - on a $650 million reduction in their state funding for the 2011-12 fiscal year., said Robert Turnage, assistant vice chancellor  for budget  in the CSU in the S.F. Chronicle.

The Jobs Crisis — Moving to Action: A Dialogue Between Workers and Polic...

Teachers Union President: Those who blame teachers for everything

By ALAN SCHWARZ. NY. Times.

WASHINGTON — Amid one of the most contentious periods in recent memory for teachers’ unions, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, on Monday called for education reform that emanates from teachers and their communities, rather than from “those who blame teachers for everything.”

“Let’s refuse to be defined by people who are happy to lecture us about the state of public education — but wouldn’t last 10 minutes in a classroom,” Ms. Weingarten told a crowd of about 2,000 here in kicking off the national conference held every two years by the union, which has 1.5 million members.

In the past year, particularly in Wisconsin and New Jersey, governors and some state lawmakers have castigated teachers’ unions and schools’ performance while slashing budgets and pushing newer education strategies like charter schools and more rigorous teacher evaluation.

Oppose the Republican plan to create a crisis

The Republican plan:

It's not just Medicare.  They've talked about privatizing Social Security... eliminating the EPA and giving polluters free rein to poison our air and water... rolling back public support for education -- everything from Head Start to college financial aid... crippling unions.

They’re pushing hard to cut programs that working families rely on while going to the mat to protect generous subsidies and special tax earmarks for the wealthy and well-connected.  

They won’t even consider cutting the “Bluegrass Boondoggle,” a $126 million giveaway to racehorse owners, but are ok doubling seniors’ health care costs.  

Their vision is basically to repeal the 20th century and go back to the Gilded Age -- let the fabulously wealthy live the good life, to heck with everyone else.

And to achieve this twisted agenda, they're holding the U.S. economy hostage, threatening not to allow the nation  to pay its bills and to drive up interest rates and create another financial crisis if we don’t pay their ransom demand.

In spite of the endless  media claims, the people are not buying this false crisis.  The just-released Pew poll makes it "crystal clear":

•               60% of Americans want to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are.

•               61% think people on Medicare pay enough of their healthcare costs.

•               58% say low-income people should keep their Medicaid benefits.

WE should stand firm.  And, we demand that the Democrats not give in to this hostage taking.

Rachel Maddow on the debt ceiling debacle

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What fiscal crisis?

In Washington it appears that this assault on government has a large measure of elite and media support, if not on the crass details or vulgar personalities but because it could conceivably force the parties to do “what they should do anyway” – namely come to a long-term deficit and debt agreement. Such an agreement would cut spending, raise some taxes, put the projected debt-to-GDP ratio on a declining track, and solve the “government’s fiscal crisis.”

What fiscal crisis? The great unasked question in this summer of sound-and-fury is “why?” The United States has many problems at the moment: a high-and-stubborn unemployment rate, a foreclosure catastrophe, a slowing economy that has not recovered and will not recover from the Great Crisis, and the ongoing challenges of infrastructure, energy and climate change. Fiscal crisis? The entire thing is a figment, made up of wise-men’s warnings repeated endlessly and linked to the projections of technicians at the Congressional Budget Office and elsewhere.

Economist James Gailbraith.  New Deal 2.0.  July 11, 2011.
http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/07/11/hawk-nation-a-guide-to-the-catastrophic-debt-ceiling-debate-51211/

The Grand Coalition Against Teachers

Firing Line: The Grand Coalition Against Teachers

by: Joanne Barkan, Dissent | Op-Ed

IN A nation as politically and ideologically driven as ours, it’s remarkable to see so broad an agreement on what ails public schools. It’s the teachers. Democrats from various wings of the party, virtually all Republicans, most think tanks that deal with education, progressive and conservative foundations, a proliferation of nonprofit advocacy organizations, right-wing anti-union groups, hedge fund managers, writers from right leftward, and editorialists in most mainstream media—all concur that teachers, protected by their unions, deserve primary blame for the failure of 15.6 million poor children to excel academically. They also bear much responsibility for the decline of K-12 education overall (about 85 percent of all children attend public schools), to the point that the United States is floundering in the global economy.

In the last few years, attention to the role of public school teachers has escalated into a high-profile, well-financed, and seriously misguided campaign to transform the profession based on this reasoning: if we can place a great teacher in every classroom, the achievement gap between middle-class white students and poor and minority students will close; all students will be prepared to earn a four-year college degree, find a “twenty-first-century job” at a good salary, and help to restore U.S. preeminence in the world economy…..

For most ed reformers, better a train wreck than no reform. They want as much change as possible as fast as possible in order to take advantage of momentum and the favorable political climate. The rush to pass state laws has provided their greatest opportunity so far. In response, they’ve skillfully built state campaigns, spending millions on organizers who advise lawmakers and legislative staffs, generate grassroots support, and run ad campaigns. A pipeline of private money—most of it from large private foundations—funds their state operations just as it funds almost all the ed reform movement’s activities. Two groups in particular—Stand for Children(headquartered in Portland) and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER, headquartered in New York City)—have played substantial roles by setting up branches in legislative battle states. Stand has a long list of contributors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which donated $5.2 million between 2005 and 2010. DFER gets most of its money from financiers, especially hedge fund managers.

The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism. Joseph Stiglitz.

Sunday 10 July 2011

by: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate | Op-Ed

Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year.

Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of US national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt.

I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case. On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven, as always, by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy – or at least the economies of Europe and America, where these ideas continue to flourish.

The People's Budget proposal

Q: Why do we now have such a large federal budget deficit?

A:    1. Ten years of the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 have accumulatively cost $2.5 trillion dollars in federal revenues.  The tax cuts primarily benefited wealthy individuals and corporations, turned the modest budget surpluses under the Clinton administration into growing deficits, but failed to promote economic growth. Tax revenues remain depressed as even fewer workers are employed at decent wages following the onset of the Great Recession.

2. The costs of the lengthy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being paid for by borrowed money rather than taxes. 

3. When the great recession broke out following the financial collapse caused by reckless speculation on the housing derivative markets, the federal government borrowed more money to bail out banks and other financial institutions.  The Obama Administration also administered a modest but costly economic stimulus program that alleviated the worst consequences of the crisis, especially for state and local governments and for the unemployed.  However that stimulus funding has lapsed, threatening millions of vital jobs in education and other public services at the state and local levels.

Q: What is really at stake in the Budget Debate in DC?

A: A manufactured crisis over raising the debt ceiling is being used by Republicans and conservative Democrats to attack Social Security and Medicare, which are highly popular, cost efficient and vitally needed government “entitlement” programs. Our values as a nation are expressed in the national budget, in how we raise our national revenues and prioritize our spending. 

Millions still unemployed after "recovery"

It has been two years since the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009, yet the labor market remains in grave shape, with nearly 14 million unemployed Americans. Two new EPI papers compare the Great Recession with past recessions and explore what makes this recession remarkably different from the others. 

In Ten facts about the recovery, EPI economist Heidi Shierholzenumerates ten compelling truths about the Great Recession, among which include:

·         The share of the working-age population with a job has not yet improved.

·         Most of the improvement seen this recovery comes from a decline in layoffs, not an increase in hiring.

·         Public-sector jobs have been hit particularly hard in response to budget cuts at the state and local level.

This last point is further explained in this week’s Economic Snapshot,Employment during the economic recovery.

Economic Policy Institute 

Systematic Cheating to pass tests in Atlanta's School system

By KIM SEVERSON: New York Times 

ATLANTA — A state investigation released Tuesday showed rampant, systematic cheating on test scores in this city’s long-troubled public schools, ending two years of increasing skepticism over remarkable improvements touted by school leaders.

The results of the investigation, made public by Gov. Nathan Deal, showed that the cheating occurred at 44 schools and involved at least 178 teachers and principals, almost half of whom have confessed, the governor said.

A culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation existed in the district, which led to a conspiracy of silence, he said in a prepared statement. “There will be consequences,” Mr. Deal said.

That will certainly include dismissals, according to school board members and the interim superintendent, Erroll B. Davis Jr., and could possibly result in criminal charges.

Mayor Kasim Reed of Atlanta called the release of the investigation “a dark day for the Atlanta public school system.” The cheating, he said, showed a complete failure of leadership that hurt thousands of children who might have been promoted to the next grade without meeting basic academic standards.

Save Our Schools March- Sacramento

TEACHERS, PARENTS GEAR UP FOR JULY 30 SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH ON D.C.;  SACRAMENTO; ALLIED ACTIONS AROUND THE NATION

Educators and families from around the country say they are fed up with so-called “reform” policies so poorly designed that they may falsely label more than 80% of U.S. public schools as failures. To counter what they see as relentless attacks on teachers and the institution of public education, a growing coalition of individuals and organizations is mobilizing for a national day of action in support of public schools.

On Saturday, July 30, 2011, thousands of people will gather at the Ellipse in Washington, DC and at other locations around the nation-- including Sacramento, California-- to express their desire to reclaim the right to determine the path of school reform in their own communities. The “Save Our Schools” March and allied events are being organized by a network of teachers, parents and community activists.

Define American: Jose's Story

The U.S. radical origins

Declaration of Independence

[Adopted in Congress 4 July 1776]

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The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: