Protect Public Education - Stop Trump et al

Congress created the Department of Education to ensure all students, no matter who they are or where they live, get equal access to an education. Students in every community benefit from its programs.  Today, Donald Trump announced that he is moving forward on dismantling the U.S. Department of Education.  Tell your senators and member of Congress to stop this unprecedented, unilateral, and illegal action.

Write Congress  ➤

Trump and his Administration are robbing students of educational opportunity by gutting the education department and shifting its hallmark programs to agencies with no expertise to meet the needs of students.   Their action will deny students the critical supports that they need to learn, grow, and succeed in life.   It will explode class sizes and deny students access to higher education and job programs.  Let’s be clear: Congress created the Department of Education and only Congress can dismantle it.    Please write your elected officials right now and demand they protect students and put a stop to Donald Trump and Linda McMahon’s ILLEGAL decision to dismantle the Dept. of Education.   Ensuring a brighter future for our children should be a top priority for any administration, but this administration is taking every chance it can to hack away at the very protections and services our students need—all to pay for billionaire tax cuts.  America’s educators and parents will not be silent as Trump and his education secretary, Linda McMahon, turn their backs on our students, families, and communities.  Thank you for taking action and for all you do for our students.  In solidarity,  Becky Pringle  President  National Education Association  Write Congress  ➤    Donald Trump just announced a plan to dismantle the Department of Education,

The Only Member of Congress Who Has Worked for Kamala Harris

The Only Member of Congress Who Has Worked for Kamala Harris: ‘What I saw is someone who is not for sale,’ Katie Porter told the Prospect.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'We Have To Keep Organizing, We Can Not Stop' ...

DSA's newest Congresswoman

In a galvanizing victory speech to an electrified crowd of admirers, Ocasio-Cortez waved away the latest criticism—of her admittedly skeletal plan to pay for an expensive agenda—with the assurance that will finds a way. "They will always call the ambitious naive, they will always call the ambitious uninformed," she said, but the overwhelming excitement her primary win engendered matters—precisely because it was not partisan. Neither party does enough for its constituents, and her victory emphasized a widespread readiness for a fresh political approach, and the possibility of real change that new course presented. 

"Our deepest challenges are not left and right, they are not red and blue; they are top and bottom, they are right and wrong," she said. "It is not good enough to throw a rock at our neighbor's yard, we need to clean up our own house."

She also acknowledged disappointment at the evening's mixed bag of returns: Democrats won the House, but lost key gubernatorial races across the country to Donald Trump-approved candidates: Georgia Representative Stacey Abrams seemed poised to lose, narrowly, to Brian Kemp (although Abrams had not conceded at time of writing); progressive Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum lost to the same windbag who underestimated Ocasio-Cortez.

Get Involved ! Do It Now !

Many Americans who oppose Trump and Kavanaugh did not even vote in the last election. In 2014, the last midterm election, only 16 % of citizens between 18 and 29 voted.

Perhaps  the best way to encourage turn out is to talk with your families and friends.  Use social media to reach out to persons who might not vote. 

The critical issue for this election is to defeat Donald Trump and his enablers. 

·      He has magnified racial prejudice to win tax cuts for the wealthy, to assault labor unions, and to reverse efforts to halt climate destruction. 

·       He has collaborated with the Russians while cutting health care for the poor in the U.S.  

·      In the Kavanaugh fight he has proven to be a misogynist, sexist, bully.

·      We must stop him now before he and his enablers can further consolidate power.  

·      The available way to stop him is to vote to win control of the U.S. Congress in the 2018 election.  

Campaigns need volunteers to knock on doors and make phone calls.  These are the critical local Congressional races

District 4  Jessica Morse

   District  10  Josh Harder

                             District 6.  Doris Matsui

                             District 7 Ami  Bera

   District 9  Jerry McNerney

    District 3  John Garamendi

Vote: Defeat Trump and His enablers

The critical issue for this election is to defeat Donald Trump and his enablers. 

·      He has magnified racial prejudice to win tax cuts for the wealthy, to assault labor unions, and to reverse efforts to halt climate destruction. 

·       He has collaborated with the Russians while cutting health care for the poor in the U.S.  

·      We must stop him now before he and his enablers can further consolidate power.  

·      The available way to stop him is to Vote to win control of the U.S. Congress in the 2018 election.  

Trump’s Racially Divisive Politics Must Be Exposed and Opposed !

The intolerant campaign  promoted by Donald Trump and supported  by the Republican Party is a call to the “silent white majority” and a demand that 11 million immigrants be deported.  This campaign promotes a dangerous and divisive racial message.  It must be vigorously opposed.

 Donald Trump is a serial liar, he  regularly incites political violence and he  is a  rampant xenophobe, racist, and  misogynist. He has sought to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S. He promises to build a wall on the border that would cost at least $35 billion to build, and billions each year to maintain.  And, it would not work. 

Trump has an overly cynical and conspiratorial view of immigration: calling for  building  walls, breaking up families,  and deporting people.  This fear mongering political message has found a very receptive base within our society among xenophobic and angry conservative older voters.

This campaign is dangerous.  It mobilizes right-wing  anti immigrant forces. Trump’s campaign is not just racism- it is a strategy to magnify racism to win the election – and we must defeat it.  He is promoting an anti Mexican, anti immigrant, anti Muslim agenda. This is more than the ranting of a fringe right. He is mainstreaming racism. 

This is Dog Whistle Politics, as described well in Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, by Ian Haney López (2014).

The Trump campaign provides an example  of strategic racism, which is a system of racial oppression created and enforced because it benefits the over class, in this case the many billionaire funders of the Republican Party.   These groups foster and promote interracial conflict and job competition as a strategy to keep wages and benefits low and to promote their continuing white supremacy in the nation.

Republican Tax Plan

House Republicans released a tax plan that is a terrible deal for middle-class families and students. They want to rush it through Congress next week, and they want you to pay for it.

The plan is an enormous tax giveaway to corporations and wealthy individuals like Betsy DeVos, and it is funded on the backs of students and  hardworking, middle-class people like you. I'm sure you won't be  surprised to hear that DeVos has publicly praised the plan.

If Betsy DeVos thinks it is a good plan, then you know something is wrong with it.

That's why we need your help to shut it down. Please send an email to your representative right now.

Amend and Re Authorize NCLB; Now ESEA (again)

This week, the House of Representatives will take up the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Senate is scheduled to follow suit as soon the House is finished.

The new version of ESEA, called the Every Student Succeeds Act—if passed in Congress and signed by the president—is a paradigm shift. In eliminating the adequate yearly progress requirement and shifting the focus away from testing as the be all and end all, ESSA would provide a fresh start for states to re-envision public schooling, better aligning it to what students need to succeed. And it should be a wake-up call to any state that wants to double down on what will now be the discarded test-and-punish system that has dominated in recent years.

After years and years of false starts, this bill is almost at the finish line. Write to your representative today and urge him or her to pass a final bill reauthorizing ESEA.

We wouldn’t be here without you. Our members, activists and leaders worked hard to make sure our message—as parents, as educators, as community members and as people who want to make a difference in the lives of children—was heard. More than 130,000 of you took action online, made phone calls, submitted comments on the bill and met with your members of Congress, and it made a difference.

We’re almost there. Write to your representative today.

The bill is not perfect, and with so much authority being turned over to the states, we will have our work cut out for us. But ESSA brings us closer to letting states, local districts and educators focus on students and their success, and to ending the harmful test fixation that has become the predominant schooling strategy. It sends a clear signal to states that the policies of No Child Left Behind, waivers and Race to the Top should be abandoned, not replicated. By maintaining funding for the students who need it most; not including support for private school vouchers, portability or other divisive policies; and including more transparency and accountability for charters, the bill also signals to states that these are unproven policies that should not be pursued.

This is a bad deal for you and I !

by Duane Campbell

The omnibus budget deal being debated in Congress passed on Sat. evening  includes a continuation of the budget cuts known as the sequester. 

Josh Silver has noted 5 major problems with the deal. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-silver/omnibus-budget-deal-2014-5-worst-things_b_6307852.html

And Senator Elizabeth Warren has revealed the Wall Street subversion in this bill and is making a brave stand against the deal.
http://sacramentopa.blogspot.com/2014/12/sen-warren-calls-on-house-to-strike.html

It is important to understand our current economic situation to understand the  conflict in Congress  and our economic future.

First, know that Wall Street has recovered, but main street has not.

Middle-class wages are stagnant. Unemployment is stalled at record levels. College education is leading to debt servitude and job insecurity. Millions of unemployed Americans have essentially been abandoned by their government.  Poverty is soaring.

 Bankers break the law with impunity, are bailed out, and go on breaking the law, richer than they were before. Only a handful of people have gone to jail, none of the really big operators. Now, more than 6 years after the crisis began,  no senior officials of the corporations that looted our economy have been held accountable.  

Drop Student Debt

By  Thom Hartman,

Never in the history of the developed world has an entire generation had to go into debt just to get an education and a job. Until now.

Back in January, 31-year-old Tony Muzzatti, who at the time owed around $60,000 in student loan debt to Sallie Mae and always made on-time payments, was told that he had to immediately make a payment of $10,000, or face asset seizures.

That's because his grandmother, who also happened to be his cosigner on the student loans, had just died.

Christopher Kibler was also told by Sallie Mae that he had to immediately pay back nearly $22,000 in student loan debts after his father, the cosigner on his loans, had passed away.

Muzzatti and Kibler are just two of the many victims of what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau refers to as "auto-defaults," or when banks immediately say that private student loan debts are in default after the death or bankruptcy of a cosigner.

What if we default on our debt?

“Sitting on the Pavement, Thinking About the Government” –

What if we default on our debt?  (Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”)

 Bill Barclay.

The debt ceiling, the dollar and hegemonic currencies

Let’s begin by clearing up a possible lingering misconception about debt and defaults.  If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling and we default, does that mean the U.S. is broke?  No.  The U.S., like any country that 1) controls the creation of its own currency and 2) issues its debt in its own currency, cannot go broke.  However, political calculations can impose deadbeat status on such a country. 

What about other countries, why don’t they have this problem?  The answer is equally simple.  With the exception of Denmark, no other wealthy industrial society has a debt ceiling – and Denmark’s is set at over twice their actual level of government debt – and it is not a political football.  So yes, the U.S. is, as our national meme says, exceptional.  The debt ceiling – and any associated problems – are our own creation. 

Wall Street Donated $41 Million to Supercommittee Members | Truthout

Wall Street Donated $41 Million to Supercommittee Members | Truthout

Stop the Republican effort to limit Finance Regulatory Reform

This is not a drill. This is an emergency.

Our financial system is being attacked in Congress, and if it collapses again because of reckless greed, working people will bear the brunt. CEO-backed politicians will raid our Social Security, our Medicare and our public services to bail out the fat cats. Take action now.

Tell your members of Congress: Deregulation leads to financial crises. Don't deregulate Wall Street and then rob working people to pay for the bailouts that will follow: [ http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1736 ].

In 2008, Big Banks and Wall Street CEOs created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. As a result, 14 million Americans still are unemployed today. 

But even though unemployment is high and our economic recovery is pathetically slow and fragile, corporations are lobbying furiously to undo the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. 

Many parts of this new Wall Street Reform Act--including a requirement that outrageous CEO pay be publicly compared with worker pay--haven't even gone into effect yet. But already, House Republicans are siding with corporate CEOs, trying to repeal the bill piece by piece. 

What's the Big Bank/CEO/House Republican plan? Deregulate. And if the economy collapses again because of reckless greed, rob working Americans to pay for bailouts while the rich get richer.

Call in for unemployment benefits extension

Hey!  In addition to calling Congress on the National Call-In Action Day there's another way to raise your voice on Tuesday, November 16 for continuing the federal unemployment insurance program.
It's a Blog-A-Thon!
We've teamed up with our friends at MomsRising.org to raise our blogging voices for unemployed workers and their families. MomsRising.org is promoting their own Blog Carnival on the unemployment issue on Tuesday, November 16.  And, in coordination, we're sponsoring a parallel Blog-A-Thon.
Here's how it works:
If you post on a blog, or have your own blog, make Tuesday, November 16 the day you post a blog on the unemployment crisis and the need for Congress to continue the federal unemployment benefits program.  When you post your blog, put the link up in a Twitter tweet -- include the hashtag #blog4ui -- and send it to @laidoffleftout or @MomsRising or better yet both.  We'll be retweeting throughout the day, helping to raise all our blogging voices for unemployed workers and their families.

Ami Bera for Congress

Dr. Ami Bera is one of the few Democrats who might win a seat away from a sitting Republican Congressman.  Photo is of Ami Bera  and Professor Jim Shoch at a  Progressive Alliance  Election Forum on Thursday, October 28, in Sacramento.

The Democratic Congress as a whole is  assault from the Republicans. There are  several liberal and progressive Democratic elected officials who are likely to lose. 

(photo: Dr. Jim Shoch and Dr. Ami Bera) 

 There is an energized, right-wing assault from the Tea Party Republicans.

Big Oil joined with Wall Street to rescue one of their staunchest allies: Dan Lungren. Under the direction of Karl Rove's shadowy organization American Crossroads, these two corporate special interests began pouring thousands of hidden dollars into the Sacramento media market.

Volunteer for Bera

The Progressive Election Forum was a success.

Bera For Congress Get Out The Vote! from BeraForCongress on Vimeo.

RE-authorization of ESEA, NCLB

Dear Supporter of a Broader, Bolder Approach to Education (BBA):

We don't expect the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (now known as "No Child Left Behind") to take place this year.  

But Congress and the Administration are working on developing a proposal, and many BBA leaders and signatories have been meeting with Senators, Congresspeople, their staffs, and Administration officials to urge more sensible approaches than those we believe are being considered seriously. 

Although each BBA leader and signatory speaks only for him or herself in this advocacy, and may emphasize different aspects of our common program, we thought it would be helpful if we developed suggested "talking points" to which you can refer when you urge the adoption of a Broader, Bolder Approach. 

These are the points (also attached to this e-mail, and available on our website at:http://www.boldapproach.org/20100512_bba_key_points_esea_reauthorization.pdf )

 1. Neither schools nor teachers should be held accountable based primarily on test scores of students. Such accountability can lead to gross misidentification of failing schools and creates incentives to teach to the test, narrow the curriculum, and substitute drill for education.

2. So-called "growth models" that are based on student growth from one year to the next would be an improvement over accountability models based on the comparison of score levels of successive cohorts, but are still flawed. A September to June measure would be an improvement (although could still misidentify schools), but would require federal mandates for twice-annual testing and would create incentives for different kinds of gaming (to depress September scores, for example) if used for accountability purposes.

Nevada brothel offers free passes to Senators

The Keith Olberman video below is powerful. Please view it.
If Republicans and Blue Dogs are going to sell their souls; they might as well enjoy it.
A famous Nevada brothel is offering free passes to the legislators. This is far less corrupting than taking millions for campaign finance efforts as the Republicans are doing; and several Blue Dogs.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/nevada-brothel-offers-free-passes-to-lawmakers.php

Pigs at the trough

Whole Hog
Early Sunday morning after a marathon session, Congress put a blue ribbon on the immense hog known as the defense budget and declared it a winner. Just before going on their August vacation, the House approved the 2008 defense appropriations bill of $459 billion. The vote was 395 to 13. With the nearly full support of the Democrats, the Bush administration is on the verge of pushing through a $40 billion increase in military spending for next year.

Much was made of the battle between Congress and the administration over this bill. After all, the administration's request was actually a few billion dollars more, and the White House has opposed many of the congressional changes. In reality, the House sliced off only the smallest amount of pork -- less than 1 percent of the total -- and redirected it to social programs. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) went after some of the more blatant earmarks and has even challenged pet projects of his Republican colleagues. His amendments were overwhelmingly rejected. (One of those earmarks, inserted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, provides $4 million to a California company to develop a "novel viral biowarfare agent" -- one of those projects of "biodefense" that the United States deceptively argues is permitted under the Biological Weapons Convention).

Over $450 billion: that's some big pig. But wait, as the old TV ads liked to say, that's not all! The appropriations bill doesn't include another nearly $50 billion in defense spending on the Department of Energy's nuclear programs and a few other items. And, of course, there's the almost $150 billion in supplemental spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which will generate considerable debate when Congress returns in September.

At $650 billion, U.S. military spending is the highest since World War II, outstrips what the rest of the world combined spends on defense, and outpaces our putative adversaries by at least 5 to 1. Flake's attempts to torpedo some of the earmarks were commendable. But hey, the earmarks total about $3 billion. That's chump change, Jeff! If you really want to save us from trichinosis, here are some of the larger pieces of pork to cut out and throw away:

Missile Defense -- this is the most expensive weapons system, and it has yet to be proven to work. The Dems cut the tiniest amount from the White House request. Knock out this technofolly and save over $8 billion a year.

Nukes -- we're telling North Korea to get rid of its pathetic arsenal and threatening countries like Iran for even considering a nuclear deterrent, yet we're pouring billions into upgrading our own system. If we sit down with the Russians and cut strategic forces to 1,000 warheads apiece, we can save nearly $15 billion a year.

Cold War weapons systems -- we're spending more than $20 billion a year to build weapons like the V-22 Osprey that a) doesn't work and b) was developed to fight the Soviet Union.

In FPIF's Unified Security Budget, we find $55.9 billion in military spending cuts that should attract bipartisan support. In our more ambitious Just Security framework, we call for a dramatic restructuring of the U.S. approach to the world, which would reduce our overseas military posture. Savings: over $200 billion a year.

So, how exactly did the Bush administration convince the Democratic majority in the House to go along with this nonsense -- and even to feel good about itself for paring off less than 1 percent?

If there were only one factory producing U.S. military armaments located in Rhode Island, there would be a dramatic reduction of congressional support for a rising defense budget. The problem is: virtually all weapons systems have been broken down into a supply chain that turns the 50 states into an assembly line for the military-industrial complex. Almost every member of Congress therefore supports the whole hog in order to bring home some of the bacon to their home district.

So, all you pay-as-you-go Democrats, where exactly are you going to find the funds for a national healthcare plan, a strategy to save our public schools, or a program to rebuild our failing infrastructure? Right now, the Dems are not thinking of the hog. Come 2008, however, there will be no other place to turn. Sharpen those knives!

Throwing the Military at the Problem

If I were a military contractor, the Middle East would look mighty dandy these days. The war in Iraq is a giant advertisement for U.S. weapons systems, even if the war itself is disastrous. The threats of Iran and Syria, trumpeted so frequently by the administration and Congress, are music to the defense industry's ears.

But really, the true gravy train is the arms sales racket. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently unveiled the administration's plan for the Middle East. There was some stirring rhetoric. More importantly, there were plenty of weapons to go around. The United States has a sweet deal -- funding both sides of the conflict. The latest plan is to add $65 billion more to the pot, with most of it going to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

As FPIF contributor Matt Duss writes in Gasoline for the Fire, the arms package "is an admission of failure on several fronts." There's the failure of the Iraq War to produce a more stable Middle East. There's the failure of the "democracy promotion" agenda for the region. "Having upset the balance of power in the region by removing Saddam Hussein, empowering Iran by removing the most significant check on their regional hegemony, and having transformed Iraq into a terrorist training ground, the United States now proposes to supply new weapons to its allies in the region to help them deal with the new security environment which it created," Duss writes.

Aside from lucrative contracts for U.S. arms manufacturers, what will the United States get out these deals? "The United States has had little success in the past using arms sales to buy leverage in the region," writes FPIF contributor Rachel Stohl in The Saudi Arms Deal: Congressional Opposition Building. "And, with no strings attached to the assistance -- no democratic reforms, human rights conditions, or peace-making obligations -- the arms sales do nothing to change the behavior of the authoritarian regimes in the region. Sending more arms to the Middle East may provoke Iran into accelerating its own arms purchases. Russia and China have been all too eager to step in and provide Iran with high technology weapon to offset the balance of power in the region. Although the United States can express its displeasure after the fact, the reality is that once the weapons leave U.S. possession, we have little to no influence on how those weapons are used and by whom."

Foreign Policy in Focus