Schwarzenegger campaigns for McCain

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger put aside his appeals to post-partisan politics on Friday in favor of taking up John McCain’s party line during a campaign rally for McCain in Columbus, Ohio, but some of that message seemed to conflict with Schwarzenegger’s own practices in office.


“I think there will be a backlash against all of this lopsided spending,” Schwarzenegger proclaimed at a campaign rally in Columbus.

And he knows something about lavish spending.

In California, the bodybuilder-turned actor-turned politician has become the most prolific political fundraiser in state history. He has used his Hollywood status to rake in at least $132 million since he launched his gubernatorial bid in 2003.

McCain and financial fraud

McCain launches new attack ads

Obama says No to McCain's cancellation of the debates

McCain and Crony Capitalism

Crony Capitalism
The U.S. purchase of AIG is crony capitalism at its worst. We, the tax payers are left holding the bag for bad investments. AIG has 85 billion world wide of insurance and other products. The front page story in the BEE says the U.S. gets a stake in the insurance giant. No. We get a liability. So, we now sell insurance in Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Peru and Russia and Europe – all supported by our taxes and our bank accounts. But, John McCain says we can not afford health insurance for our own people.
AS described in a Salon.com article, this system was created and promoted by Phil Gramm, formerly John McCain’s principal economic advisor.
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/09/16/mccain_and_aig/index.html
It is accurate that Gramm had assistance from Democrats, lead by Joe Lieberman, now Mc Cain’s primary advisor.
These politicians demonstrate the examples given in the book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.
Public money should be used for public purposes, for schools, roads, water systems. Not for crony capitalism and to reward millionaires.
Its time to throw the bums out- the Republicans -to protect your home ,your job and your pension funds.

Duane E. Campbell
Sacramento

McCain and change

McCain wrong on education

A major component of the John McCain campaign this week is to argue that he is a maverick, he has disagreed with his own party- and Barack Obama has not. You can see this quote on his stump speeches.
The problem, the claim is just is not true. Not only has John McCain voted with President Bush over 90% of the time, particularly on critical issues such as the war in Iraq, but Barack Obama has taken on his own party.
In yesterday’s major speech on education reform Barack Obama took two positions directly in opposition to the teachers unions and majorities in his own party.
(See below)
He has called for more funding of public charters and for teacher pay for performance. These two are key ingredients which the teachers’ unions oppose. Indeed, it was these positions that led the AFT to back Hillary Clinton, they are not supporting Barack Obama.
And, he opposed the majority of his party on the highly controversial FISA legislation.
Duane Campbell

New York Times
September 10, 2008
Obama Looks to Lessons From Chicago in His National Education Plan
By SAM DILLON
CHICAGO — Senator Barack Obama learned how hard it can be to solve America’s public education problems when he headed a philanthropic drive here a decade ago that spent $150 million on Chicago’s troubled schools and barely made a dent.
Drawing on that experience, Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, is campaigning on an ambitious plan that promises $18 billion a year in new federal spending on early childhood classes, teacher recruitment, performance pay and dozens of other initiatives.
In Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday, Mr. Obama used his education proposals to draw a contrast with Senator John McCain, his Republican opponent, and to insist to voters that he, more than his rival, would change the way Washington works.
Were he to become president, Mr. Obama would retain the emphasis on the high standards and accountability of President Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind. But he would rewrite the federal law to offer more help to high-need schools, especially by training thousands of new teachers to serve in them, his campaign said. He would also expand early childhood education, which he believes gets more bang for the buck than remedial classes for older students.
Mr. Obama added a new flourish to his stump speech, promising for the first time on Tuesday to double federal spending on public charter schools while holding those with poor records accountable.
But more than most campaign blueprints, Mr. Obama’s education plan reflects his own work with Chicago’s public schools, campaign staff members and people who have worked with him said in interviews. His plan signals that he is looking to apply those lessons nationwide.
“Barack has been very engaged, very inquisitive about the dynamics of how do you improve public schools,” said Scott Smith, a former publisher of The Chicago Tribune who has collaborated with Mr. Obama on education projects here for a decade.
One of the biggest lessons Mr. Obama drew from his experiences in Chicago, associates said, is that student achievement is highly dependent on teacher quality.
In the two decades since Mr. Obama arrived in Chicago, its public schools have undergone a sweeping turnaround, from an education wasteland to a district that, while still facing major challenges, is among the most improved in the nation. The city has closed many failing schools and reopened them with new staffs, making it an important laboratory for one of the country’s most vexing problems.
The city closed the failing Dodge Elementary School, for example, in 2002 and reopened it as an academy where candidates for advanced degrees in education work in classrooms under master teachers while studying at a local university. Mr. Obama visited the school in 2005, liked what he saw and now proposes to create 200 such teacher residency programs nationwide. The goal, he says, would be to turn out 30,000 teachers a year to work in the toughest schools.
Mr. Obama’s views have drawn heavily from a cast of experts who helped mold the Chicago experience. Strategies for overhauling failing schools have come from Arne Duncan, who as chief executive of the Chicago public schools led the turnaround efforts. The senator derived his views on early childhood education in part from the work of a Nobel Prize-winning economist based in Chicago.
The scope of Mr. Obama’s plan has impressed many educators, but not everyone.
Michael J. Petrilli, a former Education Department official under Mr. Bush, said Mr. Obama’s plan was more comprehensive than Mr. McCain’s.
“That’s because Obama is proposing what somebody called a Christmas tree of new programs,” Mr. Petrilli said. “McCain is suggesting a couple of new things, but doesn’t think Washington should spend more on education than we already are.”

Response to McCain

Move on ads

McCain and Schools

McCain Lays Down The Educational Gauntlet
Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 11:57 pm
In his speech last week to the national convention of the American Federation of Teachers, Barack Obama was clear and unequivocal in his opposition to using public money for vouchers for private schools. At that time, Obama made it clear that he supported public school choice — the ability of students and their families to chose which public school they would attend. In taking this stance, Obama reiterated what is a longstanding position of his — he had made the same point to the National Education Association convention earlier in July, and had explicitly disowned attempts by pro-voucher partisans to spin comments he made in a primary campaign interview into support for private school vouchers.
Today, John McCain chose the occasion of a speech to the august civil rights organization, the NAACP, to take on Obama — and teacher unions — on this very point. McCain said:
In remarks to the American Federation of Teachers last weekend, Senator Obama dismissed public support for private school vouchers for low-income Americans as, “tired rhetoric about vouchers and school choice.” All of that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?
Over the years, Americans have heard a lot of “tired rhetoric” about education. We’ve heard it in the endless excuses of people who seem more concerned about their own position than about our children. We’ve heard it from politicians who accept the status quo rather than stand up for real change in our public schools. Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent, and diplomas that open doors of opportunity. When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children. Some parents may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private school. Many will choose a charter school. No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.
Let us leave to the side McCain’s intellectually dishonest attempt to wrap the issue of private school vouchers in the mantle of public school choice: there are, of course, very sound policy reasons why Obama, the NAACP and teacher unions all draw a vital distinction between private school vouchers and public school choice, opposing the former and supporting the latter. But the real political import of McCain’s statement lies elsewhere — it is an attempt to force a political wedge between Obama and teacher unions, based on the raw power calculus that an Obama campaign without vigorous teacher and union support would be a far more vulnerable opponent.
To accomplish this goal, McCain has returned to the old Republican Dole and D’Amato playbook of attacking teacher unions. In an American trade union movement that has been decimated in recent decades, teacher unions stand out as a powerful exception, with most of the K-12 educational sector organized in either the NEA or the AFT. It is teacher unions that stand between the Republican right and the privatization of public education and the further dismantling of American public life. Like his predecessors, McCain understands this political reality. Teachers and unionists need to understand it as well, and organize for this election in a way that send a message every bit as powerful as the crushing defeats of Dole and D’Amato.

Leo Casey. Leo blogs on Edwize. The Blog of the New York AFT.

Obama v. McCain on NCLB

Candidates Split Sharply
On Bush's No Child Left Behind Law
By ANNE MARIE CHAKER and AMY CHOZICK
Wall Street Journal
May 29, 2008; Page A6
Barack Obama attacked a key plank of John McCain's education platform, taking up an issue that has been on the back burner amid a campaign dialogue dominated by war and the economy.

The candidates' biggest disagreement on education policy comes over President Bush's No Child Left Behind law, which threatens sanctions if schools don't meet certain standards of achievement. Sen. Obama wants to overhaul the law, while Sen. McCain wants to extend it.

"We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind," Sen. Obama said Wednesday while touring the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts, a Colorado public school that leans heavily on the arts to teach subjects such as math and English. "We must provide the funding we were promised ... We also need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single, high-stakes test," he added.

The Illinois senator cited Mapleton's unorthodox model of instruction as an example of creativity fostering success. He noted a study that asserted: "87% of Colorado teachers said that testing was crowding out subjects like music and art."

The general election will offer stark differences on education. The Democratic presidential front-runner supports federal funding toward universal prekindergarten in states. Sen. McCain is opposed. Sen. Obama wants to cut banks out of the student-loan business and would have students only borrow directly from the government. Sen. McCain says students benefit from competition between bank-based and "direct" government lending.

In a speech in November, Sen. Obama declared that the No Child Left Behind law "has done more to stigmatize and demoralize our students and teachers in struggling schools than it has to marshal the talent and the determination and the resources to turn them around."

In discussing No Child Left Behind on his Web site, Sen. McCain says that "we finally see what is happening to students who were previously invisible."

Signed into law six years ago, No Child Left Behind is considered one of President Bush's signature domestic achievements. The goal was to close the gap between high- and low-achieving children by holding their schools accountable. But while it passed with bipartisan support, the law has been widely panned for its rigidity by parents, teachers and education policymakers -- particularly among the heavily Democratic teachers unions.

Sen. Obama, as well as his rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, has proposed a revamping of the law.

Clinton aides say she wants to see testing models that distinguish between failing schools and schools that are just falling short. The New York senator's campaign says she wants to move beyond testing to other indicators of progress.

Sen. Obama, too, wants to take a fresh look at the testing models. The campaign says the law unfairly puts the responsibility for student performance heavily on schools. Sen. Obama wants to see parents -- not just schools -- held accountable, by requiring districts to adopt school-family contracts that lay out expectations for student behavior, attendance and homework, the campaign says.

The Bush law holds schools accountable by exacting punishments if students don't meet goals. Schools that fail to reach their yearly improvement targets face sanctions such as reduced managerial authority or even layoffs for teachers.

Sen. McCain says the No Child law has succeeded by shining a spotlight on how effectively schools are teaching. His campaign says the threat of tough sanctions gives schools a big incentive to improve.

There is also a clear partisan split on another hot education issue: whether preschool should be more widely available. Currently, most states provide only limited funding for pre-K.

But in recent years, a number of states have invested more from their budgets to expand pre-K availability, at least for lower-income families. Sens. Clinton and Obama both propose helping states establish or expand pre-K programs further. Sen. Obama proposes a "Zero to Five" plan, at a cost of $10 billion a year, providing incentives to states to expand early education for young children.

Sen. McCain says that a federally sponsored pre-K program already exists, which provides preschool services to low-income families. "Let's not look to expand the role of the federal government in this area," says a campaign aide, explaining the senator's position. "Rather, let's look to ensure where the government is playing a role, it's doing so effectively."