Medicare for All

Nurses, Progressive Dems Seek Stepped Up Action for
Real, "Robust" Healthcare Reform

Single-Payer, Medicare for All, as Best Solution to Crisis

WASHINGTON - June 24 - With action heating up in
Washington for enactment of comprehensive healthcare
reform, the nation's largest RN union and professional
association joined with progressive Democratic Party
activists today in calling for the most "robust" reform
of all to repair the nation's healthcare crisis, by
enacting a single-payer system in the form of an
expanded and updated Medicare for all.

In a joint statement, the National Nurses Organizing
Committee/California Nurses Association and Progressive
Democrats of America announced they are stepping up
calls and other lobbying efforts to urge Congressional
leaders to include discussion of the single-payer
option in upcoming deliberations on the healthcare
reform legislation now advancing in Congress.

As President Obama holds several public healthcare
events, major committees in Congress unveil
legislation, and some liberal constituency groups set
to rally in Washington Thursday, NNOC/CNA and PDA said
that a single-payer/Medicare-for-all approach is "the
best way to achieve goals of universality, effective
cost controls, and improving the quality of care for
all Americans."

All other proposals, the groups said, suffer the same
limitations. They:

* Leave the insurance industry, with its emphasis
on generating profits and revenues rather than
providing care, in control of our health. * Fail to
assure financial security of American families by
not cracking down on insurance pricing practices. *
Avoid the strongest cost controls that are achieved
in a single-payer system with one shared risk pool
that covers everyone, elimination of the
administrative waste associated with private
insurers, and use of the power of the public entity
to negotiate lower costs. * Does not protect choice
of doctor, hospital, and other providers, as occurs
in a single-payer system, because insurers can
still limit choice to their own approved network of
doctors and providers.

Even the public option favored by the President and
leading Democrats would not achieve these goals, said
NNOC/CNA and PDA. Private insurers would still be able
to cherry pick healthier patients through their
aggressive marketing techniques, with sicker patients
likely being dumped into the public plan. The result is
the public plan would face higher costs and the
likelihood of having to cut or ration services to stay
financially afloat.

PDA and NNOC/CNA are asking people to continue to call
Congress and the White House to insist that single-
payer, and the single-payer bills in Congress, HR 676
in the House and S 703 in the Senate, be given equal
consideration in the legislative review process this
summer.

The two organizations have worked together since early
last year on a variety of healthcare projects,
including pressing the Democratic National Party to go
on record in "support of guaranteed healthcare for all"
at the national convention in Denver, campaigns on
behalf of single-payer candidates across the country in
the fall, and rallies and forums in cities throughout
the U.S.

"The time is ripe for real reform. For our personal
well-being and for the sake of our great nation, now is
the time to institute a real healthcare system instead
of tweaking the patchwork of corporate non-care that
now envelopes us," said NNOC/CNA Co-President Geri
Jenkins, RN.

Jenkins will be attending the ABC White House Town Hall
meeting with President Obama on healthcare reform
tonight, along with Patty Eakin, RN, President of the
Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied
Professionals and an NNOC/CNA board member.

"As long as a profit-motive is the centerpiece of our
system, as it is and will be with healthcare
corporations calling the shots, we entertain no notion
that a public option will be the fix that so many
Americans desperately need and want," Jenkins said.
"Medicare for all is the only solution to what ails
us."

"Regardless of the claims that the majority of people
want a 'public option,' what most people really want is
a system of healthcare that covers everybody, and they
believe the government can do a better job of it than
the healthcare corporations can. It's time for
Congress to stop nibbling around the edges of reform
and provide real leadership toward enacting healthcare
reform for the people, instead of yet another windfall
for wealthy corporations," said Tim Carpenter, national
director of PDA.

The Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign presses forward
with a "Week of Action for Medicare-for-All - H.R.
676." Participating organizations will make calls to
Congress asking representatives to provide leadership
in the healthcare debate. On July 30, the 44th
anniversary of Medicare will be celebrated with a rally
and lobby day in Washington, D.C. ### The California
Nurses Association, and its national arm, the National
Nurses Organizing Committee, is one of the nation's
premiere nurses' organizations and health care unions.
One of the fastest growing health care organizations in
the U.S., CNA/NNOC presently has 80,000 members in 50
states, representing nurses at scores of hospitals,
clinics, and home health agencies.

__________________

This depression

14 states now have double-digit unemployment

New data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that five more states -- Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee -- had crossed into double-digit unemployment, while Michigan's unemployment rate rose from 12.9% to 14.1% in a single month. With 14 U.S. states now in double-digit unemployment and many continuing to see large increases month to month, EPI convened experts from three of the hardest-hit states -- Michigan, Ohio, and Oregon -- who discussed what these staggering job losses had meant for their local economies and shared their concerns that the pain could last long after the recession ends. Michigan's job situation, for instance, has gone from bad to worse with the recent bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, while in Oregon, May unemployment of 12.4% represents a 33-year high.
Economic Policy Institute

Blaming the victims

The current California budget crisis was created by the collapse of the U.S. economy. The economic collapse was caused by the greed of bankers, financiers, and those in the government who enabled these corporate robber barons.
Letter writers and talk show screamers blame school children, teachers, police, firemen, the sick and the elderly.
This is a classic case of scapegoating.

Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracies, Demonization &
Scapegoating
by Chip Berlet
Political Research Associates
June, 2009
Executive summary:
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/toxic2democracy/Tox2Dem-exec.pdf

the full text of the report may be
found here:
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/toxic2democracy/Tox2Dem-1.pdf]

Rants from the Right

Rants from the Right ! Right wing lunacy.
In California we are again experiencing a budget crisis. The basic problem is that our constitution requires a 2/3 vote to increase taxes. Without this limit, our budget problem would go away.
Since we are in a “crisis”, the newspapers are filled with stories on the budget problems and issues. Newspapers now have response pages, e mail lists to respond to articles. Each time there is an article, whether it is a proposal for taxes, to fund the schools, or a cut in services, the newspaper response section will have 200-300 responses. 90% plus will be Right Wing cranks. They repeat anti immigrant or no taxes cant. Often they are not even in response to the article. It is just a chance to blow off.
Has anyone done an analysis of this? What is the effect of this ranting?
You can find the same thing on mainstream blogs or even Huffington Post and TPM whenever the budget is mentioned. The rants from the right outnumber the center and the left at least 20 – 1.
Recall in the 1990’s when the Right gained control of the talk radio, and the left had domination of the internet. At least in the news blogs, this seems no longer the case.
These rants pass for feedback. In a few occasions I have noted specific changes in coverage and concern based upon the numbers of the feedback- even without legitimacy. This stuff passes for feedback, but it is not representative.
For example, in California the anti immigrant stuff is always there. However, now they have begun to complain not only about the cost of immigrants, but the cost of educating the children of immigrants ( U.S. citizens). They seem to have made this an issue by keeping their echo chamber letters flying. Of course Lou Dobbs and others help this.

Question.
Should we be concerned? Or should we ignore this stuff?

Should we try to respond to provide some balance?
For an analysis of some of the problems of scapegoating, see this.

Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracies, Demonization &
Scapegoating
by Chip Berlet
Political Research Associates
June, 2009
Executive summary:
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/toxic2democracy/Tox2Dem-exec.pdf

the full text of the report may be
found here:
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/toxic2democracy/Tox2Dem-1.pdf]

An open letter to Arne Duncan

Rethinking Schools, Summer 2009

From Herbert Kohl

Dear Arne Duncan,

In a recent interview with NEA Today you said of my book 36 Children, "I read [it] in high school … [and] … wrote about his book in one of my college essays, and I talked about the tremendous hope that I feel [and] the challenges that teachers in tough communities face. The book had a big impact on me."

When I wrote 36 Children in 1965 it was commonly believed that African American students, with a few exceptions, simply could not function on a high academic level. The book was motivated by my desire to provide a counter-example, one I had created in my classroom, to this cynical and racist view, and to let the students' creativity and intelligence speak for itself. It was also intended to show how important it was to provide interesting and complex curriculum that integrated the arts and sciences, and utilized the students' own culture and experiences to inspire learning. I discovered then, in my early teaching career, that learning is best driven by ideas, challenges, experiences, and activities that engage students. My experience over the past 45 years has confirmed this.

We have come far from that time in the '60s. Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to produce measurable learning outcomes we have lost sight of the essential motivations to learn that moved my students. Recently I asked a number of elementary school students what they were learning about and the reactions were consistently, "We are learning how to do good on the tests." They did not say they were learning to read.

It is hard for me to understand how educators can claim that they are creating high standards when the substance and content of learning is reduced to the mechanical task of getting a correct answer on a manufactured test. In the panic over teaching students to perform well on reading tests, educators seem to have lost sight of the fact that reading is a tool, an instrument that is used for pleasure and for the acquisition of knowledge and information about the way the world works. The mastery of complex reading skills develops as students grapple with ideas, learn to understand plot and character, and develop and articulate opinions on literature. They also develop through learning history, science, and technology.

Reading is not a series of isolated skills acquired in a sanitized rote-learning environment utilizing "teacher-proof" materials. It develops through interaction with a knowledgeable, active teacher—through dialogue, and critical analysis. It also develops through imaginative writing and research.

It is no wonder that the struggle to coerce all students into mastering high-stakes testing is hardest at the upper grades. The impoverishment of learning taking place in the early grades naturally leads to boredom and alienation from school-based learning. This disengagement is often stigmatized as "attention deficit disorder." The very capacities that No Child Left Behind is trying to achieve are undermined by the way in which the law is implemented.

This impoverishment of learning is reinforced by cutting programs in the arts. The free play of the imagination, which is so crucial for problem-solving and even for entrepreneurship, is discouraged in a basics curriculum lacking in substantial artistic and human content.

Add to this the elimination of physical education in order to clear more time to torture students with mechanical drilling and shallow questioning and it is no wonder that many American students are lethargic when it comes to ideas and actions. I'm sure that NCLB has, in many cases, a direct hand in the development of childhood obesity.

It is possible to maintain high standards for all children, to help students learn how to speak thoughtfully, think through problems, and create imaginative representations of the world as it is and as it could be, without forcing them through a regime of high-stakes testing. Attention has to be paid to the richness of the curriculum itself and time has to be allocated to thoughtful exploration and experimentation. It is easy to ignore content when the sole focus is on test scores.

Your administration has the opportunity, when NCLB comes up for reauthorization, to set the tone, aspirations, and philosophical and moral grounds for reform that develops the intelligence, creativity, and social and personal sensitivity of students. I still hold to the hope you mentioned you took away from 36 Children but I sometimes despair about how we are wasting the current opportunity to create truly effective schools where students welcome the wonderful learning that we as adults should feel privileged to provide them.

I would welcome any opportunity to discuss these and other educational issues with you.

Sincerely, Herbert Kohl

The costs of higher education in California

Investing In California Higher Education Benefits All Californians

By Alberto Torrico
Assembly Majority Leader

Republicans just don’t get it. The rest of us understand that the worst national recession in our lifetime demands a shared sacrifice. But the right wing Republicans continue to fight for big corporations enjoying record profits.

Take archconservative George Runner. He actually suggested on the conservative blog Flash Report that asking oil companies to pay for tapping a California resource would empower Hugo Chavez. That’s ridiculous, but it’s typical of the GOP’s blind allegiance to big business.

It’s time to move beyond such meaningless rhetoric. That’s why I’ve introduced AB 656 to raise much-needed funds for the UC, CSU and California Community College systems through an oil severance tax. We are the only oil-producing state in the nation not to levy this tax. Conservative strongholds like Texas, Alaska and Louisiana, plus 18 other states generate revenue for vital services to their residents. In California, we put the burden on working families.

California’s Republican Governor thinks it is a good idea to close down our state’s oldest public law school, turn away over 20,000 high school seniors from our college campuses, and to eliminate Cal Grants, the funds that allowed me, and countless other Californians, to become the first in our families to attend college.

That’s after 7 years of fee increases, including this year’s that will force University of California undergraduates to shell out an additional $662 and California State University students $306. California’s long-time promise of an affordable higher education is jeopardized by declining state support. are raising concerns that access to affordable higher education is in jeopardy because of declining state support.

AB 656 will empower hundreds of thousands of students by keeping college affordable and making sure they have timely access to courses they need to graduate. Instead of working two jobs and taking years to get their degrees because of reduced course offerings, students would join the workforce more quickly.

AB 656 will reinvigorate our economy by ensuring that a steady stream of well-trained and educated workers keeps flowing into our key industries, our classrooms and our health-care facilities. A recent Public Policy Institute of California study found that if current trends continue, California will face a shortfall of one million college graduates by 2025. That would devastate our economy and the thousands of companies that rely on these institutions to supply skilled workers.
Posted from the California Progress Report.

Testing and the California budget crisis

Lets cancel the High School Exit Exam, lay off teachers, release prisoners early, cut medi cal payments, keep children from health insurance, increase class size, end care for Alzheimer patients, but keep $ 16 million for a sweetheart contract for a very few tenured professors.

In 2006 the legislature and CTC imposed an expensive, redundant accountability system (test) TPA/PACT on teacher preparation – one the state cannot afford in its current budget crisis. I am confident that only a few legislators were even aware that they were creating this accountability fraud. It is a gross injustice to add funding for performance assessment of future teachers into the budget when our schools are having to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, reduce career technical education, cancel transportation, and delay long needed school reforms.
There is no evidence that TPA/PACT are valid measures of good teaching. To the contrary, our experience tells us that one-time all-or-nothing tests like the TPA/PACT are among the poorest possible ways to predict the likelihood that a test-taker will be an excellent California teacher.

Significant evidence of the test has yet to be gathered. For details see the linked article. But, I was able to observe two out of the available 5 local sites.
In each case about 30 students made twenty minute videos to measure (calibrated) to see if they were “good teachers”. In the two cases I observed, about 3 students – total of 6- did not pass on the first administration. Notably, these 6 students were also student teaching and observed by professionals who found their teaching very professional. In the same cohorts, about 6 student teachers were “excellent” in their calibration of their video. Notably, these 6 student teachers were not found to be excellent nor superior in their student teaching as measured by professionals. That is, the test did not eliminate the weak and it did not identify the strong. That is what the state is paying $16 million each year ; $10 million to the CSU and an estimated $6 million to the U.C. U.C. prepares fewer teachers than the CSU. BTW. In future years, the cost of the test (calibration) will be transferred as a fee to the students teachers.
The implementation of TPA assessment was initially contingent upon state funding. But SB 1209 in 2006 removed the funding requirement and required implementation of the TPA throughout the CSU effective July 1, 2008, imposing a new low quality accountability system on teacher preparation programs in addition to the performance assessments currently in place, without providing the funding needed to pay for the new program. The solution is obvious. Rescind this provision of SB 1209.
In times of crisis we should fund important things. This $ 16 million should be cut from the CSU and U.C. budgets and used for other vital, impacted interests.
For a detailed description of the problems of PACT and TPA see here ; http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/
Why are so many people disillusioned with the legislature and the legislative leadership? In part because these kinds of boondoggles exist. And, pure personal contacts, the privileges of the elite, keep them funded while the governor proposes that we close parks and reduce the number of fire fighters available. Legislators and the LAO have been consistently advised of this foolish spending. This is a failure of leadership.

Duane Campbell,
Sacramento

Paying for School Reform

The Selling Of School Reform

Dana Goldstein
The Nation
June 15, 2009
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/goldstein

It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: Al
Sharpton, Newt Gingrich and Mike Bloomberg--all failed
presidential hopefuls--arrive at the White House for a
joint meeting with President Barack Obama. Upon leaving
the Oval Office, they convene a press conference on the
White House lawn.

But far from tearing one another to bits or sniping at
the man whose job they coveted, these unlikely
comrades--a self-appointed civil rights spokesman, a
former Republican Speaker of the House and a
billionaire New York City mayor--were in total
agreement. The topic of the meeting? Schools.

"You have to hold people accountable, and those that
perform should be the ones that teach our kids, and
those that don't, unfortunately our children are just
too important," Bloomberg said, referring to his
support for teacher merit pay.

Sharpton intoned, "The nation's future is at stake, our
children [are] at stake."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan was there to lend the
administration's support. "There's a real sense of
economic imperative," he said. "We have to educate our
way [to] a better economy."

Though the media portrayed the meeting as one among
"strange bedfellows," in fact Sharpton, Gingrich and
Bloomberg are all on the same side of the education
policy debate roiling the Democratic Party. The three
are spokesmen for the Education Equality Project (EEP),
an advocacy group that has attracted widespread media
attention since its June 2008 launch, in large part
because of its bipartisan call for policies like merit
pay and the expansion of the charter school sector.
With the support of rising star Democrats like Newark,
New Jersey, Mayor Cory Booker and Washington, DC, Mayor
Adrian Fenty, the EEP and such allied groups as the
political action committee Democrats for Education
Reform--have openly pushed back against the influence
of teachers unions, community groups and teachers
colleges over national education policy. Proclaiming
themselves "reformers," they often borrow their
strategies from the private sector, and they believe
urban public schools must be subjected to more free-
market competition.

On the other side of the divide is a group of
progressive policy experts and educators who published
a manifesto during campaign season called A Broader,
Bolder Approach to Education. They believe teachers and
schools will not be able to eradicate the achievement
gap between middle-class white children and everyone
else until a wide array of social services are
available to poor families. They envision schools as
community centers, offering families healthcare, meals
and counseling.

Theoretically, there is no reason all these people
can't work together. Some charter schools, after all,
have had extraordinary success in raising the
achievement of low-income students--even, in some
cases, with the cooperation of teachers unions. Many
younger teachers appear enthusiastic about performance-
based pay, although there is no evidence from the
cities that have tried it, like Denver, that it
improves student achievement. Yet the single-
mindedness--some would say obsessiveness--of the
reformers' focus on these specific policy levers puts
off more traditional Democratic education experts and
unionists. As they see it, with the vast majority of
poor children educated in traditional public schools,
education reform must focus on improving the management
of the public system and the quality of its services--
not just on supporting charter schools. What's more,
social science has long been clear on the fact that
poverty and segregation influence students' academic
outcomes at least as much as do teachers and schools.

Obama's decision to invite representatives of only one
side of this divide to the Oval Office confirmed what
many suspected: the new administration--despite
internal sympathy for the "broader, bolder approach"--
is eager to affiliate itself with the bipartisan flash
and pizazz around the new education reformers. The risk
is that in doing so the administration will alienate
supporters with a more nuanced view of education
policy. What's more, critics contend that free-market
education reform is a top-down movement that is
struggling to build relationships with parents and
community activists, the folks who typically support
local schools and mobilize neighbors on their behalf.

So keenly aware of this deficit are education reformers
that a number of influential players were involved in
the payment of $500,000 to Sharpton's nearly broke
nonprofit, the National Action Network, in order to
procure Sharpton as a national spokesman for the EEP.
And Sharpton's presence has unquestionably benefited
the EEP coalition, ensuring media attention and
grassroots African-American crowds at events like the
one held during Obama's inauguration festivities, at
Cardozo High School in Washington.

Read the entire piece:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/goldstein

The Troubled Democrats

The Trouble With Democrats
Reclaiming the Economy for the People

By William Greider
The Nation
June 5, 2009

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090622/greider

The governing party faced an awkward dilemma. People
were hurting and furious at the government's generous
bailouts for banks. But how could the Democrats do
something for the folks without upsetting their friends
and patrons in the banking industry? Democrats think
they found a way. They are enacting a series of
measures described as "breakthrough" reform and
"unprecedented" defeat for the bankers. Only these
achievements are more accurately understood as "reform
lite." The house is on fire and Democrats brought a
garden hose.

The Democratic Party is changing in some promising
ways, but what's impressive is how much it has not
changed. Does that sound harsh? I am relying on private
judgments from Washington players regarded as the
"white hats" on this subject--consumer lobbyists and
other public-interest reformers, who for years have
labored in frustration to enact laws that would restore
equity and honest relationships to the out-of-control
financial system. These organizations mostly endorse
the Democrats' efforts and celebrate their "victories."
But a few minutes of private conversation reveals their
doubt and disappointment. "It's a good bill," they will
say, then after enumerating the shortcomings add, "It's
better than nothing."

"This has to be on background, OK?" one of the
reformers said. "This crisis brought down the world
economy and yet Congress still hasn't passed a bill
making sure it doesn't happen again."

Julia Gordon, a lawyer with the Center for Responsible
Lending, did not seek anonymity. "We have reached the
moment to ask ourselves Rabbi Hillel's question: if not
now, when?" Gordon said. "I fear we are letting this
crucial moment pass without putting forward-looking
rules in place to fundamentally change how mortgages
are made and prevent predatory lending. Plus, when we
look back at the foreclosure tsunami that devastated so
many families, we're going to be ashamed that we did
not fix the bankruptcy code to permit mortgage
modification. That move alone could have prevented more
than a million foreclosures, and while I predict we
will revisit the issue in the future, it will be like
closing the barn door after the horse has died."

If not now, when? That question ought to haunt the
Democratic Party and President Obama, who has been
missing in action himself on key issues. Congressional
Democrats are responding to this epic conflagration
with the same risk-avoidance tactics they learned
during many years in minority status. In those days,
they could always blame right-wing Republicans for
blocking their good intentions. But whom do the Dems
blame now that they have the White House and fifty-nine
votes in the Senate and a seventy-eight-seat majority
in the House? Their standard explanation for not doing
more is, "We didn't have the votes." So when might we
expect Democrats to achieve more? When they have eighty
votes in the Senate?

The party's ideological intentions are being defined
with greater clarity in these new circumstances, and so
are the President's. It's still early, but the
implications are ominous for other issues. If Democrats
are reluctant to disturb the power of other major
interests, it seems improbable that fundamental change
will occur on healthcare, energy conversion or the
restoration of work and wages. The problem now is the
Democrats, not the Republicans. The party aids and
protects its free-roaming entrepreneurial politicians
and does not punish those who undermine the party's
larger promises. When Republicans were in charge, they
enforced party loyalty with Stalinist discipline.
Democrats are the party of safe incumbents, weak
convictions.

The much-celebrated "Credit Cardholders' Bill of
Rights" is a fresh example of how the Democratic Party
tries to have it both ways--avoiding the tough votes
while mollifying the folks. The credit card reform
measure imposes new rules on the industry and does away
with many of the most outrageous gimmicks bankers use
to extract more money from debtors. Banks cannot raise
interest rates retroactively on old credit card
balances or pile on hidden fees or fail to give advance
notice for rate increases. These and other changes are
worthy.

The achievement seems less courageous if you know that
Congress was largely ratifying the regulatory rules
already adopted by the Federal Reserve last year. Or
that the legislation gives the industry another nine
months to gouge their customers before the new rules go
into effect. Or that Visa and MasterCard, Citigroup and
JPMorgan Chase are free to raise future interest rates
to the sky--without limit. That is the industry's
intention, as bank lobbyists reported after the bill
was passed.

American Usury

One of the fundamental issues that party managers
wished to avoid was the scandal of American usury.
Usury is the ancient sin of charging inflated interest
rates sure to ruin the borrowers. It is considered
immoral by Judaism, Christianity and Islam because
usury involves the powerful using their wealth to
ensnare weak and defenseless borrowers. The classic
usurer offers an impossible choice that debtors cannot
easily refuse. If they reject the terms of the loan,
they will not be able to pay the rent or buy
necessities. If they accept the usurious interest
rates, their debts will accumulate until they are
bankrupted (at which point the creditors claim their
property). No civilized society can endure in such
conditions.

Usury used to be illegal in the United States but it
was "decriminalized" in 1980--the dawn of financial
deregulation. A Democratic president and Congress
repealed all interest-rate controls and the federal law
prohibiting usury. Thirty years later, American society
is permeated with usurious practices--credit cards
charging 30 percent and higher, subprime mortgages and
other forms of predatory lending, the notorious
"payday" loans that charge desperate working people an
effective interest rate of 500 percent or more.
Businesses, especially smaller firms, are also prey to
usury in less direct ways.

Needing credit to survive, they submit to the
creditor's demands and are often weakened as a result,
shedding workers and services that shrink customers and
income.

The straightforward way to stop usury is to enact a
hard legal limit on the interest rates creditors can
charge borrowers. In the House, several legislators
introduced interest-rate caps, but party leaders would
not let the issue get a roll call vote. Rep. Maurice
Hinchey of New York and co-sponsors proposed an
interest-rate cap of 18 percent, the same ceiling
enacted years ago for credit unions. "Offering the
amendment raised a lot of anxiety on the part of a lot
of people," Hinchey said.

"It was withdrawn because it had no possibility of
success and it would have put a number of people in a
tough situation. We had to back off."

A roll call on usury would have compelled legislators
to choose between their constituents and their bankers.
Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland proposed a tougher
ceiling on interest rates, but the House rules
committee rejected her amendment. "Our constituents are
so angry with the banks," she observed, "siding with
credit-card companies would not be helpful to me, and I
expect that's true in other districts." Bankers are
contributors, so this is what members call "a money
vote." A consumer lobbyist explained. "Let's face it,"
he said. "The main reason lots of members get on the
House Financial Services Committee is because they want
to raise money from the financial industry."

In the Senate, Dick Durbin of Illinois, the majority
whip who rounds up votes for the party, introduced his
own usury bill--a cap of 36 percent including the non-
interest fees and charges. Durbin's bill also empowered
state governments to set lower limits. The Consumer
Federation of America endorsed it, but the consumer
lobbyists asked Durbin not to have a roll call on his
measure because it might reveal their weakness.

Nevertheless, the redoubtable Bernie Sanders of Vermont
demanded a vote on his bill--an interest-rate cap of 15
percent.

"When banks are charging 30 percent interest rates,
they are not making credit available," Sanders said.
"They are engaged in loan sharking." Sanders lost, 33
to 60. Twenty-one Democrats voted with the sharks.
Senators Carper, Cantwell, Byrd, Bingaman, Bayh,
Baucus, Akaka, Warner, Tester, Stabenow, Specter,
Shaheen, Pryor, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Murray,
Lincoln, Landrieu, Kaufman, Johnson, Hagan.

The scandal of "payday" lending is being confronted by
numerous state legislatures, but the issue stalled out
in Congress. The industry pursued a race-based lobbying
strategy that targeted black and Hispanic
representatives with this pitch--poor people need these
loans; don't mess with them. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of
Illinois proposed a bill that usurers found
acceptable--an interest rate cap of 390 percent.

Standing With the Sharks

Perhaps the most revealing moment for Democratic
timidity was the Senate roll call to authorize
bankruptcy judges to intervene on home foreclosures and
reduce the burden for failing homeowners. If the
bankers refused to make a deal, the debtors could take
them into bankruptcy court and hope for better terms.
This single reform would shift the balance of power
modestly from creditors to debtors and save at least
1.5 million families from foreclosure, reformers
estimated. The measure passed easily in the House, but
was defeated by the Senate.

Bankruptcy reform lost because twelve Democrats joined
the Republicans to vote for bankers and against
embattled families. Senators Baucus, Bennet, Byrd,
Carper, Dorgan, Johnson, Landrieu, Lincoln, Ben Nelson,
Pryor, Specter, Tester.

Dick Durbin could not conceal the bitter aftertaste. He
told a hometown radio interviewer: "Hard to believe in
a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of
the banks created--they are still the most powerful
lobby on Capitol Hill. And frankly, they own the
place."

Durbin's disappointment may have included the former
Illinois senator whom he had championed for president.
Barack Obama took a walk on reform. Last year as a
candidate, Obama declined to support the bankruptcy
provision for the financial-bailout legislation, but he
promised reform groups he would support it if elected.
The White House wouldn't let reformers include it in
the stimulus package or in Obama's first budget. The
White House suggested the issue could proceed as a
stand-alone measure (guaranteed to fail). On this
important reform, the president stands with the sharks.

The Democratic Party ignores its left-liberal-
progressive base with some regularity because it knows
it can. Politicians understand they will suffer no
consequences afterward. The galaxy of mediating
organizations, including organized labor, that
surrounds and supports the party may stomp and holler,
but they do not attempt any retribution that might
alter their relationship with power. Reform
organizations will not withdraw their support, either
money or rank-and-file voters. Nor will they seek to
punish any of the wayward Democrats who regularly vote
against them with opposition at the next election. The
"white hat" reformers are Washington insiders
themselves, with a seat at the table and influence on
the substance of the party's agenda. They do not want
to put their status at risk. Politicians know this from
long experience. So do the reformers.

The warped dynamics of the Democratic Party may have
sufficed when the GOP was ascendant and the goal was
restoring a Democratic majority. But now the majority
party resembles a dysfunctional family, badly in need
of outside intervention. I say this with sympathy,
having known and admired many of the reform activists
for many years. Some of them are suffering from a
political version of the Stockholm syndrome. Their good
intentions are brutally compromised by identifying with
the limited imagination and nerve of the Democratic
Party.

In some ways, the politicians are prisoners too--
captives of the money politics and the expensive mass-
marketing that requires them to raise so much money and
thus rely on the moneyed interests. Representatives and
senators know how the system works and what they need
to do to survive. Now and then, they may try to win one
for the folks, but mostly they are resigned to the
confinements of the status quo. So long as activist
groups will make no attempt to break out of this
pattern or penalize incumbents for disloyalty, the
party will continue to stiff the faithful.

Moral Awakening

Given all the adversities facing the country, I
conclude that meaningful "intervention" is plausible
only if it originates with people at large who are more
distant from power. I envision the intrusion coming
from many "independent formations" free to ignore
Washington's insider routines and mobilized by citizens
on behalf of their own convictions, their common-sense
ideas of what needs to be accomplished. This
alternative path is a central theme of my new book,
Come Home, America. I describe (somewhat wishfully) how
self-directed organizations might develop the power to
break through regular politics and overcome the usual
barriers.

These groups could function, not as a third party nor
as standard "issue" advocates, but as a mixture of
these capabilities. They could act like free-roaming
guerillas who educate and agitate; like a political
party that selectively destabilizes safe-seat
incumbents by entering party primaries or running
independent challengers; like a representative
organization that can demand political relations
through direct confrontations or even civil
disobedience. This development sounds implausible, I
know, especially in Washington. But our crisis demands
a more aggressive response from citizens--something
that threatens the power of both parties and makes them
insecure.

As it happens, a rough facsimile of what I envisioned
is arising now in the politics of financial reform. A
network of fourteen community organizations, based in
cities from Boston to Washington, DC, and across North
America, has come together in alliance and intends to
force a moral awakening on the narrow thinking of the
status quo. These citizens are developing a political-
action agenda around one theme--usury--as the efficient
expression of the abuses and injustices associated with
banking and finance. These are interfaith organizations
affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation and
composed of citizens who are white and black, affluent
and working poor, whose local organizations are based
in churches and synagogues, Catholic, Protestant,
Jewish, Muslim and others.

Usually, their political action is local and succeeds
regularly in building relations with public officials
that produce real change in communities. This time,
given the crisis, these IAF groups are attempting
something they have not done before--building the voice
and influence to join the national debate and change
its terms. I sat in on one of their organizing meetings
near Baltimore and was asked to contribute my views on
the shape of the problem.

"Are you ready to be born again? And again? And again?
Do you have the imagination? Do you believe it?" The
call was from the Rev. Hurmon Hamilton of the Roxbury
Presbyterian Church in Boston, and he inspired the 100
or so community leaders. "Faith is the substance of
things hoped for," Hamilton declared, "the evidence of
things unseen."

Outlawing Usury

The Rev. David Brawley of East Brooklyn Baptist
described a preliminary statement of basic principles.
"Reasonable interest rates," he said. "In this
financial culture, the nation will return to a time-
honored, indeed ancient, practice: the law against
usury. Financial institutions and mechanisms that
participate in this culture will agree to a maximum of
9 percent interest or so. This was the usual state-
mandated rate before the repeal."

Brawley described other principles with radical
implications. "The lender holds the loan," he
explained. "The financial institution that makes a loan
holds the loan for its duration. The borrower and
lender enter into a long-term relationship that ends
when the loan is fully repaid. This is the fundamental
starting point for any return to accountability." That
statement of principle challenges the market
securitization of mortgages that falsely claimed to
reduce risk by dispersing it among many investors. The
process instead left no one responsible for sound
lending and thus multiplied the costs of failure.

Brawley's final principle was perhaps most threatening
to the existing order. "The federal government insists
on these core characteristics as the criteria for all
further bailout funding. Banks that wish to borrow from
the government must accept these simple standards [and]
provide consumers with an alternative to the current
monopoly of financial transactions dominated and still
dictated by the same fifty financial institutions that
caused the crisis."

In other words, the social standard of usurious
practices should define which banks and financial firms
are eligible to participate in all forms of government
aid and protection. Why should taxpayers finance the
usurers who are injuring the society? The government's
undiscriminating approach to aiding banks implicates
everyone in supporting the usury. So do the banks and
brokerages that collect people's savings and channel
the money into usurious practices that produce greater
returns by ruining more borrowers. The moral standard
poses difficult questions for everyone, not just
bankers and politicians.

Arnold Graf, national organizer for the IAF, argues
that the moral question can lead people to confront a
deeper debate about the future. "What is the kind of
society we want to have?" Graf asked. "That's really
what we want to talk about--transforming the society.
We're not going to get transformation form the
president and Congress. It can only come from the
people themselves."

These IAF organizations expect to try different tactics
to spread the message and engage the people with power
who make decisions. That means directly confronting
elected representatives but also the banking
institutions with famous names. The alliance hopes the
moral principles will mobilize people of faith but also
students and workers and investors. Following the
example of the civil rights movement, people of
conscience have to find ways to turn up the heat on the
established order and discomfort the silent citizens
who are passive and indifferent. This effort, Graf
assumes, will probably take years, not months. Leaders
of the community organizations are aware of the risks.
They are attempting a leap into the unknown and they
might fail. No one listens, nothing changes. They
accept the risk because they too have asked Hillel's
question. If not now, when?

____

National affairs correspondent William Greider has been
a political journalist for more than thirty-five years.
A former Rolling Stone and Washington Post editor, he
is the author of the national bestsellers One World,
Ready or Not, Secrets of the Temple, Who Will Tell The
People, The Soul of Capitalism (Simon & Schuster) and,
most recently, Come Home, America

________________________________

California can cut school budgets $6 Billion

June 3, 2009
Obama officials say California can cut $6 billion from schools
California can cut $6 billion from education through June 2010 without jeopardizing federal funds after the Obama administration on Wednesday approved the state's revised application for stimulus money.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's finance officials said last month that they mistakenly assigned $2 billion to California's education spending in 2005-06 when the money was actually spent in 2006-07. The error played a big factor in California's current budget discussion because the state cannot spend less on education now than it did in 2005-06 as a condition of receiving stimulus money.
Under the state's initial application, California could only have cut about $2 billion from the state's education budget through June 2010. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month proposed cutting $6 billion from K-14 schools to shrink a $24.3 billion budget gap, alarming education advocates.
Schwarzenegger aides said that they mistakenly assigned $2 billion from 2006-07 to 2005-06 because technically the money was meant to "settle up" reduced education payments in 2005-06.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, said Tuesday that they had no position on whether the state's new application should have been approved. But Steinberg said Democrats were not willing to cut $6 billion from schools.
School groups lobbied the Obama administration and questioned the convenient timing of Schwarzenegger officials discovering they had made an error favorable to more budget cuts right as they needed to make additional school reductions.
The Department of Education on Wednesday said that it concluded California's application revisions "are consistent with the manner by which state appropriations for 'settle up payments' are treated for accounting purposes."
Bob Wells, Association of California School Administrators executive director, said, "It's just a shame. I think it pretty much gives the green light to the state to continue cutting schools."
Wells said $6 billion in cuts would result in more teacher layoffs and larger class sizes. Schwarzenegger proposed giving school districts the flexibility to reduce the school year by up to seven and a half days in order to save money.
"The governor is fighting for California's fair share of Recovery Act dollars and is pleased that the administration approved our application," said Schwarzenegger press secretary Aaron McLear.
Categories: State budget
Capitol Alert. Sac Bee

School accountability and the language of public relations

Accountability and the Slippery Language of Public Relations
An Essay Review by Susan Ohanian

“Certainly language is a good place to
start reform. We could start by admitting that
the claims made for transparency are at best
laughable and hypocritical and at worst
deliberately deceptive.” Susan Ohanian.


Talk about the eye of the beholder! The authors view this scenario as something
to be desired. I am appalled by the casual assumptions presented in this positivist,
technocratic view of teacher decision-making. Such “planning” assumes:
• state standards cause learning
• achievement tests test those standards
• student scores on achievement test reveal something important about what
a student knows
• students learn what teachers teach


Accountability and the Slippery Language of Public Relations:
An Essay Review

Susan Ohanian

Kowalski, Theodore J. & Lasley II, Thomas J. (Ed.) (2008)
Handbook of Data-Based Decision Making in Education. NY:
Routledge

Pp. vii + 494 ISBN 0-415-96504-7
$90 (papercover) $198 (hardcover) $72 (Kindle)

Citation: Ohanian, Susan. (2009, June 5). Accountability and the slippery
language of public relations: An essay review. Education Review, 12(7).
Retrieved [date] from http://edrev.asu.edu/essays/v12n7index.html


Accountability and the Slippery Language of Public Relations
An Essay Review by Susan Ohanian

http://edrev.asu.edu/essays/v12n7.pdf

Progressives Challenging Obama

Representative Donna Edwards provides a look into the Congressional Progressive Caucus and urges progressives to speak up and challenge the Obama presidency to deliver innovative and powerful legislation. Edwards discussed the state of the presidency at the "Obama @ 100: A Progress Report from The Nation" forum April 22 in Washington, DC
For more video of the discussion please watch Obama@100 .
--Gabriela Resto-Montero

Technology: Hang your head in shame

California's elected officials, both the Governor and the Legislature, should hang their heads in shame.
This is an indication of failure to provide resources for education.

California falls behind in Internet access
California appears to be falling behind the curve on many indicators of socioeconomic wellbeing these days, and the Census Bureau has added another -- access to the Internet, which is no small irony in a state that has spawned so much communications technology.
Although California is slightly above the national average in its residents living in homes with Internet access at 69 percent, according to a new data report, it's well below the national average in individual access to the Internet.
The Census Bureau found that in 2007, just 60.9 percent of the state's residents accessed the Internet from any location, the 16th lowest rate among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The highest level of such access was found in Alaska, 76.1 percent, while the lowest was 51.5 percent in Mississippi.
The full report, which analyzes Internet access by various demographic and economic factors, as well as geographic ones, is available here.
Source: Capitol Alert, Sacramento Bee

Budget cuts to schools

Schools Chief Jack O'Connell Issues
Statement on Newly Proposed Education Cuts
ANAHEIM — State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell today issued the following comment in response to Governor Schwarzenegger's proposal to add an additional $680 million in cuts to public education:
'With his proposal to reduce spending for public education by another $680 million in the 2009-2010 budget year, the Governor is now asking schools to make more than $1.4 billion in cuts during the last few weeks of the school year, and close to $4 billion in the next. If these proposals become a reality, we will see the dismantling of vital education programs up and down our state. Already, the Los Angeles Unified School District has eliminated summer school. Classroom teachers are being let go. Class sizes are swelling. Regular school maintenance will become a distant memory.

"'While I know that teachers, administrators, school staff, school board members, and parents will make valiant efforts to continue to focus on improving student achievement and closing the achievement gap, these devastating cuts would make their job exponentially harder, and jeopardize the progress we have seen over the past decade.

"I recognize that California's budget shortfall continues to grow deeper. However, it is critical that we focus on ways to protect and preserve Californians' top priority — public education. We protect our collective economic viability by educating students to their full potential and preparing them to compete in the global economy. Failing to do so is not worthy of our great state."

Note: The economic crisis was caused by banking and finance capital being irresponsible. It was not caused by California students, teachers, police and public service workers.

Will the legislature listen?

My Assembly person is Allyson Huber. This is her first term. She won a very narrow victory. On her web site she says that she wants to hear from her constituents. I have sent her a prior copy of this and have not received a response. So, I am going public.
BTW. My Senator is Darrell Stienberg. I have tried to get his attention to this $10 million for over two years. It is interesting how friendly candidates are during campaigns and how distant they are after winning.
But, another election is on the way.

Assemblywoman Allyson Huber,
California Assembly June 1,2009

The budget reform proposals failed and the legislature has the lowest approval ratings in modern history. Perhaps it is time to listen.
Here is $10 million which I previously pointed out was available.
In 2006 the legislature and CTC imposed an expensive, redundant accountability system TPA/PACT on teacher preparation – one the state cannot afford in its current budget crisis. I am confident that only a few legislators were even aware that they were creating this accountability fraud. It is a gross injustice to add funding for performance assessment of future teachers into the budget when our schools are having to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, reduce career technical education, cancel transportation, and delay long needed school reforms.
The CTC has a session on these accountability programs on Friday and they do not recognize that any problems exists.
The legislature will be faced with ending health insurance for the young, increasing class sizes in k-12, laying off teachers, and violate contracts rather than examine this sweetheart deal for the self promotion of a few tenured profs.
There is no evidence that TPA/PACT are valid measures of good teaching. To the contrary, our experience tells us that one-time all-or-nothing tests like the TPA/PACT are among the poorest possible ways to predict the likelihood that a test-taker will be an excellent California teacher. The implementation of TPA assessment was initially contingent upon state funding. But SB 1209 in 2006 removed the funding requirement and required implementation of the TPA throughout the CSU effective July 1, 2008, imposing a new low quality accountability system on teacher preparation programs in addition to the performance assessments currently in place, without providing the funding needed to pay for the new program. The solution is obvious. Rescind this provision of SB 1209.
In times of crisis we should fund important things. This $10 million should be cut from the CSU budget and used for other vital, impacted interests. A similar amount is in the U.C. budget.

For a detailed description of the problems of PACT and TPA see; http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/

I remain available to discuss the misguided financing of PACT and TPA with your office. I encourage you to use your elected position to act responsibly in this budget crisis.

Dr. Duane E. Campbell
Professor of Education (Emeritus)
Sacramento, Ca.

Are we all socialists now?

Business Week
News Analysis May 22, 2009, 3:20PM

Socialism? Hardly, Say Socialists
Under Obama, socialism chatter has permeated the media in 2009. But beyond
sound bites, what is socialism?

By Moira Herbst

The first months of the Obama Administration have given rise to abundant
talk about a U.S. drift into socialism. "We Are All Socialists Now," a
Newsweek cover declared in February. On May 20 the Republican National
Committee approved a resolution calling on Democrats to "stop pushing our
country toward socialism." The resolution was predicated on the idea that,
under Obama, Democrats are following the path of Western European
countries in advocating expansive social safety nets and deeper government
involvement in the economy.

Some conservative commentators have even likened Obama's economic stimulus
and regulatory initiatives to a Soviet-style takeover of the country. In
February, syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Obama of waging war
on capitalism. "That's his objective. He wants to destroy capitalism,"
Limbaugh told a caller. "He wants to establish a very powerful socialist
government, authoritarian. He wants control of the economy."

But real Socialists would vigorously disagree. They say if the Obama
Administration were establishing a true socialist state, we'd have at
least a $15-an-hour minimum wage (instead of the current $6.55 federal
minimum) and 30-hour workweeks. Every American would be guaranteed
employment and health-care coverage. Oh, and homeless people would be
occupying vacant office buildings in cities and vacant McMansions in the
suburbs.

In fact, many Americans appear to be confused about what socialism
actually is. In a poll of 1,000 adults conducted Apr. 6-7, Rasmussen
Reports found that 53% of Americans said they prefer capitalism to
socialism, while 20% said they prefer socialism. More than one-quarter,
27%, said they're not sure which system is better. Another poll conducted
this month by ConservativeHQ.com found that 70% of self-identified
conservatives consider Obama's political philosophy "Socialist" or
"Marxist," with 11% calling it "Communist."

Socialists say the policies Obama has pursued are hallmarks of "democratic
capitalist" states, not socialist ones. "None of the societies of Western
Europe are socialist, but the political influence of their strong Labor,
Social Democratic, and Socialist parties make their form of capitalism
much more humane than our own," says Frank Llewellyn, national director of
the New York-based Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest
U.S. Socialist party.

Obama: Saving Capitalism from Itself?

As with every political ideology, there's no discrete, tidy explanation of
what socialism means. "There have been diverse socialist movements that
have pursued different programs," says Frances Fox Piven, a professor of
political science at City University of New York (CUNY) and an honorary
chair of the DSA. "What they have shared is an effort to overcome the
historical problem with democracies that separate political governance
from the economy, often with a rigid wall. Socialists have tried to breach
that wall in the interest of democracy, or expanding the idea that the
people shall rule."

Karl Marx called socialism the "revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat," the working class seizing power and replacing a political,
economic, and social system controlled by the bourgeoisie, or the
propertied class. Such a reordering denotes "an association where the
development of each is the basis of the free development of all," Marx
wrote in 1848 in The Communist Manifesto.

Socialists say that far from creating a state in which workers rule, the
Obama team is instead scrambling to rescue and preserve capitalism. Sherry
Wolf, an activist with the Chicago-based U.S. branch of the International
Socialist Organization (ISO), scoffs at the idea that the U.S. is at the
dawn of a socialist era. "What Marxists mean by socialism is different
from what Rush Limbaugh means," she says. "We believe the class that
produces the wealth should own and control that wealth. That's a far cry
from what's happening now. The state is propping up banks, mortgage, and
insurance companies, while the lives of working people are torn apart by
foreclosures, evictions, and unemployment. It's an effort to save global
capitalism from its own excesses."

Wolf's group sees itself as "revolutionary," meaning it advocates not
incremental changes but rather a "total transformation of society and
political economy." By definition then, actions by a U.S. President like
Obama—tighter regulations, tax law revisions, and additional emergency
unemployment assistance—are not paving a path toward socialism. "Whoever
runs U.S. Inc. is in no position to advocate for the interests of the
class of people who produce the wealth," Wolf says. "There is really no
way for the President to deliver socialism to the people; it has to be
fought [for] and won by the workers themselves."

"A Hedge Fund Democrat"

Another group, called the Socialist Party USA, based in New York, refuses
to endorse any Democrat or Republican politician. The party, founded in
1973 when the Socialist Party of America split, wants a wholesale
reorientation of the economy so that the focus is on production "for need,
not profit." Billy Wharton, editor of the Socialist magazine for the
1,500-member party, wrote in a March Washington Post column that his group
considers Obama "a hedge-fund Democrat—one of a generation of neo-liberal
politicians firmly committed to free-market policies." "You see [Obama]
operating as a hedge fund Democrat on health care now," Wharton says. "He
blocked advocates of a single-payer system from presenting their case to
the Senate Finance Committee."

Not all Socialists denounce mainstream parties wholesale. Unlike the ISO
and the Socialist Party USA, the DSA, with about 7,000 members, is willing
to work within existing social and political structures toward incremental
change. The DSA is critical of Democrats, calling them the "second most
capitalistic party." Says Llewellyn, the DSA's national director: "We have
a long-term view of protecting people from the devastating power that
capitalism is capable of inflicting. We think the role of government and
civil society is to curtail and eventually eliminate the power of
capitalism to inflict that destruction." At the same time, Llewellyn says,
"we recognize that capitalism is capable of producing tremendous growth,"
which the DSA doesn't oppose.

But even to the more inclusive DSA, Obama is no socialist. "The discussion
of socialism that has appeared in the media is surreal," says Llewellyn.
"Nobody in their right mind would think Obama is a socialist if they knew
anything about the meaning of the word. Obama is acting as Roosevelt did,
trying to save capitalism from itself."

If the U.S. is not operating under a socialist regime, what would it look
like if it were? The DSA's Llewellyn says that for one, health care would
be universal and guaranteed, unlike the less comprehensive, market-based
plans the Obama Administration is floating. The Socialist Party USA takes
its platform a step further, calling for a full employment policy with a
$15 minimum wage, 30-hour workweeks, and six weeks' annual paid vacation
for all workers. The ISO would immediately end foreclosures and allow
homeless people to occupy vacant homes and buildings.

Recovering from Lax Regulation

On Mar. 6 a New York Times reporter asked Obama whether his domestic
policies indicated the President is a socialist. Obama laughed, replying
"the answer would be no." In a later telephone call to the paper, Obama
said enormous taxpayer sums had been injected into the financial system
before his election. "The fact that we've had to take these extraordinary
measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference,
but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant
risk-taking has precipitated a crisis," Obama told the newspaper.

Even if the description of "socialist" isn't accurate for the current
state of U.S. affairs, look for the term to reemerge in coming months as
the battle over health-care reform quickens. Earlier this month, for
example, U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said Democrats are
on a "march toward socialized medicine." Meanwhile, Socialists consider
Obama a stalwart capitalist. Says Wolf at the ISO: "We haven't seen
Comrade Obama at a meeting."

Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek in New York.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2009/db20090522_329825.htm

California's budget problem: Prop. 13

Harold Meyerson: Prop. 13 opened state's road to insolvency
ShareThis
By Harold Meyerson
Published: Friday, May. 29, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 15A
To understand why the woes of California's economy threaten the nation's economy, we must understand the state's road to insolvency. The Age of Reagan did not commence with the Great Communicator's inauguration in 1981. For its real beginning, we need to go back to June 1978, when Californians went to the polls and enacted Proposition 13.
By passing Howard Jarvis' malign initiative, California voters reduced the Golden State to baser metal. Under Republican Gov. Earl Warren and Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, California epitomized the postwar American dream. Its public schools, from kindergarten through Berkeley and UCLA, were the nation's finest; its roads and aqueducts the most efficient at moving cars and water – the state's lifeblood – to their destinations. All this was funded by some of the nation's highest taxes, which fell in good measure on the state's flourishing banks and corporations.

Amid the inflation of the late 1970s, however, the California model began to crumple. As incomes and property values rose, Sacramento's tax revenue soared – but the parsimonious Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, neither spent those funds nor rebated them. With the state sitting on a $5 billion surplus, frustrated Californians grumped to the polls and passed Proposition 13, which rolled back and limited property taxes – effectively destroying the funding base of local governments and school districts, which thereafter depended largely on Sacramento for their revenue. Ranked fifth among the states in per-pupil spending during the 1950s and '60s, California sank to Mississippi-like levels – the mid-40s in rank – by the 1990s.

Since 1978, state and local government in California has been funded more by taxes on personal income and sales. Bank and corporation taxes have been steadily reduced. In the current recession, with state unemployment at 11 percent, tax revenue has fallen off a cliff.

But the problem with Proposition 13 wasn't merely that it reduced revenue. It also made it very difficult to increase revenue.

Raising taxes now requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, though in 47 other states, a simple majority suffices. California has become overwhelmingly Democratic in the past two decades, but Republicans have managed to retain footholds – representing just over one-third of the districts – in both houses of the Legislature.
The conservative backlash of 1978 also swept into the Legislature a proto-Reaganistic generation of Republicans, later dubbed "the Cavemen." Compared with today's GOP state legislators, though, the Cavemen look like Diderot's Encyclopedists. The current Republican crop has refused in good times as well as bad to raise business or other taxes. (Increasing the tobacco tax, for instance, has failed each of the past 14 times it has come up for a vote.)

Abetted by little local Limbaughs who inflame Republican brains, they protest that the state already has the nation's highest taxes. In fact, California ranks 18th among the states in percentage of personal income paid to state government, and its presumably beleaguered wealthiest 1 percent, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, pay just 7.4 percent of their income to the state while the poorest pay 10.2 percent.

But the myth of soak-the-rich high taxation persists among Republicans – so much so that the GOP front-runner to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger in next year's gubernatorial election, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, is calling for cuts in business tax rates, even though the state is staring at a $24.3 billion deficit that it somehow has to close. In short order, unless the federal government steps in with a bridge loan, the state will throw 940,000 poor children off its health-care rolls and lay off tens of thousands of teachers.

Because California is so much larger than any other state, and its unemployment rate is among the nation's highest, the collapse of its capacity to spend will counteract some of the effect of the federal stimulus and retard the nation's recovery – much as its aerospace slump retarded the recovery of the mid-1990s. The Obama administration ignores California's plight at its own – and the nation's – peril.

The nation's banks are stuck with so much bad paper from California mortgages gone awry that a huge contraction in state spending would make their assets even more toxic. In the short term, the only way to avoid a further downturn may be a federal loan to the state.

A more permanent, homegrown solution to California's woes (and it may take a state constitutional convention to get it) would require the state to eliminate the two-thirds threshold for enacting taxes, to repeal Proposition 13's freeze on the value of commercial properties (some of which are still assessed at their 1978 levels) and to end the process of ballot-box budgeting through the initiative process, which is now more dominated by monied interests than the Legislature ever was.

In Washington, the Age of Reagan may have shuddered to an inglorious end, but we also need action from state governments – and Sacramento in particular – to move us toward a more sustainable economic future.

Harold Meyerson is editor-at-large of American Prospect and the L.A. Weekly. This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.

The enduring achievement gap

Veteran reporter Debra Viadero has written more than 1,400 stories for Education Week and most of them have been about research.
Getting at the Causes for NAEP Achievement Gaps
In his take on the results released earlier this week from the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in reading and mathematics, the NYT's Sam Dillon emphasizes the fact that the test-score gaps separating poor and minority students from their higher-achieving white and better-off counterparts have not budged over the last four to five years.
Now a new report from the Educational Testing Service explores some of the many possible reasons why. Parsing the Achievement Gap II is a follow-up to a 2003 study that lays out the racial and ethnic fault lines for 14 different indicators that have been linked to academic achievement. Its basic conclusion: While the nation has made some progress in narrowing disparities among students of different racial, ethnic, and income groups, not much has changed, for the most part, since 2003.
I know. That may not exactly be news.
But the new report, which expands the original number of indicators to 16, includes some illuminating statistics. Did you know, for instance, that in 2007 more than half of African-American 8th graders, compared with a fifth of white 8th graders, had a teacher who left before the end of the school year? Among students poor enough to qualify for federal free-lunch programs, two-thirds had teachers who failed to finish out that year.
That's sobering. My two children attend, or graduated from, middle-class public high schools. In all their years of schooling, I can only recall two instances in which one of their teachers failed to make it to the finish line—one because of a terminal illness and another due to maternity leave.
If you couple those statistics with the disproportionately high mobility rates that the report documents among poor and minority families, it adds up to a lot of disrupted schooling.
One bright spot the report notes, however, is that increasing numbers of students of all racial, ethnic, and income groups are taking on more advanced coursework in high school. (For an interesting analysis on how that trend has contributed—or not contributed—to longtern NAEP results see my colleague Sean Cavanagh's post in the Curriculum Matters blog.) Yet, by the same token, black students remain badly underrepresented among those students who go on to take Advanced Placement exams.
Debra Viadero

Shutting Detroit Down

They're Shuttin' Detroit Down

Check out this new video: here http://heavens-gates.com/usworkers/indexB.html

You will need to wait for the video to load. And, you may need to click through to the alternative site.
It is worth it.

Direction of Anger?

Direction of anger?
I am watching the Joint Budget Committee of the California Assembly and Senate seeking to cut the California budget in response to the national and economic economic crisis. The cuts proposed by the Governor’s office and the response of the Legislative Analysts Office are extreme. For example the U.C. and the CSU would lose $1.4 this year and 583 million next year. In health care the state would eliminate care for Alzheimer’s patients, eliminate AIDS testing,
Cal Works, and health insurance for over 900,000 children. These are only the beginning.
Question, how do we try to direct the anger? Is the appropriate anger aimed at the Legislature, the voters, the non voters, the bureaucracy?
Reading the blogs you would think that teachers, police, firemen and state employees caused the crisis.
California's k-12 education system is in large part in crisis because it is underfunded. Contrary to the wishes of the voters, politicians continue to fail to adequately fund our schools. Legislators only have a 23% support in the public. When comparisons include cost of living, California ranks 47th out of the 50 states in per pupil expenditures. Our schools are suffering. This is unacceptable.

California, and most other states, have a budget crisis as a result of the national economic crisis – significantly a banking crisis. The robber barons of finance capital have stolen the money, they have looted the treasury and our pensions and now they want to return to business as usual without any significant reform of the economic system. Just give them more tax payer money to bail out the banks.


The severity of the national and international economic collapse has created budget shortfalls for state and local governments. Economist Dean Baker, says "Since many states are required by their charters or constitutions to balance their budgets, states will end up using federal stimulus dollars to offset these shortfalls." It currently looks as if much of the stimulus package will be used to back fill state budget shortages which sharply limits the potential success of the stimulus.