School budget cuts

“The Governor continues to attempt to balance the budget on the backs of our students and our schools. Suspending Proposition 98 is a shortsighted approach that drops school funding into financial quicksand and will harm a generation of students.

“Our schools already have absorbed nearly $12 billion in cuts from a budget passed just months ago. As a result, schools have had to cut summer school; class sizes are going up; teachers and support staff have been laid off; and art, music, and sports programs are being eliminated. The list of tragic consequences of our budget crisis continues to grow.

“California needs a well-educated, critically thinking, and problem-solving workforce in order to improve and grow California’s economy. Public education is the key to unlocking the potential for success that our students possess. It is wrong-headed to cut education when we desperately need to nurture and support the students in our schools today who will be the backbone of our economy in just a few short years.

“Proposition 98 was passed by the voters of California to provide a floor of funding for our schools. Suspending it simply pulls the rug the out from under our students and the future of our state."
In addition to Mr. O’Connell, one of his potential replacements, Assemblymember Tom Torlakson who was a long-time teacher also spoke out strongly against the proposal.

“I am adamantly against suspending Proposition 98. The students of California and our schools have suffered far too much already. The Governor had the option to avert a suspension of Proposition 98 and an additional $3 billion in further cuts. Instead he chose to put our schools and the education of our kids at risk. There are many other solutions to the budget crisis that would not hurt the children of California.”

Under Proposition 98, the state is required to devote a specific proportion of the budget to education programs. Already, education funding has been slashed by over $12 billion. Proposition 1B was designed to restore just under $10 billion that has already been raided from education. That measure failed and now the governor is talking about taking even more money.
Superintendent O'Connell

Blaming teachers

Jonathan Alter Joins the Teacher-Scapegoating Chorus: I'm Calling BS
Dan Brown. The Huffington Post
It is convenient to blame teachers for America's education woes because it lets everyone else off the hook. Tragically, this has become the vogue opinion in the mainstream media, and I'm calling bullshit. Jonathan Alter's latest column in Newsweek pushed me over the edge. (See post below) Here's the implicit argument:

Why do kids drop out? Not the stultifying test prep, overcrowded rooms, chronic absenteeism, or lack of personal connection to a counselor. It's bad teachers.

Why are America's test scores lagging compared to other countries around the world? Not deep-seated cycles of drugs/violence/ignorance in many neighborhoods or an antiquated school calendar with a ridiculous summer vacuum. It's complacent, unionized teachers.

What's the solution? Scrap the unions, clean house, and let the market sort it out.

Alter writes with certainty, "the key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can't."

This spirit of exceptionalism is dangerous. According to Alter, you're either born with the teaching gene or not. You may have spent years earning a teaching degree, but that's worthless because, as Alter bizarrely claims, "most teachers' colleges teach the wrong stuff."

So who are among the special, birthrighted good teachers, benighted with secret understandings unavailable in higher ed institutions whose sole job is to prepare teachers?

Wendy Kopp, influential founder and leader of Teach For America, offered living examples of her vision for what teachers need to do in her recent commencement speech at Washington University. She cited Colleen Dunn, a rookie teacher working with struggling first-graders in St. Louis:
At the end of the school year, after nine months of days that began for Colleen at 4:30 in the morning and ended with her falling asleep over grading papers, lesson planning, writing parent newsletters, her students had made two years of progress in reading and math. The students who had started out so far behind were ready to enter second grade ahead of average second graders.

Judging from Colleen's example, the achievement gap doesn't need to exist...

Kopp's speech advances the argument for a paradigm of superteacher messiahs, one Alter appears to embrace. Surely, every example of an individual superteacher is above reproach and deserving of great praise.

But if Colleen is the model, working from 4:30 a.m. until a daily collapse, who's out? Forget single parents, who know more about facing challenges than just about anyone. Forget most that don't have the access to accrue the eye-catching resumes of Teach For America applicants. Forget people who choose balance over being a workaholic. The hero-martyr superteacher, cast in the mold of Hollywood friendly Freedom Writers or Dangerous Minds, is not replicable or realistic.

I agree with Alter that there are some complacent, ineffective teachers out there who should be fired. I also agree with Kopp that Colleen sounds like a superb teacher. However, this obsessive focus on cleaning house and demanding superhuman performance misses a larger point. (Time Magazine drew similarly raised blood pressure when they featured DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee on their cover in December 2008, scowling and holding a broom. The headline spotlighted her gutsy "battle against bad teachers.")

Most teachers in America are smart and dedicated enough to help their students achieve. They're not the unaccountable fiends holding kids back, as Alter portrays them with his broad brush. Poverty, deficiency of support services, disjointed curricula, overemphasis on testing, and overcrowded classes do far more to impede student achievement.

If you are reading this with the slightest inclination to agree with anything I've written, Alter has already prepared for and discounted us. He'd refer to you and me as parts of

"the Blob, the collection of educrats and politicians who claim to support reform but remain fiercely committed to the status quo."
BS. I want kids to learn and I want bad teachers to go. I welcome reform and genuine accountability in my classroom, but to do that right it needs to come from more than a single, reductive standardized test.

We need those with the biggest microphones to stop scapegoating teachers and their right to have a collective voice, and to start stepping into living classrooms to see what's really happening on the ground. Then they can tell the real story.

Dan Brown is a teacher in Southeast Washington, DC and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. From the Huffington Post.

California: a dream decimated

California: A Dream Decimated


By Harold Meyerson
Washington Post
Wednesday, July 1, 2009

In Sacramento, they can hear the chimes at midnight. State legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have been told by State Controller John Chiang that he will be compelled to pay the state's bills with IOUs starting tomorrow unless they come up with a way to close California's mammoth $24 billion deficit.

California has company in this eleventh-hour agony. Indiana, Arizona, Mississippi and Pennsylvania also went into the final day of the fiscal year facing the prospect of shutdowns of public agencies or paying bills through IOUs unless they devised ways to close the yawning gap between their obligations and their recession-savaged revenue.

The list of states -- Democratic and Republican, old economy and new -- is sufficiently diverse to dispel any notion that the fiscal crisis of the states is disproportionately the problem of one party or one region. It is, rather, hard-wired into the American system of governance, wherein virtually all the states have required themselves to produce balanced budgets even during depressions -- which means they must slash services and lay off workers even though such actions actually deepen the downturn.

But California is a special case simply because it's so big. Closing California's budget gap entirely through cutbacks in programs, as Schwarzenegger and the Republicans in the legislature propose, will deepen not only the state's recession but also the nation's. Fully 1 in 4 of the nation's underwater mortgages, for instance, are on California homes, and the effects of the governor's proposed cuts -- which UCLA's Anderson School of Business estimates will cause 60,000 state employees to lose their jobs -- will be to create a new wave of foreclosures and toxic assets on the banks' books. California accounts for 12 percent of the nation's gross domestic product and a disproportionate share of the federal government's revenues (and for every dollar that Californians pay to the feds, they get just 80 cents back in services).

Right-wing ideologues see the crisis as an opportunity to shrink government regardless of the consequences. Schwarzenegger is proposing to end welfare, not just as we know it but altogether, and to throw 1 million children off the rolls of the state's healthy families program. But the consequences of closing the deficit simply through cutbacks will be felt by more than the poor. Already reeling from $15 billion in cutbacks that the state put through in February, many school districts, including that of Los Angeles, have canceled summer school this year. Scholarships that enable students of modest means to attend California's fabled university system have been slashed. Most of the state's parks may have to be closed as well.

The terrible irony in decimating the public sector to save the state is that the California that was the epicenter of the postwar American dream was fundamentally a creation of government. Fighting a Pacific war during World War II compelled the federal government to spend billions on California industry and infrastructure, and the state was the leading beneficiary of Pentagon dollars during the Cold War. As Kevin Starr, California's leading historian, points out in "Golden Dreams," his brilliant new history of the state in the 1950s and early '60s, fully 40 percent of all defense dollars for manufacturing and research in 1959 went to California, anchoring the state's booming economy in a well-paid workforce that was either unionized or professionalized, and seeding an electronics and high-tech sector that was to blossom in the following decades. Building on that prosperity to create more prosperity, Earl Warren, Goodwin Knight and Pat Brown -- two Republicans, one Democrat -- invested state dollars in schools, universities, freeways and aqueducts that were the best in the world. The Golden State was never more golden.

Today, its governor seems determined to turn that gold to dross. On Monday, the Democrats in the legislature passed a budget that included cuts of $11 billion, levied a tax on oil companies and tobacco, and raised auto registration fees by $15 per car to keep the state parks from closing. Schwarzenegger reiterated his refusal to raise any taxes or fees and said he would veto the budget.

From a model for far-sighted investments in the future, California has become a state that uninvests in the present and has no vision at all for the future. Proposition 13, enacted by state voters in 1978, effectively blocked its cities and counties from funding their own endeavors, and the Republican minority in the legislature, abetted by Schwarzenegger, has made it all but impossible to invest in the kind of projects that Warren, Knight and Brown undertook. Today's California visionaries are calling for a constitutional convention to rewrite the plainly dysfunctional rules by which the state governs itself. It is not only Californians but also America that has a stake in their success. A California that decimates itself during recessions drags the rest of the nation down with it.

meyersonh@washpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/30/AR2009063003099.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

Schwarzenegger Threatens to Shut Down the State

Schwarzenegger Threatens to Shut Down the State

By Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Assistant Director ASFCME

With California just a few days away from having to issue IOUs to pay its bills, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to shut down the state rather than agree to $2 billion worth of new taxes on cigarettes and alcohol and oil companies that Democrats have proposed to help close the Golden State's $24 billion budget deficit.

This shortsighted and fiscally irresponsible stance is out of step with the majority of California voters who support these taxes and a tad hypocritical, since Schwarzenegger himself proposed these very solutions at the end of last year.

If Schwarzenegger believes that it is possible to balance the state budget without these revenue solutions, as paltry as they are, then he just doesn't understand economics.

Should he actually follow through on his threat to veto the Democratic plan, which also includes $11 billion worth of cuts and $10 billion worth of accounting maneuvers, blame for shutting down the state would rest squarely on his shoulders.

While Schwarzenegger has been prone to using threats, coercion, and other ham-fisted approaches to realize the vision of a state with no capacity to provide social or educational services to the citizens of California, it is unclear whether he actually has the courage to take the blame for shutting down the state.

The only way to win this game of budget chicken and avert the prospect of California taking its place among the Third World, an outcome that corporatists of both political stripes have been planning for decades, is for the Democratic majority to concede nothing and to place a budget on Schwarzenegger's desk that includes new revenues.

CSU and the budget

California State University (CSU) is facing a $583.8 million dollar budget cut for the 2009-10 fiscal year. CSU faculty are being asked to take 10% less pay by accepting two days of furloughs per month for 2009-10. Justification for this request is to protect 3,700 full time equivalent lecturer positions (9000 Instructors) from lay-off. CSU Faculty, like state workers, are being asked to bail out the state by accepting less pay because of massive budget deficits. State worker unions and the California Faculty Association must stand firm against the CSU administration and State government officials. Giving concessions undermines the wages for working people across the board. It also means protecting the incomes of the rich, and most powerful corporations in California.

The budget crisis in California has been artificially created by cutting taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations. The current “crisis” is a shock and awe process designed to undermine wages and unions in the state and force labor concessions to protect corporate profits.

According to the California Budget Project, tax cuts enacted in California since 1993 cost the state $11.3 billion dollars annually. Had the state continued taxing corporations and the wealthy at rates equal to those fifteen years ago we would not have a budget crisis today. Even though a budget crisis was evident last year, California income tax laws were changed in February of this year to provide corporations with even greater tax savings—equal to over $2 billion per year.

Half of all state revenue comes from personal income taxes paid by working people, and another third comes from sales and use taxes. The result is that as a percent of income, taxes hit the lower paid workers the hardest. Corporations only pay for about 1/10th of the state budget. The rest of us are bailing out the rich by accepting massive budget cuts at a time when less spending will only exacerbate the economic situation.

Unions and working people need to say no to massive state budget cuts, and fight for every service and job possible. We must say no to voluntary furloughs and push for new taxes on the wealthy and largest corporations. CSU Professors should be the leaders for working people in the State. We must stand firm on no concessions, no furloughs, and no cuts in classes for our students.



Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University.

California State Budget Crisis Not Caused by the Recession


The budget crisis in California has been artificially created by cutting taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations. The current “crisis” is a shock and awe process designed to undermine wages and unions in the state and force labor concessions to protect corporate profits.

According to the California Budget Project, tax cuts enacted in California since 1993 cost the state $11.3 billion dollars annually. Had the state continued taxing corporations and the wealthy at rates equal to those fifteen years ago we would not have a budget crisis today.

Half of all state revenue comes from personal income taxes paid by working people, and another third comes from sales and use taxes. The result is that as a percent of income, taxes hit the lower paid workers the hardest. Corporations only pay for about 1/10th of the state budget. The rest of us are bailing out the rich by accepting massive budget cuts at a time when less spending will only exacerbate the economic situation.

Unions and working people need to say no to massive state budget cuts, and fight for every service and job possible.

Legislature passes budget

At 7:30 PM.
Today the California Legislature passed a budget which would resolve the immediate crisis. Governor Schwarzenegger will veto the bill.

The basic problem is the national and international economic crisis. Over 40 states are in trouble. California is in particular trouble because of the 2/3 rule.

Republicans incessantly demand more school budget cuts.

So, now I have 120 fewer Sheriffs to protect the neighborhood.

250 fewer teaches to assist school children. Cuts in higher education that will hurt the economy for decades.

The Republicans want to create a society like Mississippi. They can win elections there.

Equalizing Opportunity

Equalizing Opportunity
Dramatic Differences in Children’s Home Life and
Health Mean That Schools Can’t Do It Alone

By Richard Rothstein

Public discourse about education pays great attention
to the stubborn persistence of an achievement gap
between poor and minority students and their wealth-
ier white peers—and public schools come under great
criticism for their apparent inability to close that gap. Some of
this criticism may be justified. But there is more to the story than
school reform. No society can realistically expect schools alone
to abolish inequality. If students come to school in unequal
school with unequal skills and abilities, in both cognitive and
noncognitive domains. This is not a reason for educators to
throw up their hands. Rather, in addition to efforts to improve
school practices, educators, along with community partners,
should exercise their own rights and responsibilities as citizens
to participate in redressing the inequalities with which children
come to school.
Income is more unequal and lower-class* families have less
access to medical care in the United States than in any other
industrial nation.
Read the entire article at American Educator. Vo.33. No. 2.
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer2009/equalizingopportunity.pdf

A budget vote, and a veto?

Assembly Passes Majority Vote Budget Bills

By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network

The Assembly passed a package of 11 bills, including two bills that would increase revenues – one by over $2 billion, and another bill containing over $12 billion in spending cuts, by simple majority votes in a procedural move that avoided the need for any Republican votes. The package of bills head to the State Senate for action on Monday morning (June 29), where Senate Democrats will approve the bills over the objections of Senate Republicans.

But the procedure used by Assembly Democrats – similar to the one used by Democrats in December, left Assembly Republicans angry, dissolving some of the debate Sunday evening on the tax increases into a bitter and angry exchange.

The bills will head to what many expect will be certain vetoes by the Governor, who previously last week said he would do so because he was strongly opposed to new tax increases. If the Governor vetoes the bills, the Legislative Democrats will have to essentially start over and somehow find an agreement with the Governor and possibly Legislative Republicans before the State’s financial situation grows worse.

Earlier Sunday evening Assembly Democrats passed by a vote of 44 to 30, a bill, AB 39x3 (the “x3” stands for “third extraordinary session”) that called for $2 billion in revenues, in a procedure that by-passed the need for any Republican votes – a move that Republicans say, especially in raising taxes, is “unconstitutional”. Right after that vote, the Assembly approved by a vote of 46 to 27, SB 16x3 that includes over $12 billion spending cuts over objections of Assembly Republicans

State Senate Democrats will likely approve those two measures – and the other 9 bills by Monday morning.
From: California Progress Report.

Constitutional Convention ?

The Forum Section of the Sacramento Bee for June 28,2009, includes extensive discussions of two of the major proposals for constitutional reform. It is positive that the press is sharing this important information.
It is inaccurate to present these two alternatives as the available options. This is framing the issues.
We- the citizen press- should make certain that we are not restricted by this framing.
For example, the proposed Constitutional convention advocates would exclude re consideration of the 2/3 rule to pass a budget and to raise taxes. And, they propose to select, not elect delegates to the convention.
effort
By Malcolm Maclachlan | 06/25/09 12:00 AM PST
Capitol Weekly
Citing political pressures, the business group pushing the idea of a constitutional convention for the state has begun efforts to hand off that effort to an independent committee.

The Bay Area Council has been championing the idea since last August. More recently, they have found themselves embroiled in a contentious debate over whether a convention should be allowed to consider the property tax limits in 1978’s Proposition 13. This question culminated in an early June conference call with anti-tax groups who threatened to derail the effort.

“We don’t want to get electrocuted on one of third rails of California politics,” said John Grubb, a spokesman for the Council. “We want a neutral process to determine what will be in the constitutional convention.”
See the entire article on Capitol Weekly.

Global Recession : Stiglitz

A Global Recovery for a Global Recession

by JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

This article appeared in the July 13, 2009 edition of
The Nation.
June 24, 2009
See the entire article at The Nation

This is not only the worst global economic downturn of
the post-World War II era; it is the first serious
global downturn of the modern era of globalization.
America's financial markets failed to do what they
should have done--manage risk and allocate capital
well--and these failures have had a major impact all
over the world. Globalization, too, did not work the
way it was supposed to. It helped spread the
consequences of the failures of US financial markets
around the world. September 11, 2001, taught us that
with globalization not only do good things travel more
easily across borders; bad things do too. September 15,
2008, has reinforced that lesson.

A global downturn requires a global response. But so
far our responses--to stimulate and regulate the global
economy--have largely been framed at the national level
and often take insufficient account of the effect on
others. The result is that there is less coordination
than there should be, as well as a smaller and less
well-designed stimulus than is optimal. A poorly
designed and insufficient stimulus means that the
downturn will last longer, the recovery will be slower
and there will be more innocent victims. Among these
victims are the many developing countries--including
those that have had far better regulatory and
macroeconomic policies than the United States and some
European countries. In the United States a financial
crisis transformed itself into an economic crisis; in
many developing countries the economic downturn is
creating a financial crisis.
The world has two choices: either we move to a better
global regulatory system, or we lose some of the
important benefits that have resulted from
globalization. But continuing the status quo management
of globalization is no longer tenable; too many
countries have had to pay too high a price. The G-20's
response to the global economic crisis, crafted at
meetings in November in Washington and in April in
London, was a beginning--but just a beginning. It did
not do enough to address the short-term problems nor
did it put in place the long-term restructuring
necessary to prevent another crisis.

A United Nations meeting in late June hopes to continue
the global discussion begun at earlier G-20 meetings
and to extend this discussion to what went wrong in the
first place so that we can do a better job of
preventing another crisis. The global politics of this
meeting are complexEighth, unless regulation is comprehensive there can be
a "race to the bottom," with countries with lax
regulation competing to attract financial services.
Ninth, if that race happens, countries will have to
take action to protect their economies--they cannot
allow bad practices elsewhere to harm their citizens.
And tenth, regulation has to be comprehensive across
financial institutions. As we have seen, if we regulate
the banking system but not the shadow banking system,
business will migrate to where it is less well
regulated and less transparent.

Despite this broad consensus, the G-20 said little or
nothing about some key issues: what to do with banks
that have grown not only too big to fail but (according
to the Obama administration) too big to be financially
restructured? The G-20 failed to ask the hard
questions: if these big banks' shareholders and
bondholders are insulated from the risk of default, how
can there be market discipline? What will replace that
discipline? The G-20 has talked about the rapid return
of "private capital," but what does this bode if
private capital returns without market discipline?
There was also talk of continuing to allow over-the-
counter derivatives-trading with no transparency. But
without transparency of each trade--to assess the
nature of the counterparty risk--how can there be
market discipline?


From the perspective of the developing countries,
though, not enough was done about bank secrecy in
offshore as well as onshore centers. Developing nations
are often criticized for corruption, but secret bank
accounts wherever they may be facilitate corruption,
providing safe haven for stolen funds. Developing
countries want this money returned and want access to
information that will allow them to detect secret
accounts.

Financial and capital market liberalization--as well as
banking deregulation--contributed to the crisis and to
the spread of the crisis from the United States to
developing countries. Advanced industrial nations are
reluctant to admit that these policies, which they
pushed so hard on developing countries, are part of the
problem. No wonder, then, that the G-20 did not argue
for a reconsideration of these longstanding policies.

The global economic crisis highlights the deficiencies
of existing international institutions. As developed countries struggle to ensure a quick
recovery, they need to think of the effects of their
actions on developing countries. It is time to begin
the restructuring of our global economic and financial
system in ways that ensure that the fruits of
prosperity are more widely shared and that the system
is more stable. This task will not be accomplished
overnight. But it is a task that must be begun, now.

About Joseph E.Stiglitz
Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia
University. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in
2001 for research on the economics of information. Most
recently, he is the co-author, with Linda Bilmes, of
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the
Iraq Conflict.

Nativo Lopez charged

Veteran Latino-rights advocate charged with voter fraud
7:09 AM | June 25, 2009
Felony charges have been filed and an arrest warrant issued for a well-known Orange County political activist suspected of committing election and voter registration fraud, the California secretary of State's office announced Wednesday.

Investigators in the agency's election-fraud unit said Nativo V. Lopez, 57, of Santa Ana leased office space in Boyle Heights and registered to vote using that address although he lived with his family in Orange County. They also say Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Assn., cast an illegal ballot in L.A. in the 2008 presidential primary.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office, which is working with the secretary of State, charged Lopez with four felonies: fraudulent voter registration, fraudulent document filing, perjury and fraudulent voting. A warrant was issued for his arrest and bail was set at $10,000. The offenses carry penalties of up to three years in prison.

Lopez is a longtime Latino political-rights advocate in Orange County who served on the Santa Ana school board. Lopez has been a vocal advocate for Latino voting rights and supported immigrant amnesty and allowing undocumented workers to have driver's licenses. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

In 1997, the Orange County district attorney opened a criminal investigation into allegations that a group in which Lopez was a leader registered some clients to vote before they took the oath of citizenship. No criminal charges were brought, and Lopez demanded an apology from critics.

-- Dan Weikel and Shelby Grad
Nativo is President of the Mexican American Political Association and a friend.

Fund California Schools

California's voters – both those who voted and especially those who did not – made their voices heard in the May 19 special election on Propositions 1A-1F.
Jack O'Connell, Superintendent of Public Instruction

But many politicians in Sacramento mistakenly seem convinced that the election results were a clear call from the people to focus solely on cuts to close our state's gaping budget hole. That would inflict a barrage of deep cuts in vital public services – especially education – upon which millions of Californians heavily depend.

Politicians in Sacramento missed the point.

Propositions 1A-1F contained a number of complex policy issues that failed to offer a clear policy direction to voters, leading many to be supportive of one or more parts of the package but not the entire package.

For example, while the package did include a provision to raise revenues for essential public services, it also included a spending cap that would have locked California into the position of 47th in per-pupil spending out of the 50 states – if not worse.

Californians also signaled their opposition to a cuts-only budget by soundly rejecting Propositions 1D and 1E. Californians value early childhood education programs and want to continue services to help those with mental illness. The "no" votes on 1D and 1E were, in fact, a "yes" for our children and the mentally ill.

Californians want to invest more in education, not less, and we need not look any further than the ongoing strong support for investing in public education at the local level.

The record number of Californians voting last November helped pass 91 percent of all local school bonds, 81 percent of all parcel taxes and 90 percent of all Mello-Roos districts on ballots across the state. Californians value the services they receive locally, and they know full well that education is the key to the future and a major component in our efforts to recover from this economic downturn.

But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger clearly opted for a different path. He proposed $1.4 billion in cuts to education in June and an additional $4.2 billion in the next school year – cuts the Legislature has taken steps to approve. These cuts would be added on top of the $11.6 billion in cuts in school funding included in the budget passed last February.

The impact of this draconian plan already is being seen. The Los Angeles Unified and Sacramento City Unified school districts were forced to shut down summer school programs. The Mount Diablo Board of Education just voted to eliminate 413 teaching positions, and at Kermit McKenzie Junior High in the Guadalupe Union School District, where I recently visited, class sizes are planned to increase from 30 to 44 students.

These are just a few examples of the burdens our teachers and other school personnel will have to overcome as they help California's 6.3 million students meet our high expectations.

While state officials mark these cuts in the budget-balancing ledger, district school boards and administrators are left no choice but to slash or eliminate vital local education programs.


The Public Policy Institute of California recently released a study that found 58 percent of residents said that kindergarten through 12th-grade education is the area they most want to protect from spending cuts.
Since 2003, when the PPIC first asked this question, respondents have consistently expressed the same sentiment. The same study also found that 54 percent of residents would support a parcel tax to raise money for their schools.

The point is clear: During these turbulent economic times, Californians trust their local efforts to directly support schools.

Legislative leaders and the governor both said just a few months ago they believe the responsible way to deal with this crisis is through cuts and revenue enhancements.

As the budget negotiations shift to deal-making between the governor and the two legislative leaders from both houses, I urge the "Big 5" not to deal students out of the equation. Pass a responsible budget that protects students and empowers Californians to directly support their local schools. Our children deserve no less.

NCLB

ESEA is reauthorized next year. If Congressman Grijalva's bill requiring that bilingual education be offered as an option in any state having high numbers of language minority students from any one particular language background, then we will bring the madness to an end.
A proposal for NCLB.

In Support of the Iranian Demonstrators

HURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2009
Open letter of support to the demonstrators in Iran!

This morning Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded an end to the massive and forceful demonstrations protesting the controversial result of last week's election. He argued that to make concessions to popular demands and 'illegal' pressure would amount to a form of 'dictatorship', and he warned the protestors that they, rather than the police, would be held responsible for any further violence.
Khamenei's argument sounds familiar to anyone interested in the politics of collective action, since it appears to draw on the logic used by state authorities to oppose most of the great popular mobilisations of modern times, from 1789 in France to 1979 in Iran itself. These mobilisations took shape through a struggle to assert the principle that sovereignty rests with the people themselves, rather than with the state or its representatives. 'No government can justly claim authority', as South Africa's ANC militants put it in their Freedom Charter of 1955, 'unless it is based on the will of all the people.'
Needless to say it is up to the people of Iran to determine their own political course. Foreign observers inspired by the courage of those demonstrating in Iran this past week are nevertheless entitled to point out that a government which claims to represent the will of its people can only do so if it respects the most basic preconditions for the determination of such a will: the freedom of the people to assemble, unhindered, as an inclusive collective force; the capacity of the people, without restrictions on debate or access to information, to deliberate, decide and implement a shared course of action.
Years of foreign-sponsored 'democracy promotion' in various parts of the world have helped to spread a well-founded scepticism about civic movements which claim some sort of direct democratic legitimacy. But the principle itself remains as clear as ever: only the people themselves can determine the value of such claims. We the undersigned call on the government of Iran to take no action that might discourage such determination.
Peter Hallward
Middlesex University, UK.
Alberto Toscano
Goldsmiths College, UK.
This letter is also signed by:
Alenka Zupancic, Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Alexander Garcia Duttmann, Goldsmiths College
Etienne Balibar, Paris X, Nanterre, and University of California, Irvine
Eyal Weizman, Director, Centre for Research Architecture, Dept. of Visual Cultures
Goldsmiths, University of London
Judith Butler, University of California, Berkeley
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor (retired), MIT, Cambridge MA USA
Philip Pettit, University Center for Human Values, Princeton University
Rada Ivekovic, Prof., Collège international de philosophie, Paris.
Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and the European Graduate School
Duane Campbell, Calif. State University -Sacramento
and hundreds more

And, the International Federation of Trade Unions


Iran Day of Worker Solidarity Action
Will Be Organized As Repression Continues

Brussels

The ITUC, EI, ITF and IUF today expressed their
solidarity with the many Iranian workers who have
joined the demonstrations in the streets to call for
respect for their fundamental democratic rights.
Protests for democracy in Iran, organized by trade
unions, will be held in countries around the world
tomorrow.

"The violence against those demonstrating for democracy
has left many people dead and several hundred injured.
This heavy repression of peaceful demonstrations and
lack of respect for human rights is completely
unacceptable," said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.
Trade unions across the world have been appalled at the
Iranian authorities' targeting of independent trade
union action in recent years, with workers attacked and
arrested for demonstrating peacefully for workers'
rights, most recently on 1 May as they attempted to
hold a peaceful May Day rally at Laleh Park in Tehran.
Repression of fundamental rights has now intensified
and widened, with particularly violent reaction by
security forces to the many demonstrations in the wake
of the election, and the arrest of hundreds of people."

California Constitutional Convention?

A group of CEO's and Bay Area business leaders are directing and funding an effort to call a California Constitutional Convention to write a new constitution.

If you want the details they are here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1auuIQFFME

They have an agenda. For example, they would exclude the consideration of repeal of the 2/3 rules for passing budgets and taxes and they would "select" the delegates, not elect the delegates, to get "average" citizens.

From the Bee Capitol Alert: Dan Walters
The council's draft language for a 2010 ballot measure to call a constitutional convention specifically says it cannot mess with Proposition 13 but that, Capitol Weekly said, has not mollified those on the right.

Today, the council's chief spokesman, John Grubb, said the article implied that it had stopped work on the convention and "This is absolutely not true and we have requested an immediate correction."

The article doesn't say that the council has halted work on the convention, but Grubb apparently is concerned about its effect on organizational work.

"The Bay Area Council is in the process of creating an open, transparent process to determine what goes into the convention," Grubb said in an email to journalists. "This will involve gathering between 50 and 100 of the state's top political and academic experts to help determine what questions the delegates should answer in a limited constitutional convention. Somehow gathering these experts (rather than the Bay Area Council itself determining what should or shouldn't be in the convention) was interpreted to mean that we were trying to "offload" the whole effort. Wrong

Lobbyists Win on Health Care, Banking

Remember all that change Americans voted for in November? Well, there's been a change in the plans for change.

The detour has come courtesy of a familiar nemesis: DC lobbyists who, this year alone, have watered-down, gutted, or out-and-out killed ambitious plans for reforming Wall Street, energy, and health care.

The media like to pretend that something's at stake when a big bill is being debated on the House or Senate floor, but the truth is that by then the game is typically already over. The real fight happens long before. And the lobbyists usually win.

They're used to administrations and newly elected Congresses that come in with big plans for the future. But, as Obama and Congressional reformers are finding out, the future doesn't have a well-funded lobby. The past, on the other hand, is extremely well represented.

Look at the auto industry. For decades, Detroit and its lobbyists fought tooth and nail against efforts to improve mileage efficiency standards or to close tax loopholes favorable to gas-guzzling SUVs. They were very successful at holding off the future. Until they went bankrupt.

"While I'm not spoiling for a fight, I'm ready for one," Obama said in his radio address last weekend, referring to his push for a new consumer finance regulatory agency. Let's hope he is, because getting a reform bill that still includes actual reforms through both houses of Congress is easier said than done.

The president has already seen what the lobbyists can do. In May, he signed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, and celebrated it as an example of doing "what we were actually sent here to do -- and that is to stand up to the special interests, and stand up for the American people."

But, in fact, those special interests had stood up to him and helped eliminate the most important legislative initiative affecting homeowners -- the cramdown provision in the bankruptcy bill.

It shows just how powerful the lobbyists are: even those representing the banks that helped bring about the financial meltdown still hold sway over our elected officials.

The same goes for the lobbyists representing the credit rating agencies which, despite having played a key role in causing the economic crisis, escaped with barely a wrist slap in the Treasury's big new reform plan. Here's how the Wall Street Journal put it:

If world-class lobbying could win a Stanley Cup, the credit-ratings caucus would be skating a victory lap this week. The Obama plan for financial re-regulation leaves unscathed this favored class of businesses whose fingerprints are all over the credit meltdown.
That's the thing about lobbyists: they serve no ideological master. It's not about right vs left or Democrats vs Republicans. It's only about the bottom line -- ie pushing their special interests, no matter how much it undermines the public interest. No wonder they are as likely to incur the wrath of the Wall Street Journal as Mother Jones.

Last year, 15,000 registered lobbyists spent more than $3.25 billion trying to sway Congress. This year has brought even more of the same. Oil and gas companies spent $44.5 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies in the first quarter of 2009 -- more than a third of the $129 million they spent in all of 2008, which in itself was a 73 percent increase from two years before. Medical insurers and drug companies are also digging deep: 20 of the biggest health insurance and drug companies spent nearly a combined $35 million in Q1 -- a 41 percent increase from the same quarter last year.
Adriana Huffington. the Huffington Post

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]