NEA President: Dennis Van Roekel. July 3,2009.
In a stirring call to action on the first day of the annual NEA Representative Assembly, President Dennis Van Roekel exhorted his colleagues to lead the efforts to transform public education in America, restore stability and respect to this country's middle class, and make sure the world knows that NEA is a swift-moving powerhouse with vision and strength.
"We have the history. We have the skills and knowledge. We have the power and we have the courage. Now we must seize the opportunity," Van Roekel exclaimed.
When half of all poor and minority children face a future without a high school diploma, a future with "no hope, no opportunity, no possibility of realizing the American dream," and millions of American jobs lost and homes foreclosed on, it's critical that educators take action now.
"Our members - the people on the front lines - know what it takes to increase student learning to transform the system," Van Roekel said. "But we have to do more than define a vision for transforming public education -- we must lead the nation in making this transformation happen."
For the first time in this century, NEA has a partner in the White House who "understand(s) that transformation is something you do with educators, not to them." And NEA welcomes this opportunity to transform education. Better ways to measure student learning - not by a single test scores but through multiple measures - and also to improve teaching are welcome, he said. The Association also is open to new ways of paying teachers - but "we understand compensation systems are bargained and negotiated not imposed!"
We won't agree with President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on everything, Van Roekel promised. "But what is most important to me is that even though we may disagree on strategies or tactics.they share our mission to fulfill the promise of public education for every student." He called on federal policy-makers to reform NCLB so that the new law helps students, not labels and punished them.
Of particular concern to Van Roekel are America's lowest-performing school -- and he asked every delegate to get personally involved in turning them around. Teach there if you can, he asked. Mentor another teacher if possible. "It is important you do something - because these kids deserve better - and we are the ones who can make a difference."
But NEA can't close achievement gaps when the families of our students don't have jobs or health care, or living wages and benefits. So Van Roekel called on members to be political activists as well - to fight for decent salaries and health benefits for all. Every congressional district needs at least 50 NEA activists by January 1, 2010, he said. He also noted that all delegates should sign up for an NEA web site specifically for them - a site where Van Roekel will continue speaking to them post-RA.
And, an opposing viewpoint:
Arne Duncan attacks teachers as NEA convention cheers... The Day of Duncan
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=773§ion=Articlet
Monday, July 06, 2009
Schwarzenegger cuts schools, protects prisons II
July 6,2009/
The leaders also discussed Schwarzenegger's proposed suspension of the state's education funding guarantee, Proposition 98. The governor has asked that lawmakers agree to fund schools at about $3 billion less than the constitutional guarantee in 2009-10, and school groups are gearing up to lobby heavily against that plan.
Bass said she does not want to entertain that suspension of Proposition 98, while Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg called it a "bad idea."
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Joe Klien Educator (Right) !
In an irony typical of the New York Times' tin ear for democracy, a recent article (May 22) on New York Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein carried the headline "Big Thinking and Radical Dreaming." In a puff piece passing as news, Susan Dominus gave us this choice in thinking about the diktat-obsessed, top-down lawyer-bureaucrat who helped impose Mayor Bloomberg's iron will on the New York school system: Klein must either be a "passionate reformer" or a "driven zealot".
How about an imperial ignoramus? A grandstanding bureaucrat? A union-busting bully? Klein advocates "reforms" like compelling kids before they finish fifth grade to visit colleges (you know, so they will understand the joys of higher ed and be motivated to succeed!); like preventing parents from sending their kids to neighborhood primary schools (there's a great way to keep the middle class in the public school system); like empowering principals at the expense of teachers; and like making "remote" education via the web a surrogate for live teachers in the classroom (hey, you can reduce the teacher corps by 30%, Klein boasts, and increase the size of classes at the same time).
In this last bureaucrat-speak idea he is aping the social science wisdom of Terry Moe and John Chubb (Chubb runs that wondrous for-profit outfit called Edison Learning). Moe envisions a world in which "kids can work it out on their own" while schools become a "place where they go and have clubs and sports activities and drama," doing all their course work online.
I've done remote teaching and it is a far cry (remote indeed) from real teaching. But coincidentally it is a whole lot cheaper since one virtual teacher can instruct hundreds while the rest of the real teachers can join the fast food service industry.
Susan Dominus acknowledges in her piece that Klein "can be hard on the people who educate the city's children," but thinks we should give him "credit for holding his tongue most of the time."
Truth is, Klein is a perfect clone of a Mayor who seized control of the schools and vowed to put his stamp on them (just as he overturned the two term limit standing in the way of his running again for Mayor later this year). His "big thinking" means bureaucrats and their business-inspired management schemes come first, principals with tough top down controls come second, while teachers and parents come last. Children, the pupils, they don't rate at all, except as the subjects for Klein's "radical dreaming" - which is inspired neither by reformist pedagogy nor democratic inclusion but by the corporate management nightmare of totally controlling the "customers" it pretends to serve.
(By the way, I am not sniping from the sanctuary of private school privilege: my daughter graduates next month from a New York public high school and has spent her entire K-12 education in public school).
Benjamin Barber
How about an imperial ignoramus? A grandstanding bureaucrat? A union-busting bully? Klein advocates "reforms" like compelling kids before they finish fifth grade to visit colleges (you know, so they will understand the joys of higher ed and be motivated to succeed!); like preventing parents from sending their kids to neighborhood primary schools (there's a great way to keep the middle class in the public school system); like empowering principals at the expense of teachers; and like making "remote" education via the web a surrogate for live teachers in the classroom (hey, you can reduce the teacher corps by 30%, Klein boasts, and increase the size of classes at the same time).
In this last bureaucrat-speak idea he is aping the social science wisdom of Terry Moe and John Chubb (Chubb runs that wondrous for-profit outfit called Edison Learning). Moe envisions a world in which "kids can work it out on their own" while schools become a "place where they go and have clubs and sports activities and drama," doing all their course work online.
I've done remote teaching and it is a far cry (remote indeed) from real teaching. But coincidentally it is a whole lot cheaper since one virtual teacher can instruct hundreds while the rest of the real teachers can join the fast food service industry.
Susan Dominus acknowledges in her piece that Klein "can be hard on the people who educate the city's children," but thinks we should give him "credit for holding his tongue most of the time."
Truth is, Klein is a perfect clone of a Mayor who seized control of the schools and vowed to put his stamp on them (just as he overturned the two term limit standing in the way of his running again for Mayor later this year). His "big thinking" means bureaucrats and their business-inspired management schemes come first, principals with tough top down controls come second, while teachers and parents come last. Children, the pupils, they don't rate at all, except as the subjects for Klein's "radical dreaming" - which is inspired neither by reformist pedagogy nor democratic inclusion but by the corporate management nightmare of totally controlling the "customers" it pretends to serve.
(By the way, I am not sniping from the sanctuary of private school privilege: my daughter graduates next month from a New York public high school and has spent her entire K-12 education in public school).
Benjamin Barber
Saturday, July 04, 2009
We hold these truths to be self evident
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Schwarzenegger cuts schools, protects prisons
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said separately Thursday that they are optimistic a budget deal can be struck within several days.
The tone of their comments marked a stark contrast to Capitol fighting over the last few weeks between Democrats and Republicans over bridging the state's $26.3 billion budget gap.
Steinberg also said Democrats had given up any attempt to increase taxes on tobacco or establish an oil severance tax.
In a Capitol news conference, Steinberg said significant progress is being made behind closed doors, adding, "It's time that we get this done."
Steinberg said he is encouraged by lengthy discussions Wednesday with Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders.
"I'm going to be here and I know that some of my colleagues are going to be here around-the-clock today, tomorrow and over the weekend with the hope and expectation that over the next several days we will complete this and complete it successfully."
See the article below about the cutting of Prop. 98. And the California Budget Project analysis.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
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
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.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
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.
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.
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