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FINDING A VOICE

By Ann Davidow

In the film Clear and Present Danger one of the president’s henchmen who has engineered an unauthorized war in South America angrily confronts CIA chief Jack Ryan for questioning the operation saying “You are such a boy-scout.” For you everything is black and white, no gray areas. To which Ryan replies ‘not black and white, right and wrong.’ It’s a scene that gets at the heart of what happens in the political world when standards are swept aside and replaced by ill-chosen, short-term remedies devised by partisans without conscience.

Decisions these days are rarely made according to principles that define right and wrong. They’re all about outwitting political opponents, taking partisan advantage of situations where morality is the last thing under consideration. “Free markets” today are the bellwether of social values and any who dare question the premise are branded socialists or communists. Never mind that free markets are often the end game of unscrupulous manipulators of our fiscal condition, a name given to make what is venal and corrupt seem decent and honorable.

Today pronouncements are made in crude, irrational moralistic trash talk, as if there were a way to make ugly words turn into wisdom the moment they are uttered. Abortion becomes a legislative goal and if laws don’t conform to the vision of right-wing purity, well, make them disappear by electing politicians who will refuse to fund laws already on the books if they offend the sensibilities of a pride-bound caucus. And how have the righteous declared fealty to the Constitution when they ignore some of its basic tenets. How do zealots get away with insisting there should be greater religious emphasis in our schools and legislatures, and that we should choose political aspirants who fit that description when the Constitution plainly states there shall be no religious test for those who wish to hold office?

Often the simple act of turning one’s television on can unleash a torrent of simple-minded blather that overwhelms rational discourse and numbs all efforts to find resolution for matters that cry out for sanity rather than partisan nonsense. Liberal, conservative and all other ideological tags fall short of defining what it is our society lacks in the way of intelligent oversight or sound criticism delivered without vitriolic ad hominem attacks. In a committee meeting on the subject of financial reform the Republican chairman McHenry accused Elizabeth Warren of “making things up” with respect to a scheduling conflict, marking a new low in decorum by the chairman and a disgraceful attempt to badger Warren into submission.

Giving power to this band of opportunistic buffoons was a mistake of historic proportions. Will the electorate have the will to correct its misperception of what proper participation in the legislative process is all about or will we be confounded by uncivil, heavy-handed partisan clowns until the process is torn to shreds? Efforts in some states to limit participation in the electoral process itself are a disturbing outcropping of an ultra-conservative assault on all things not to its liking. It can only be hoped that the courts will step in to protect our way of life from an unconscionable offensive led by politicians at the margins.

Perhaps I didn’t notice before, but Representative Cantor’s demand that relief assistance to states devastated by recent tornados must be offset by spending reductions came as a shock. I don’t recall similar requirements when human needs were involved in the past. I was under the impression that disaster relief was in a special category. The idea that such services could be tied to budgetary constraints is one more indication of the fanatical, one-note ideology of the Republican majority now unfortunately in control.

As Richard Trumpka, president of the AFL/CIO said at a recent gathering we are facing a “moral challenge” about how we should go about mending our fiscal condition and re-establishing a fair and open society.  It isn’t just about political affiliations; but ultimately is about right and wrong.

By Michael Rice, Kalamazoo Public Schools Superintendent

and  Carol McGlinn, Kalamazoo Public Schools Board of Education President .

Carol is also Executive Director, Kalamazoo at Specialized Language Development Center

and Past Director of Development at Specialized Language Development Center

Web Site at:

Thanks to Kalamazoo County voters for their support of the enhancement millage renewal this week. Ours was one of the first counties in the state to support an enhancement millage in 2005 and remains one of only a few to have passed such a millage.

The county that gave birth to The Kalamazoo Promise, Education For Employment, Education For the Arts, the Kalamazoo Area Math & Science Center and that hosted the president in the first Commencement Challenge last year is threatened, like all other counties, by the governor’s pre-K-12 education budget.

According to the governor and many in the state Legislature, the proposed pre-K-12 education budget would cut only $300 per student in the state’s foundation grant to schools, a cut of 3.9 percent. While it is true that this is the proposed cut to the state‘s budget, the cut that public school children would experience is closer to $700 per student. KPS students are threatened by a $900 per student cut. Here’s why:

This year, districts across the country benefit from federal economic stimulus funds that will not exist next year. In Michigan, these funds generate about $170 per student. Add the $170 to the proposed $300 cut and you get $470 per student. To that figure, add the $230 per student cost of a large increase in the state-mandated retirement contribution rate, and the average district would have to cut $700 per student to balance its 2011-2012 school year budget. Districts do not choose to participate in the retirement system. The retirement system’s benefits and costs are set by the state.

For KPS, the governor’s proposed budget is even worse. The governor proposes to eliminate the class-size reduction grant, which permits smaller class sizes in kindergarten through third grade in schools with high poverty rates. Among the KPS schools that benefit are those that have 85 to 98 percent free/reduced-price lunch eligibility. Poor children who start life behind in so many ways have benefited from this grant, as teachers have been able to better individualize instruction in the smaller classes. Research supports the combination of smaller class sizes and greater individualization to improve student achievement for early elementary students, particularly those from challenging backgrounds. Our improved elementary test scores in the last few years indicate the value of the grant as well. The proposed cut is penny wise and pound foolish.

Most superintendents and school board members understand that the cost of making up the one-time federal money ($170 per student) and the cost of the increase in state retirement contribution rate ($230 per student), a total of $400 per student, would be necessary even if the state didn’t cut a nickel out of its education budget.

In other words, the biggest cuts by districts in the state’s history would take place regardless of whether the state cuts anything beyond this $400 per student. Another $300 per student would be a death knell blow for many districts and would considerably harm the education of public school children across the state.

Under the governor’s proposal — even with reductions in employee compensation and benefits — districts across the state would still adopt budgets with a range of unhappy cuts: staff layoffs, including teachers, which would result in higher class sizes at all levels; program cuts and eliminations in areas as diverse as athletics, the arts, technology, gifted and talented education, and alternative education; and school closings, all over the next few years.

The governor and some legislative leaders have said that if employees simply paid a 20 percent contribution to their health insurance, it would eliminate 60 percent of the deficit created by the proposed cuts. This is inaccurate. If districts negotiated this level of contribution with their unions — and many have already done so, while many others have employee contributions but at somewhat lower levels — about one-quarter of the governor’s proposed cuts would be addressed, and only if a district currently had no employee contribution whatsoever. For districts like Vicksburg that already have an employee contribution of 20 percent or more of total premium, this suggestion has no benefit whatsoever. If a mandatory employee contribution is such a good idea, the state Legislature should make it law. Many school employees would understand and accept the logic in this environment.

When and where a child is born should never determine the quality of his or her education. Yet if the governor’s budget in some substantial measure is approved by the state legislature, that will in fact be the case: children who had the misfortune to be born just a few years ago in the state of Michigan will pay the price in the form of diminished educational resources — and educational quality, given the enormity of the cuts in question.

That quality education is not all about funding is different from the notion that funding levels are irrelevant. They aren’t. Stable, adequate funding is necessary to educate children, all the more necessary when we are dealing in Michigan with poverty at higher levels than in most states across the country.

Budgets are about choices, about values. The governor’s education budget, currently under consideration in the state legislature, does not value public school children, and it particularly undervalues poor school children. The proposed budget would transfer almost $1 billion away from pre-K-12 education to other state services.

In the last 12 years, KPS has cut $23 million to balance its budget. In the last two years, in collaboration with our teachers’ association and other unions, we changed health insurance plans to save $1 million; adopted and/or raised employee health insurance contributions to save $700,000; and changed middle and high school schedules, the first such changes since 1985 and 1999, respectively, to increase student instructional time and to save another $1.7 million. In the last five years, school districts across the state had particular need to cut, since state funding adjusted for inflation declined almost 10 percent, before the governor’s proposed cuts this year.

During the same time period, KPS has had five years of rising enrollment, four consecutive years of rising test scores at the elementary and middle school levels, and high school Advanced Placement participation that has more than doubled in the last three years, among many other achievements. We have much left to accomplish, and we understand that we will be doing this without more dollars. We are concerned about our ability to continue our improvement as cuts grow in size and as budget areas already tapped for savings are tapped out.

No one is suggesting not to have cuts. The reality is this: All districts in the state will cut $400 per student, due to the retirement increase and the absence of federal economic stimulus funds.

We are saying that, lamentable as it is for school children to take any cut, the cuts should stop there — at the largest in the state’s history — before we further damage children’s education. In addition, we believe and strongly recommend that any additional revenue identified in the May Revenue Estimating Conference should be devoted to reducing this $400 per student cut to the maximum extent possible.

We as a state have choices, on both the expenditure and revenue sides of the state budget. If the governor proposes large business tax cuts and the taxing of retirement income, we as a state have choices. If he proposes not to cut or to increase a number of state budget categories, we have choices. If he doesn’t propose an increase in the alcohol tax, unchanged for more than 40 years; a progressive income tax, as most states have; or a sales tax on services, as many states have, we clearly have choices.

Educators aren’t asking for more money. They haven’t in some time in the state. They are asking that kids not be unduly harmed by cuts.

Budgets are about choices, about values. What do we value in Michigan?

Michael F. Rice is superintendent of Kalamazoo Public Schools. Carol McGlinn is president of the Kalamazoo Public Schools Board of Education.

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Mark Provost | Why the Rich Love High Unemployment
Mark Provost, Truthout: “Christina Romer, former member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, accuses the administration of ‘shamefully ignoring’ the unemployed. Paul Krugman echoes her concerns, observing that Washington has lost interest in ‘the forgotten millions.’ America’s unemployed have been ignored and forgotten, but they are far from superfluous. Over the last two years, out-of-work Americans have played a critical role in helping the richest one percent recover trillions in financial wealth.”
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Mubarak to Face Trial for Killing of Protesters
David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times News Service: “Egypt’s top prosecutor on Tuesday ordered former President Hosni Mubarak to stand trial in connection with the killing of unarmed protesters during the 18-day-revolt that forced him from power, yielding to one of the revolution’s top demands just days before many of its organizers had vowed to return to Tahrir Square for another day of protest.”
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The Indignation in Spain Rises Gently From the Plains
Kieran Manjannez, Woodchip Gazette: “For the past week, in anticipation of local elections this weekend (May 21-22), Spanish students and young people defied legal injunctions and held protests in the country’s major cities. An estimated 10,000 ‘indignados’ (indignant ones) crowded into Madrid’s Puerta del Sol plaza and published a co-ordinated Communique or Manifesto [1] on line. The protests and the expected defeat of the ‘socialists’ at the polls highlights the international nature of the economic crisis and the ideological challenges facing the would-be left.”
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Eugene Robinson | A Medicare Moment for GOP
Eugene Robinson: “Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the architect of his party’s radical plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program, gave a lesson Sunday in stating the obvious: ‘I don’t consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policies should be.’ I’d suggest that Republicans with less disdain for public opinion might want to check out the height of the cliff from which Ryan would have them leap.”
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NATO Bombs Tripoli in Heaviest Strikes Yet
John F. Burns, The New York Times News Service: “In the heaviest attack yet on the capital since the start of the two-month-old NATO bombing campaign, alliance aircraft struck at least 15 targets in central Tripoli early Tuesday, with most of the airstrikes concentrated on an area around Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s command compound.”
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News in Brief: Warren Prodded to Run for US Senate Seat in Massachusetts, and More …
Push for Elizabeth Warren to run for the US Senate in Massachusetts; White House adds rapid response and progressive outreach staffer; Leahy, Paul team up to change elements of Patriot Act.
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Company Believes Three Reactors Melted Down in Japan
Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times: “In a belated acknowledgment of the severity of Japan’s nuclear disaster, the Tokyo Electric Power Company said Tuesday that three of the stricken Fukushima plant’s reactors likely suffered fuel meltdowns in the early days of the crisis. The plant’s operator also said that it was possible that the pressure vessels in the three stricken reactors, which house the uranium fuel rods, had been breached as well.”
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Paul Krugman | Trapped by the Euro, Yet Dependent on It
Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: “Kudos to Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, for saying the unsayable, and making a case for a Greek exit from the euro. In a New York Times Op-Ed published on May 10, he wrote: ‘The experience of Argentina at the end of 2001 is instructive. For more than three and a half years Argentina had suffered through one of the deepest recessions of the 20th century….’”
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Ten Reasons Protecting Unions Is a Life-and-Death Issue
Eric Mann, Truthout: “In Wisconsin, tens of thousands of public-sector workers were going to work every day, helping the people in the DMV, hospitals, health care centers, public transportation: teachers, fire fighters, clerical workers, among others. Then, on February 11, 2011, Republican Gov. Scott Walker introduced a bill, with a Republican majority in the legislature, which would virtually eliminate public-sector unions as we know them. The bill opposed collective bargaining rights, required annual votes to ask workers if they wanted the unions to represent them and prevented unions from collecting dues automatically out of workers’ paychecks. The anti-union movement is spreading to Ohio and many other states, and we have to develop a plan to beat back the pro-corporate, anti-union forces.”
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Playing the China Card
Dilip Hiro, TomDispatch.com: “Washington often acts as if Pakistan were its client state, with no other possible patron but the United States. It assumes that Pakistani leaders, having made all the usual declarations about upholding the ‘sacred sovereignty’ of their country, will end up yielding to periodic American demands, including those for a free hand in staging drone attacks in its tribal lands bordering Afghanistan. This is a flawed assessment of Washington’s long, tortuous relationship with Islamabad.”
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The Nuclear Disaster That Could Destroy Japan
Hirose Takashi, The Asia-Pacific Journal: “The nuclear power plants in Japan are aging rapidly; like cyborgs, they are barely kept in operation by a continuous replacement of parts. And now that Japan has entered a period of earthquake activity and a major accident could happen at any time, the people live in constant state of anxiety. Seismologists and geologists agree that, after some fifty years of seismic inactivity, with the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Southern Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake), the country has entered a period of seismic activity.”
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Obama’s Sister: What Our Mother Taught Us
Fran Korten, YES! Magazine: “In 1984, YES! Publisher Fran Korten worked alongside Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Soetoro, at the Ford Foundation’s office in Jakarta, Indonesia. Ann’s daughter, Maya, who was 14 at the time, attended the Jakarta International School with Fran’s daughters, Alicia and Diana. Maya was recently in Seattle preparing for the launch of her new children’s book, Ladder to the Moon, and Fran talked with her for the first time in 27 years.”
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