BABY BOOMERS KNOW HOW THE MIDDLE-CLASS IN AMERICA WAS BUILT: STRONG EDUCATION IN THE 1950s - 1970s; STRONG TAXATION TO BUILD THE PUBLIC SECTOR; AND STRONG PENSIONS AND RETIREMENT PROGRAMS. THAT IS THE MIDDLE-CLASS POLICY.
BELOW YOU'LL SEE HOW THIRD WAY DEMOCRATS ARE KILLING ALL THESE POLICIES....IT IS NOT THE REPUBLICANS MAKING THEM DO IT.....THEY ARE DOING IT FOR THE CORPORATIONS.
PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS ARE THE DRIVER OF MIDDLE-CLASS WAGES AND BENEFITS. IN THE 1960s, IT WAS THE FACT THAT GOVERNMENT JOBS PAID LIVING WAGES, OFFERED BENEFITS, PROTECTED WORKER'S RIGHTS THAT PUSHED CORPORATIONS TO DO THE SAME IN ORDER TO COMPETE FOR THE BEST WORKERS. IT DOESN'T WORK THE OTHER WAY...THE PRIVATE SECTOR WILL NOT CREATE A MIDDLE-CLASS, THEY CREATE POVERTY- CLASS. AS YOU LISTEN TO EMPLOYMENT STATISTICS YOU'LL HEAR A STEADY DECLINED IN PUBLIC JOBS.....THAT IS THE MIDDLE-CLASS. HERE IN MARYLAND WE HAVE BEN CARDIN, ANTHONY BROWN, AND MAGGIE MCINTOSH PUSHING PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC JOBS.....O'MALLEY AND RAWLINGS-BLAKE PUSHED DEFUNDING AND THEN CUTTING PUBLIC PENSIONS. THEY ARE KILLING THE MIDDLE-CLASS TO PROTECT CORPORATE AND WEALTH TAXES.
PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS ARE THE MIDDLE-CLASS AND THEY PUSH THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO OFFER MIDDLE-CLASS EMPLOYMENT!
YOU NEED A STRONG TAX BASE TO HAVE A STRONG PUBLIC SECTOR. IT WAS THE BUSH TAX CUTS AND THE WARS THAT DROVE THE DEFICITS......WE KNOW WE NEED TO END BOTH. ENDING THE BUSH TAX CUTS FOR EVERYONE RETURNS THE TAX BASE TO THE LEVEL WHEN THE MIDDLE-CLASS WAS STRONG. THE FACT THE THE DEMOCRATIC SENATE AND NOW THE HOUSE LEADER PELOSI ARE TRYING TO PROTECT THE BUSH TAX CUTS, SHOWS THAT THEY ARE WORKING FOR THE CORPORATIONS AND THE WEALTHY....NOT THE MIDDLE-CLASS. THESE BUSH TAX CUTS WILL HAPPEN AUTOMATICALLY....THERE IS NO REPUBLICAN THAT THREATENS THIS.....THEY ARE WORKING TO INSTITUTIONALIZE INCOME INEQUITY! ENDING THESE CUTS WILL HAVE LITTLE IMPACT ON THE MIDDLE/LOWER CLASS......ONLY A GREAT ONE ON THE WEALTHY. DON'T LET THEM TELL YOU THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR THE MIDDLE-CLASS IN PROTECTING AGAINST A TAX INCREASE.....THAT IS PROPAGANDA!
IF YOUR DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS AT ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT ARE NOT SHOUTING LOUDLY TO END BUSH TAX CUTS.....SHOUTING AGAINST ENDING PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS......FIGHTING FOR A DIFFERENT EDUCATION REFORM THAN 'RACE TO THE TOP'.......THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR THE MIDDLE-CLASS.......
VOTE YOUR INCUMBANT OUT!!!!!
GO TO THE CREDO ACTION WEBSITE TO SIGN A PETITION TO END ALL BUSH TAX CUTS! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!
__________________________
THE STATE OF THE STATE IN ONCE PROGRESSIVE CALIFORNIA, THE DRIVER OF ALL THIS THIRD WAY POLICY THAT KILLED THE AMERICAN DREAM, SHOWS THESE LEADERS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE ANY LONGER. CALIFORNIA VOTERS ARE GOING TO CHANGE THAT SOON.....MARYLAND VOTERS NEED TO DO THE SAME!
Pelosi tax cut plan knocked by study
By DAVID ROGERS | 5/30/12 3:54 PM EDT Updated: 5/30/12 4:14 PM EDT Politico
Nancy Pelosi’s expanded definition of the middle-class is running into criticism from old progressive allies fearful that the House Democratic leader is giving up too much in the battle over Bush-era tax cuts.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities weighed in Wednesday with a report saying that as much as $366 billion in 10-year-revenues would be lost under Pelosi’s plan allowing households earning up to $1 million — not just $250,000 — to be allowed to keep their lower tax rates after January.
That’s almost half of the $829 billion in potential revenue gains under the initial White House position, if President Barack Obama holds firm to the $250,000 limit.
“This means that policymakers ultimately would need to find $366 billion more in deficit savings to offset the cost,” the Center says. “That would make key programs ranging from Medicare to Medicaid and other low-income programs to education, basic research, food safety, defense, and homeland security significantly more vulnerable to deep cuts.”
The numbers illustrate the down side to the message war being waged by Democrats going into the fall elections. Pelosi opted for the higher threshold to build support in her party and try to isolate Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as holding out for those earning $1 million or better.
But many Democrats winced at the notion of expanding the “middle class” so high, and the report from the Center — which has been a fierce critic of the House Republican budget — is intended to illustrate the practical result.
_____________________________________________
Tell Democrats: Buffett Rule is not enough, end the Bush Tax cuts
CREDO ACTION
This week, you'll be hearing a lot of politicians in Washington DC talk about the Buffett Rule, which if passed would ensure that millionaires pay at least 30 percent in taxes on their income.
But it's important that we be clear that the Buffett Rule is not a substitute for rolling back the Bush tax cuts, which along with disastrous wars of choice, are responsible for the last decade's spike in our national debt.
An editorial in the New York Times1 makes the case clearly (emphasis ours):
The Buffett Rule, which would raise an estimated $50 billion over 10 years, would not make an appreciable dent in the deficit or provide a lot more for essential programs. By comparison, letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for taxpayers making more than $250,000 a year, as the president has also called for, would raise $800 billion over 10 years.
Mr. Obama must ensure that the Buffett Rule does not become a substitute for ending those tax cuts. Tell the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
In recent weeks we have been hearing a lot of disconcerting rhetoric coming out of Washington DC about the need to cut our social safety net under the guise of deficit reduction.
Democratic leaders including President Obama have adopted rightwing talking points about the need for "shared sacrifice"2 and a "grand bargain."3 This is code for raising the retirement age and making brutal cuts to vital programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
There is no need for our leaders to make concessions like these at the beginning of negotiations. In fact history has shown us that such pre-emptive caving leads to disastrous results.
_________________________________________________
If the Democratic establishment is serious about addressing the national debt and deficit, there is a simple way to do it: letting the Bush tax cuts permanently expire at the end of 2012. Adopting the Buffett Rule alone simply will not cut it.
Tell Democratic Leadership: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
We're working with our allies at Progressives United, an important new group led by Senator Russ Feingold, to make sure that Democrats get the message loud and clear that we can address our revenue needs by ending the Bush tax cuts and making corporations pay their fair share. In the coming days -- leading up to tax day -- the President and his Democratic allies in Congress will rally around the "Buffett Rule," tax legislation that aims to get the billionaires and millionaires to more in taxes.4
If the Democrats want to show a genuine commitment to enacting progressive tax policies that will help address the economic injustice in this country, they need to not just pass the Buffett Rule, but also make sure to end the Bush tax cuts and make corporations pay their fair share.
Tell Democratic Leadership: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
Had President Obama decided not to cut a deal with the Republican leadership and extend the low Bush tax rates in December of 2010, additional revenue would already be "flowing into the U.S. Treasury" at a rate of "$11.6 million every hour of every day."5 Generating those revenues by requiring the top 1 percent to pay their fair share as they were doing prior to Bush tax cuts, would have neutralized the beltway clamor for brutal cuts to programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the name of reform.
Focusing on the Bush tax cuts isn't only just, it's also smart politics. We don't have to pass a bill through the Republican-controlled House -- all we need to do is ensure that Congress doesn't pass a bill that extends the Bush tax cuts past 2012.
Tell Democratic Leadership: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
More than a decade after Bush tax cuts were signed into law, it is clear now that the Bush tax cuts were a huge mistake. Without the implementation of those disastrous cuts, our economy "would have been in much stronger shape to weather all the fiscal storms of the past 10 years and much better prepared for those of the next 10."6 There is no reason for President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress to repeat that same mistake.
Tell Democratic Leadership: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
This is a fight we can win if we are relentless. We need to speak up and lay down our marker today to let the Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House know that we expect them to hold the line against what has turned out to be one of the most disastrous economic policies enacted in our nation's history.
Thank you for fighting to end the Bush tax cuts once and for all.
1. Editorial, "Mr. Obama and the 'Buffett Rule'," The New York Times, April 11, 2012.
2 Chris Cillizza, "President Obama to Republicans: Get serious," WashingtonPost.com, April 3, 2012.
3. Brian Beutler, "Progressive Advocacy Group Targets Hoyer Over Potential Entitlement Cuts," TalkingPointsMemo.com, March 1, 2012.
4. Jim Kuhnhenn, "Obama Calls On Congress To Pass 'Buffett Rule' Tax," AP, March 31, 2012.
5. Mattea Kramer, "Super committee: Let Bush tax cuts expire and your work will be done," The Christian Science Monitor, November 2, 2011.
6. Michael Linden & Michael Ettlinger, "The Bush Tax Cuts Are the Disaster that Keeps on Giving," Center for American Progress, June 7, 2011.
______________________________________________________
SCHOOL POLICY IN THE 1950s - 1970s IS THE TEMPLATE FOR EDUCATION REFORM.....RACE TO THE TOP IS CORPORATE REFORM TAKING US TO THE BOTTOM.
Opinion Making Schools Work
By DAVID L. KIRP Published: May 19, 2012 New York Times
AMID the ceaseless and cacophonous debates about how to close the achievement gap, we’ve turned away from one tool that has been shown to work: school desegregation. That strategy, ushered in by the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, has been unceremoniously ushered out, an artifact in the museum of failed social experiments. The Supreme Court’s ruling that racially segregated schools were “inherently unequal” shook up the nation like no other decision of the 20th century. Civil rights advocates, who for years had been patiently laying the constitutional groundwork, cheered to the rafters, while segregationists mourned “Black Monday” and vowed “massive resistance.” But as the anniversary was observed this past week on May 17, it was hard not to notice that desegregation is effectively dead. In fact, we have been giving up on desegregation for a long time. In 1974, the Supreme Court rejected a metropolitan integration plan, leaving the increasingly black cities to fend for themselves.
. A generation later, public schools that had been ordered to integrate in the 1960s and 1970s became segregated once again, this time with the blessing of a new generation of justices. And five years ago, a splintered court delivered the coup de grâce when it decreed that a school district couldn’t voluntarily opt for the most modest kind of integration — giving parents a choice of which school their children would attend and treating race as a tiebreaker in deciding which children would go to the most popular schools. In the perverse logic of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., this amounted to “discriminating among individual students based on race.” That’s bad history, which, as Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in an impassioned dissent, “threaten[s] the promise of Brown.”
To the current reformers, integration is at best an irrelevance and at worst an excuse to shift attention away from shoddy teaching. But a spate of research says otherwise. The experience of an integrated education made all the difference in the lives of black children — and in the lives of their children as well. These economists’ studies consistently conclude that African-American students who attended integrated schools fared better academically than those left behind in segregated schools. They were more likely to graduate from high school and attend and graduate from college; and, the longer they spent attending integrated schools, the better they did. What’s more, the fear that white children would suffer, voiced by opponents of integration, proved groundless. Between 1970 and 1990, the black-white gap in educational attainment shrank — not because white youngsters did worse but because black youngsters did better.
Not only were they more successful in school, they were more successful in life as well. A 2011 study by the Berkeley public policy professor Rucker C. Johnson concludes that black youths who spent five years in desegregated schools have earned 25 percent more than those who never had that opportunity. Now in their 30s and 40s, they’re also healthier — the equivalent of being seven years younger.
Why? For these youngsters, the advent of integration transformed the experience of going to school. By itself, racial mixing didn’t do the trick, but it did mean that the fate of black and white students became intertwined. School systems that had spent a pittance on all-black schools were now obliged to invest considerably more on African-American students’ education after the schools became integrated. Their classes were smaller and better equipped. They included children from better-off families, a factor that the landmark 1966 Equality of Educational Opportunity study had shown to make a significant difference in academic success. What’s more, their teachers and parents held them to higher expectations. That’s what shifted the arc of their lives.
Professor Johnson takes this story one big step further by showing that the impact of integration reaches to the next generation. These youngsters — the grandchildren of Brown — are faring better in school than those whose parents attended racially isolated schools.
Despite the Horatio Alger myth that anyone can make it in America, moving up the socioeconomic ladder is hard going: children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich, who have about a 22 percent chance.
But many of the poor black children who attended desegregated schools in the 1970s escaped from poverty, and their offspring have maintained that advantage. Of course desegregation was not a cure-all. While the achievement gap and the income gap narrowed during the peak era of desegregation, white children continued to do noticeably better. That’s to be expected, for schools can’t hope to overcome the burdens of poverty or the lack of early education, which puts poor children far behind their middle-class peers before they enter kindergarten. And desegregation was too often implemented in ham-handed fashion, undermining its effectiveness. Adherence to principle trumped good education, as students were sent on school buses simply to achieve the numerical goal of racial balance. Understandably, that aroused opposition, and not only among those who thought desegregation was a bad idea. Despite its flaws, integration is as successful an educational strategy as we’ve hit upon. As the U.C.L.A. political scientist Gary Orfield points out, “On some measures the racial achievement gaps reached their low point around the same time as the peak of black-white desegregation in the late 1980s.”
And in the 1990s, when the courts stopped overseeing desegregation plans, black students in those communities seem to have done worse. The failure of the No Child Left Behind regimen to narrow the achievement gap offers the sobering lesson that closing underperforming public schools, setting high expectations for students, getting tough with teachers and opening a raft of charter schools isn’t the answer. If we’re serious about improving educational opportunities, we need to revisit the abandoned policy of school integration.
In theory it’s possible to achieve a fair amount of integration by crossing city and suburban boundaries or opening magnet schools attractive to both minority and white students. But the hostile majority on the Supreme Court and the absence of a vocal pro-integration constituency make integration’s revival a near impossibility.
David L. Kirp is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children’s Lives and America’s Future.”
BELOW YOU'LL SEE HOW THIRD WAY DEMOCRATS ARE KILLING ALL THESE POLICIES....IT IS NOT THE REPUBLICANS MAKING THEM DO IT.....THEY ARE DOING IT FOR THE CORPORATIONS.
PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS ARE THE DRIVER OF MIDDLE-CLASS WAGES AND BENEFITS. IN THE 1960s, IT WAS THE FACT THAT GOVERNMENT JOBS PAID LIVING WAGES, OFFERED BENEFITS, PROTECTED WORKER'S RIGHTS THAT PUSHED CORPORATIONS TO DO THE SAME IN ORDER TO COMPETE FOR THE BEST WORKERS. IT DOESN'T WORK THE OTHER WAY...THE PRIVATE SECTOR WILL NOT CREATE A MIDDLE-CLASS, THEY CREATE POVERTY- CLASS. AS YOU LISTEN TO EMPLOYMENT STATISTICS YOU'LL HEAR A STEADY DECLINED IN PUBLIC JOBS.....THAT IS THE MIDDLE-CLASS. HERE IN MARYLAND WE HAVE BEN CARDIN, ANTHONY BROWN, AND MAGGIE MCINTOSH PUSHING PRIVATIZATION OF PUBLIC JOBS.....O'MALLEY AND RAWLINGS-BLAKE PUSHED DEFUNDING AND THEN CUTTING PUBLIC PENSIONS. THEY ARE KILLING THE MIDDLE-CLASS TO PROTECT CORPORATE AND WEALTH TAXES.
PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS ARE THE MIDDLE-CLASS AND THEY PUSH THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO OFFER MIDDLE-CLASS EMPLOYMENT!
YOU NEED A STRONG TAX BASE TO HAVE A STRONG PUBLIC SECTOR. IT WAS THE BUSH TAX CUTS AND THE WARS THAT DROVE THE DEFICITS......WE KNOW WE NEED TO END BOTH. ENDING THE BUSH TAX CUTS FOR EVERYONE RETURNS THE TAX BASE TO THE LEVEL WHEN THE MIDDLE-CLASS WAS STRONG. THE FACT THE THE DEMOCRATIC SENATE AND NOW THE HOUSE LEADER PELOSI ARE TRYING TO PROTECT THE BUSH TAX CUTS, SHOWS THAT THEY ARE WORKING FOR THE CORPORATIONS AND THE WEALTHY....NOT THE MIDDLE-CLASS. THESE BUSH TAX CUTS WILL HAPPEN AUTOMATICALLY....THERE IS NO REPUBLICAN THAT THREATENS THIS.....THEY ARE WORKING TO INSTITUTIONALIZE INCOME INEQUITY! ENDING THESE CUTS WILL HAVE LITTLE IMPACT ON THE MIDDLE/LOWER CLASS......ONLY A GREAT ONE ON THE WEALTHY. DON'T LET THEM TELL YOU THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR THE MIDDLE-CLASS IN PROTECTING AGAINST A TAX INCREASE.....THAT IS PROPAGANDA!
IF YOUR DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS AT ALL LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT ARE NOT SHOUTING LOUDLY TO END BUSH TAX CUTS.....SHOUTING AGAINST ENDING PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS......FIGHTING FOR A DIFFERENT EDUCATION REFORM THAN 'RACE TO THE TOP'.......THEY ARE NOT WORKING FOR THE MIDDLE-CLASS.......
VOTE YOUR INCUMBANT OUT!!!!!
GO TO THE CREDO ACTION WEBSITE TO SIGN A PETITION TO END ALL BUSH TAX CUTS! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!
__________________________
THE STATE OF THE STATE IN ONCE PROGRESSIVE CALIFORNIA, THE DRIVER OF ALL THIS THIRD WAY POLICY THAT KILLED THE AMERICAN DREAM, SHOWS THESE LEADERS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE ANY LONGER. CALIFORNIA VOTERS ARE GOING TO CHANGE THAT SOON.....MARYLAND VOTERS NEED TO DO THE SAME!
Pelosi tax cut plan knocked by study
By DAVID ROGERS | 5/30/12 3:54 PM EDT Updated: 5/30/12 4:14 PM EDT Politico
Nancy Pelosi’s expanded definition of the middle-class is running into criticism from old progressive allies fearful that the House Democratic leader is giving up too much in the battle over Bush-era tax cuts.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities weighed in Wednesday with a report saying that as much as $366 billion in 10-year-revenues would be lost under Pelosi’s plan allowing households earning up to $1 million — not just $250,000 — to be allowed to keep their lower tax rates after January.
That’s almost half of the $829 billion in potential revenue gains under the initial White House position, if President Barack Obama holds firm to the $250,000 limit.
“This means that policymakers ultimately would need to find $366 billion more in deficit savings to offset the cost,” the Center says. “That would make key programs ranging from Medicare to Medicaid and other low-income programs to education, basic research, food safety, defense, and homeland security significantly more vulnerable to deep cuts.”
The numbers illustrate the down side to the message war being waged by Democrats going into the fall elections. Pelosi opted for the higher threshold to build support in her party and try to isolate Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as holding out for those earning $1 million or better.
But many Democrats winced at the notion of expanding the “middle class” so high, and the report from the Center — which has been a fierce critic of the House Republican budget — is intended to illustrate the practical result.
_____________________________________________
Tell Democrats: Buffett Rule is not enough, end the Bush Tax cuts
CREDO ACTION
This week, you'll be hearing a lot of politicians in Washington DC talk about the Buffett Rule, which if passed would ensure that millionaires pay at least 30 percent in taxes on their income.
But it's important that we be clear that the Buffett Rule is not a substitute for rolling back the Bush tax cuts, which along with disastrous wars of choice, are responsible for the last decade's spike in our national debt.
An editorial in the New York Times1 makes the case clearly (emphasis ours):
The Buffett Rule, which would raise an estimated $50 billion over 10 years, would not make an appreciable dent in the deficit or provide a lot more for essential programs. By comparison, letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for taxpayers making more than $250,000 a year, as the president has also called for, would raise $800 billion over 10 years.
Mr. Obama must ensure that the Buffett Rule does not become a substitute for ending those tax cuts. Tell the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
In recent weeks we have been hearing a lot of disconcerting rhetoric coming out of Washington DC about the need to cut our social safety net under the guise of deficit reduction.
Democratic leaders including President Obama have adopted rightwing talking points about the need for "shared sacrifice"2 and a "grand bargain."3 This is code for raising the retirement age and making brutal cuts to vital programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
There is no need for our leaders to make concessions like these at the beginning of negotiations. In fact history has shown us that such pre-emptive caving leads to disastrous results.
_________________________________________________
If the Democratic establishment is serious about addressing the national debt and deficit, there is a simple way to do it: letting the Bush tax cuts permanently expire at the end of 2012. Adopting the Buffett Rule alone simply will not cut it.
Tell Democratic Leadership: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
We're working with our allies at Progressives United, an important new group led by Senator Russ Feingold, to make sure that Democrats get the message loud and clear that we can address our revenue needs by ending the Bush tax cuts and making corporations pay their fair share. In the coming days -- leading up to tax day -- the President and his Democratic allies in Congress will rally around the "Buffett Rule," tax legislation that aims to get the billionaires and millionaires to more in taxes.4
If the Democrats want to show a genuine commitment to enacting progressive tax policies that will help address the economic injustice in this country, they need to not just pass the Buffett Rule, but also make sure to end the Bush tax cuts and make corporations pay their fair share.
Tell Democratic Leadership: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
Had President Obama decided not to cut a deal with the Republican leadership and extend the low Bush tax rates in December of 2010, additional revenue would already be "flowing into the U.S. Treasury" at a rate of "$11.6 million every hour of every day."5 Generating those revenues by requiring the top 1 percent to pay their fair share as they were doing prior to Bush tax cuts, would have neutralized the beltway clamor for brutal cuts to programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the name of reform.
Focusing on the Bush tax cuts isn't only just, it's also smart politics. We don't have to pass a bill through the Republican-controlled House -- all we need to do is ensure that Congress doesn't pass a bill that extends the Bush tax cuts past 2012.
Tell Democratic Leadership: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
More than a decade after Bush tax cuts were signed into law, it is clear now that the Bush tax cuts were a huge mistake. Without the implementation of those disastrous cuts, our economy "would have been in much stronger shape to weather all the fiscal storms of the past 10 years and much better prepared for those of the next 10."6 There is no reason for President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress to repeat that same mistake.
Tell Democratic Leadership: Pass the Buffett Rule, and then end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and make corporations pay their fair share too.
This is a fight we can win if we are relentless. We need to speak up and lay down our marker today to let the Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House know that we expect them to hold the line against what has turned out to be one of the most disastrous economic policies enacted in our nation's history.
Thank you for fighting to end the Bush tax cuts once and for all.
1. Editorial, "Mr. Obama and the 'Buffett Rule'," The New York Times, April 11, 2012.
2 Chris Cillizza, "President Obama to Republicans: Get serious," WashingtonPost.com, April 3, 2012.
3. Brian Beutler, "Progressive Advocacy Group Targets Hoyer Over Potential Entitlement Cuts," TalkingPointsMemo.com, March 1, 2012.
4. Jim Kuhnhenn, "Obama Calls On Congress To Pass 'Buffett Rule' Tax," AP, March 31, 2012.
5. Mattea Kramer, "Super committee: Let Bush tax cuts expire and your work will be done," The Christian Science Monitor, November 2, 2011.
6. Michael Linden & Michael Ettlinger, "The Bush Tax Cuts Are the Disaster that Keeps on Giving," Center for American Progress, June 7, 2011.
______________________________________________________
SCHOOL POLICY IN THE 1950s - 1970s IS THE TEMPLATE FOR EDUCATION REFORM.....RACE TO THE TOP IS CORPORATE REFORM TAKING US TO THE BOTTOM.
Opinion Making Schools Work
By DAVID L. KIRP Published: May 19, 2012 New York Times
AMID the ceaseless and cacophonous debates about how to close the achievement gap, we’ve turned away from one tool that has been shown to work: school desegregation. That strategy, ushered in by the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, has been unceremoniously ushered out, an artifact in the museum of failed social experiments. The Supreme Court’s ruling that racially segregated schools were “inherently unequal” shook up the nation like no other decision of the 20th century. Civil rights advocates, who for years had been patiently laying the constitutional groundwork, cheered to the rafters, while segregationists mourned “Black Monday” and vowed “massive resistance.” But as the anniversary was observed this past week on May 17, it was hard not to notice that desegregation is effectively dead. In fact, we have been giving up on desegregation for a long time. In 1974, the Supreme Court rejected a metropolitan integration plan, leaving the increasingly black cities to fend for themselves.
. A generation later, public schools that had been ordered to integrate in the 1960s and 1970s became segregated once again, this time with the blessing of a new generation of justices. And five years ago, a splintered court delivered the coup de grâce when it decreed that a school district couldn’t voluntarily opt for the most modest kind of integration — giving parents a choice of which school their children would attend and treating race as a tiebreaker in deciding which children would go to the most popular schools. In the perverse logic of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., this amounted to “discriminating among individual students based on race.” That’s bad history, which, as Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in an impassioned dissent, “threaten[s] the promise of Brown.”
To the current reformers, integration is at best an irrelevance and at worst an excuse to shift attention away from shoddy teaching. But a spate of research says otherwise. The experience of an integrated education made all the difference in the lives of black children — and in the lives of their children as well. These economists’ studies consistently conclude that African-American students who attended integrated schools fared better academically than those left behind in segregated schools. They were more likely to graduate from high school and attend and graduate from college; and, the longer they spent attending integrated schools, the better they did. What’s more, the fear that white children would suffer, voiced by opponents of integration, proved groundless. Between 1970 and 1990, the black-white gap in educational attainment shrank — not because white youngsters did worse but because black youngsters did better.
Not only were they more successful in school, they were more successful in life as well. A 2011 study by the Berkeley public policy professor Rucker C. Johnson concludes that black youths who spent five years in desegregated schools have earned 25 percent more than those who never had that opportunity. Now in their 30s and 40s, they’re also healthier — the equivalent of being seven years younger.
Why? For these youngsters, the advent of integration transformed the experience of going to school. By itself, racial mixing didn’t do the trick, but it did mean that the fate of black and white students became intertwined. School systems that had spent a pittance on all-black schools were now obliged to invest considerably more on African-American students’ education after the schools became integrated. Their classes were smaller and better equipped. They included children from better-off families, a factor that the landmark 1966 Equality of Educational Opportunity study had shown to make a significant difference in academic success. What’s more, their teachers and parents held them to higher expectations. That’s what shifted the arc of their lives.
Professor Johnson takes this story one big step further by showing that the impact of integration reaches to the next generation. These youngsters — the grandchildren of Brown — are faring better in school than those whose parents attended racially isolated schools.
Despite the Horatio Alger myth that anyone can make it in America, moving up the socioeconomic ladder is hard going: children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich, who have about a 22 percent chance.
But many of the poor black children who attended desegregated schools in the 1970s escaped from poverty, and their offspring have maintained that advantage. Of course desegregation was not a cure-all. While the achievement gap and the income gap narrowed during the peak era of desegregation, white children continued to do noticeably better. That’s to be expected, for schools can’t hope to overcome the burdens of poverty or the lack of early education, which puts poor children far behind their middle-class peers before they enter kindergarten. And desegregation was too often implemented in ham-handed fashion, undermining its effectiveness. Adherence to principle trumped good education, as students were sent on school buses simply to achieve the numerical goal of racial balance. Understandably, that aroused opposition, and not only among those who thought desegregation was a bad idea. Despite its flaws, integration is as successful an educational strategy as we’ve hit upon. As the U.C.L.A. political scientist Gary Orfield points out, “On some measures the racial achievement gaps reached their low point around the same time as the peak of black-white desegregation in the late 1980s.”
And in the 1990s, when the courts stopped overseeing desegregation plans, black students in those communities seem to have done worse. The failure of the No Child Left Behind regimen to narrow the achievement gap offers the sobering lesson that closing underperforming public schools, setting high expectations for students, getting tough with teachers and opening a raft of charter schools isn’t the answer. If we’re serious about improving educational opportunities, we need to revisit the abandoned policy of school integration.
In theory it’s possible to achieve a fair amount of integration by crossing city and suburban boundaries or opening magnet schools attractive to both minority and white students. But the hostile majority on the Supreme Court and the absence of a vocal pro-integration constituency make integration’s revival a near impossibility.
David L. Kirp is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Kids First: Five Big Ideas for Transforming Children’s Lives and America’s Future.”
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