Given our apartheid public education system could it be otherwise? Presently schools are more segregated than they were 15 years ago. The ridiculous and convoluted “Robin Hood” system of school funding in Texas Red is little more than institutionalized madness that encourages “rich” school districts to hold on to the millions of dollars allotted for “poor” school districts.
What’s with this business of rich and poor public education systems anyway? Are we all citizens of the republic or not? While I’m at it, what’s with the non-educator Arny Duncan/Obama “Race to the top” business? Why are we making it a “competitive” process when all children of citizens of the republic deserve a viable education?
Face it just how is it there’s anything “competitive” about a race between rich and poor? The rich start at the finish line in expensive running shoes while the barefoot poor don’t have a clue where the finish line is.
Texas Red spends millions to tweak its money-making prison-industrial complex but not a dime to improve conditions that would make the prison-industrial complex obsolete. It is even less likely the powerful such as the Koch brothers would back any effort to re-cast our apartheid public education system or improve healthcare for he people. Count on it.
Stunning Statistics of the Week:
- 69: Number of preliminary reviews conducted by the Office of Congressional Ethics over the past two years
- 11: Number of disciplinary actions meted out by the House ethics committee during that time
- 10: Number of disciplinary actions meted out by the House ethics committee between 1997 and 2008, before the Office of Congressional Ethics was created
U.S. Supreme Court takes aim at Arizona clean elections law
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging Arizona’s clean elections law. Under the system, if candidates forgo private fundraising and adhere to spending limits, they can receive public money after raising a set number of $5 donations. The law permits candidates to receive extra money if their opponent spends more than a certain amount. Good government advocates worry that the Supreme Court is gearing up to once again erode laws designed to curb corporate influence of elections.
U.S. Chamber’s election spending raises eyebrows among shareholders
Investors in four corporations that sit on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – IBM, Pfizer, Pepsi and Accenture – are raising concerns about the Chamber’s political spending and agenda. Through the shareholder resolutions, investors challenged their corporate boards to review their policies relating to political expenditures. One of the resolution’s filers said in a press release that “[t]he Chamber of Commerce is an aggressively partisan organization that is standing in the way of solutions to our nation’s most pressing problems, from health care to climate change. We are asking why these companies would lend their good names — and their implicit endorsement — to the Chamber’s agenda.”
Rove groups were “undisputed leaders” of outside spending in Nov. elections
The latest filings to the Federal Election Commission show that two conservative groups co-founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove raised more than $70 million for the November elections. The Washington Post calls American Crossroads (which amassed almost $28 million) and Crossroads GPS ($43 million) “the undisputed leaders of an onslaught of outside spending on 2010 House and Senate races.” The groups were created after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last January in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the court gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case challenging Arizona’s clean elections law. Under the system, if candidates forgo private fundraising and adhere to spending limits, they can receive public money after raising a set number of $5 donations. The law permits candidates to receive extra money if their opponent spends more than a certain amount. Good government advocates worry that the Supreme Court is gearing up to once again erode laws designed to curb corporate influence of elections.
U.S. Chamber’s election spending raises eyebrows among shareholders
Investors in four corporations that sit on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – IBM, Pfizer, Pepsi and Accenture – are raising concerns about the Chamber’s political spending and agenda. Through the shareholder resolutions, investors challenged their corporate boards to review their policies relating to political expenditures. One of the resolution’s filers said in a press release that “[t]he Chamber of Commerce is an aggressively partisan organization that is standing in the way of solutions to our nation’s most pressing problems, from health care to climate change. We are asking why these companies would lend their good names — and their implicit endorsement — to the Chamber’s agenda.”
Rove groups were “undisputed leaders” of outside spending in Nov. elections
The latest filings to the Federal Election Commission show that two conservative groups co-founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove raised more than $70 million for the November elections. The Washington Post calls American Crossroads (which amassed almost $28 million) and Crossroads GPS ($43 million) “the undisputed leaders of an onslaught of outside spending on 2010 House and Senate races.” The groups were created after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last January in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the court gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.
Left to the GOPers, Tea Partiers and Blue Dogs, fewer and fewer Americans would be eligible to cast a vote. Not that based on the outcome of elections, in particular elections 2010, more or less Texas Red voters would do anything to challenge the status quo.“The rich get richer and the poor get babies… “ and you know from appearances not only do few give a damn but most are pleased as punch to leave things as they are.
From Texas Red: a cratered landscape of prisons, deplorable apartheid public education, lack of healthcare and politicians and majority population intent on keeping it that way…
Hasta Siempre,
Hasta Siempre,
More:
Wealthy Texas school districts kept millions
HALLSVILLE, Texas — Dozens of wealthy Texas school districts held onto more than $40 million in tax dollars that should have gone to poorer districts under the state's so-called "Robin Hood" law until the state demanded they pay up this year, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7294682.html
De Facto School Segregation Growing, Study Says
A new Harvard University study finds America's public schools are more segregated now than they were 15 years ago. Ed Gordon discusses the findings with Harvard professor Gary Orfield, a co-author of the study, and with John Brittain, chief counsel and senior deputy for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law…
Furthermore, to let school districts build schools in black and Latino neighborhoods perpetuates segregation with state full funding and they let predominantly white schools renovate and build new schools in the suburbs that also maintains desegregation. So, our laws have failed and our government actors have failed.
Take no prisoners, shoot the wounded and eat the dead…..
My buds usually say to this type of discovery, “No sh-t Sherlock?”
The Austin-based advocacy firm The Equity Center recently released a report called “Money Does Matter” detailing the trouble with public school finance in the current educational climate.
Two San Antonio superintendents — Robert J. Duron with SAISD and Robert Jaklich with Harlandale ISD — contributed to the project and said they both understand why unequal funding is becoming more and more of a problem.
“It costs $8 million a month to run the district,” he said. “Harlandale is 22nd from the bottom as far as property wealth, so our funding is very low.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/community/equity_center_releases_ominous_finance_report_106975173.html
The Equity Center recently released a report called “Money Does Matter”
http://www.equitycenter.org/moneymatters/Money%20Matters%20Publication.Sept%202010.pdf
http://www.equitycenter.org/moneymatters/Money%20Matters%20Publication.Sept%202010.pdf
Race to the Top
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_top
The Brothers Koch: Rich, Political And Playing To Win
Chances are you've never heard of Charles and David Koch. The brothers own Koch Industries, a Kansas-based conglomerate that operates oil refineries in several states and is the company behind brands including Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Lycra fibers and Stainmaster carpet. Forbes ranks Koch Industries as the second-largest privately held company in the U.S. — and the Koch brothers themselves? They're worth billions.
Covert Operations
The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
those tea partiers---what jokers. There’s a lot in the Constitution as originally stood-up that the Tea Partiers should hope doesn’t become the focus of attention….
Tea Party: Don’t Let Renters Vote
http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/blog/home-equity/tea-party-dont-let-renters-vote/3350/
Revised deficit panel plan seeks deeper cuts
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AS4Z120101201
A People's History of the United States– Howard Zinn
“However, James W. Marquart, Sheldon Ekland-Olson, and Jonathan R. Sorensen offer a more complex thesis. In their book, The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990,[5] they argue that Texas' execution rate reflects the Southern "cultural tradition of exclusion," and that "[s]uch exclusion was a basic element of the legacy of slavery."
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