I know folks in Georgia and around the country have been watching the case of Troy Davis and wondering if he is, indeed, going to be executed tonight. The execution has been delayed (a temporary stay was granted) for now – here is a live broadcast from the prison through Democracy Now.
Here are facts about the U.S. death penalty.
Amnesty International’s campaign to abolish the death penalty.
Mistakes and Innocence on Death Row.
Anti-death penalty video based on true story.
Thanks to MV for passing this along – Warren Buffett has always gone out on limbs and here he goes again. He knows our country – especially our country’s politicians – has lost its way and fairly taxing the most wealthy is exactly what can lead us to the right path. In this article he tells of paying around 17% of his taxable income while many middle-class Americans pay up to 40% of their taxable incomes. Buffett calls it “coddling the rich” and I couldn’t agree more. Coddling those at the very top of our income earning ladder who have acquired the majority of the economic resources in our country makes us a country of extreme Haves and Have-Nots. Those who have abundance wealth enjoy more tax credits and access to powerful people while paying a much smaller overall income tax, and those who are on the bottom 90% of the wealth ladder pay higher taxes, get less from the government in terms of tax credits and safety nets, and end up barely being able to pay their bills and feed their families.
And what about “entitlements”? I have practiced a new response to all those people who tell me that “government entitlement programs must go” before we raise taxes on anyone:
1. Do you own a home? Are you paying a mortgage? Then you are part of (probably the nation’s largest) entitlement program – it’s called your mortgage interest tax credit and in many cases it earns you more per year than a family receives from the government in food stamps per year.
2. Are you, or do you know, someone who owns land registered as agricultural for tax purposes? Wooops. There’s another entitlement program.
3. Have you taken on any home improvement projects to lower energy costs and submitted those receipts for a tax credit? Hmmmm….
4. Do you send your child to private school and live in a state where there is a loophole for claiming that tuition as charitable contributions to an educational institution? There’s another.
5. And what about these entitlements: You are entitled to police security in your community; You are entitled to being protected by a fire department if you need them for any reason; You are entitled to drive and walk on public roads and sidewalks; You are entitled to free and public education from grades Kindergarten through 12. Want to get rid of those too?
We are not yet entitled to any of these things with dignity if we are poor or struggling in any way, but there sure is pride and dignity in receiving that mortgage interest tax credit/entitlement!
Thanks Warren – we need more of you and your fellow billionaires to speak out loudly and clearly.
Hey all – thanks to a friend for sending this along. I have grown more impatient with the “These are your children, control them!” response from UK officials to the riots in London that resulted from a police officer killing a young man of color. UK officials are now considering the eviction of all families related to any accused in the riots. Great – so then the disenfranchised, angry, resentful collection of working-class and poor (mostly) immigrants will be homeless. This is a terrific solution! That should certainly prevent any future uprisings.
Is this an uprising? Or is it just a bunch of hoodlum adolescents expressing their greed and self-righteousness the way UK officials make them out to be?
It may be an uprising.
We weren’t surprised by the uprisings in the Middle East this year, but somehow people are less inclined to speak of “uprisings” in the “civilized, western” world including metropolitan London.
But this may just be an uprising.
Margaret Thatcher (the woman who spoke the words “There is no such thing as society” quoted at the bottom of this article in The Guardian) and her cronies including everyone involved in the Reagan era politics wanted “individuals” who were solely responsible for themselves and no one else – just as no one else would be responsible for those individuals – would be bound to consumerism and market fetishes and not worry about something so abstract as “society.”
Congratulations.
This is a terrific article and a nice primer for folks not familiar with “neoliberal” policies of the last 30-40 years and their implications.
So I’m more than envious of all you folks who participated in this historic event – but I’m still happy that I spent the day at my cousin’s wedding in Ohio celebrating with family and friends and dancing the night away…
But these speeches look like they were fabulous! Linda Darling-Hammond, Jonathan Kozol, John Kuhn, Diane Ravitch, and all the amazing educators, families, and children who are fighting every day to make sure kids are respected and can experience education with dignity and hope and power:
Other great video footage of the march.
What should we do now?
Paul Thomas has some good ideas here…
Thanks to J.J. for sending this my way:
Mother Hopes Others will Opt Out of Standardized Testing
State College, Pennsylvania (CNN) — A Pennsylvania mother has decided she does not want her two children to take the two-week-long standardized tests given by her state as part of the federal No Child Left Behind law. And she hopes other parents will do the same.
Michele Gray’s sons — Ted Rosenblum, 11, and John Michael Rosenblum, 9 — did independent study the week of March 14 while their classmates were filling in hundreds of bubbles in classrooms with doors marked, “Quiet. Testing in Progress.”
Gray says the only legal exemption that would allow her kids to sit out the tests was a religious objection. So that’s what she did.
But Gray says her concerns go well beyond religion. “The more I look at standardized tests, the more I realize that we have, as parents, been kind of sold a bill of goods.”
She says the tests are not accurate measures of accomplishment, create undue anxiety for students and are used to punish schools.
She gives the example of her sons’ award-winning school, Park Forest Elementary, which last year was put on “warning” status after the school’s special education students fell below the level of progress the state expects on their exams.
“The more I looked at it, the more outraged I became,” Gray said, “This is not something I want to be contributing to (or) something I want my children participating in.”
Dr. Timothy Slekar, an associate professor of education at Penn State Altoona, agrees. It was his op-ed piece on the Huffington Post website that inspired Gray to take action.
Slekar is also a father and this year chose not to allow his 11-year-old son Luke to take the tests. He says schools are narrowing their curricula in an effort to boost test scores and wasting too much time preparing for, and then taking, the tests.
He says the tests aren’t an accurate indicator of a child’s — or a school’s — performance. “I’m a father and an educator who’s finally said, ‘This is it. I’m done.’ Something has to give. Something has to change,” Slekar said.
Another education professor, Dana Mitra, also isn’t happy with the tests, but decided to allow her third-grader daughter to take them this year because she’s afraid that holding her daughter out could harm the school’s test results.
“Given that we’re interested in wanting our schools to be the best that they can, we feel pressure as parents to want to help our school,” she said. She’s not sure what she’ll do with her daughter next year.
Testing proponents, such as United Negro College Fund President and CEO Michael Lomax, say parents who opt out “are doing their own children a disservice.” He added, “Testing is a parent’s ally” and that in order to compete with countries such as China and India, U.S. schools need to be held to a higher standard. And testing, he says, is the way to do it.
“The testing isn’t the reason the schools are failing. The instruction is the reason the schools are failing,” Lomax insisted.
But “opt-out” parents like Gray and Slekar are undeterred.
Gray has a Facebook page aimed at helping other parents learn that they are able to opt out of testing and how to do it.
Parents in Colorado have created a similar website.
Despite these efforts, opting out of standardized tests is rare nationwide. The U.S. Department of Education says it doesn’t track the numbers.
At Park Forest Elementary, where Gray’s children go, nine out of 500 were held out of standardized tests this year, including Gray’s. Last year, all the students there took the test.
President Barack Obama, at a March speech at a Virginia school, acknowledged testing reform is needed. But he says testing isn’t going away.
“There will be testing,” he said. “We can have accountability without rigidity — accountability that still encourages creativity inside the classroom, and empowers teachers and students and administrators.”
His administration recently announced a $300 million grant aimed at revamping standardized tests.
Meantime, Ted and John Michael won’t be participating. Their mother thinks if enough parents follow her lead, high-stakes testing may go away altogether.
Michael Lomax thinks parents like Gray are hurting education. “I’m sure they love their kids,” he said, “but I think they are wrong.”
She’s done it again, and I’m only a couple months late in responding.
Thanks to Gloria for passing this along!
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentaries.php?id=865
Thanks to TCS for sending this my way!
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