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Republican Debators Not Demanding Removal of Brown M&Ms

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The latest act taking the center ring in the Republican presidential campaign circus involves a candidate revolt against debate formats, followed by a revolt against the revolt. You could say these are the most revolting developments yet in the revolt against the incumbency of the Black Guy in the White House.

Following a failed attempt by CNBC to spice up a debate format burdened by the reality of a dozen large egos competing for prominence, Republican candidates responded by agreeing to cut their own party out of the negotiating loop.

The campaigns held a summit over the weekend at the Hilton Alexandria Old Town to formulate demands for future debate ground rules, starting off by exempting the Fox Business debate scheduled for November 10th.   [Read more…]

Marijuana, Tax Measures Vying for California 2016 Ballot

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By Doug Porter

As we come down the stretch into the final year before the 2016 general election, there are competing interests backing ballot measures seeking to legalize recreational marijuana use and increase taxes on upper-income earners in California.

The downside in this situation is the possibility of enough confused voters rejecting the choices on the ballot on both issues. And you can bank on opponents of legalization and tax increases will do their best to sow doubt and confusion.

Divisions in the pro-pot camp led to the defeat of Proposition 19 in 2010, despite not having a competing measure on the ballot and polling showing voters favoring legalized marijuana.  Advocates for tax increases in 2012 were divided between competing propositions, but a unified effort on the part of organized labor gave Proposition 30 the votes needed to win.   [Read more…]

Inequality for All in America’s Higher Education System

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By Jim Miller with Ian Duckles 

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Thomas Piketty speak on economic inequality at UCSD. In his talk, Piketty hit on the central themes of his seminal work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century: how our current level of economic inequality is now back to where it was before the “great compression” of the mid-twentieth century when union density, progressive taxation, and educational policies helped produce the high point of the American middle class. He underlined how there is no economic benefit to our current level of excessive inequality and that it is the product not of any “natural” function of the free market economy, but rather several decades of wrong-headed ideology, destructive politics, and bad policy.

During the question and answer session following his presentation, a well-heeled older gentleman prefaced his question about why the “lower 50 percent” don’t just vote out the bad policies with, “this audience, we’re all the top 10%,” which drew a few laughs from people, many of whom were likely debt-ridden students, teaching assistants, campus workers, and lecturers whose income doesn’t come close to landing them in that realm. That there may have been a ragtag group of professors and students from lowly City College in attendance was not even in the speaker’s imagination.

I couldn’t help but think how UCSD is a perfect microcosm of the macroeconomic inequality that Piketty was talking about and that the class-blind commenter was a perfect manifestation of the very elite ideology that serves to enforce our deep level of inequality. But of course, it’s not just at UCSD where this is an issue but across the entire landscape of American higher education, where what used to be one of the most solid middle-class professions in the country is in the process of being hollowed out, bit by bit.   [Read more…]

Students Protest Gun Violence with Giant Dildos

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By Sola Agustsson /Alternet

Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently passed the “campus carry” law, which will allow gun license owners to carry concealed firearms throughout public university campuses. The law will go into effect starting August 2016, and many believe it will make universities less safe. Students at the University of Texas at Austin are protesting this law in a peaceful yet subversive way- by openly carrying sex toys to class.

“You’re carrying a gun to class? Yeah well I’m carrying a HUGE DILDO.

Just about as effective at protecting us from sociopathic shooters, but much safer for recreational play.

  [Read more…]

SANDAG, Water Agencies Faith Based Planning

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By Doug Porter

Two incredulous tales about the agencies entrusted to look out for the public good opting for short-sighted policies grabbed my attention this morning. Apparently climate change is a mere bureaucratic hurdle and the drought is soon to be forgotten. I guess we just gotta have faith, baby.

Our regional transportation planners are set to approve a proposal no better than the one already rejected by the courts for failing to meet state-mandated greenhouse gas reduction goals, according to the group that took them to court in the first place.

Ten local water agencies are, according to a story in Voice of San Diego, questioning state regulators about the need to continue restrictions on water use. They’re banking on a return to normalcy with the advent of El Nino conditions this winter, and are apparently ignorant of long term trends due to climate change.   [Read more…]

Why Free College Tuition Makes Sense for America

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By Bernie Rhinerson / FreeCollegeNow.Org

Ever since President Obama announced Americas College Promise, his plan to make community colleges tuition free, the debate and conversation about making colleges free has been building with many productive ideas coming forward.

This month, the San Diego Community College District may have become the first community college district in the country to approve an endorsement resolution supporting these efforts to make a community college education more affordable.  That is just one step of many that we need to take down the road to a future where a college education is expected, accessible and affordable for all young people in our country.

More than 100 years ago, America began to acknowledge that to be successful, our younger citizens needed more education.  During the “high school movement” from 1910 to 1940, high schools were established to expand educational opportunities for students.  In 1910, only 9% of 18-year-olds graduated from a secondary school.  By 1940, 73% of high school age Americans were enrolled in a secondary school.  That educational explosion has been credited with the success achieved by our country in the 20th century in the growth of the middle class, and scientific and technological achievements.   [Read more…]

Do All “Black Lives Matter?”

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By Ernie McCray

Damn. One day I’m writing a piece concerning discrimination against lesbians and gays, making a pitch for us to let the now proverbial Adam and Steve or Alanna and Eve feel at ease in just being themselves.

And the very next day, to my dismay, I hear of a little 5-year-old black girl who is kicked out of a school, the Mt. Erie Christian Academy, because she has two moms.

Whoa, right back where I started from. Another story about “beliefs.” Christian beliefs. But I just have to say I can’t see Christ turning some child away from a school with some lame excuse like “The Bible says homosexuality is a sin,” making that little girl, in essence, a victim of her mothers’ sins.   [Read more…]

Diary of a Refugee: Finding Hope In Art and Education

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By Vanessa Ceceña

Burma is a country in Southeast Asia that has been torn by civil war, unrest and a regime that instills fear in its people. After nearly 50 years of military rule, the country is currently in a process of renovation, but there are still accounts continued human rights violations.

Like in many countries that have experienced unrest and a level of genocide, many in Burma fled their country and entered refugee camps in neighboring Thailand. Here is the story of Eh De Gray.

De Gray identifies as Karen, one of the ethnic groups in Burma. He is the oldest of 5 and at the young age of 11, he decided to leave his home country and family to enter a refugee camp on the Burmese-Thai border. He wanted an education, an opportunity, something that he would not get if he remained in Burma.   [Read more…]

Are Charter School Directors Bending Pension Rules?

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By Rick Mercurio / Alianza North County

Teachers and administrators in California’s public schools earn pensions based on several factors. For some, like Dennis Snyder, the founder of three charter schools in Escondido CA, it adds up to a healthy lifetime benefit, even though his final employer was not a public school district, and even though he found an apparent loophole in the regulations.

Snyder’s situation

Dennis Snyder worked as a teacher and football coach at Escondido High School starting in about 1965. In 1986 the principal fired Snyder as coach, citing the reason that he was not cooperative with the parent booster organization. Snyder appealed the firing to both the superintendent and the school board, and he lost both appeals.

Although he was let go as head football coach, he retained his teaching position. However, in the early ‘90s Snyder switched jobs, becoming executive director of the Escondido Charter High School, which he founded. Heritage K-8 Charter School and Heritage Digital Academy were later founded by Snyder as well.

Snyder’s salary as executive director eventually rose to almost $111,000.   [Read more…]

To Cut Costs, College Students Are Buying Less Food and Even Going Hungry

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By Sara Goldrick-Rab, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Katharine Broton, University of Wisconsin-Madison / The Conversation

Studies have long shown that a college student’s odds of achieving financial security and a better quality of life improve when he or she earns a degree.

But what are some of the obstacles that prevent degree attainment?

At the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, we study the challenges that students from low- and moderate-income households face in attaining a college degree. Chief among these are the many hurdles created by the high price of college. Paying the price of attending college, we find, changes who attends and for how long, as well as the college experience itself – what classes students take, the grades they earn, the activities in which they engage and even with whom they interact.

Our recent research shows an alarming trend on college campuses: an increasing number of students tell us that they are struggling in college, sometimes even dropping out, because they can’t afford enough of life’s basic necessity – food.   [Read more…]

School Board Trustee Praised, Defended and Investigated, All in a Day at San Diego Unified

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By Doug Porter

School Board Trustee Marne Foster is at the center of several controversies in the San Diego Unified School District. A meeting of the trustees yesterday featured numerous TV trucks lined up outside, partisans and opponents inside, along with three distinct actions and enough drama for a cable mini-series.

Documents released by the district answered many questions raised concerning the School of Creative and Performing Arts, at the center of the current controversy. Responding to charges that Trustee Foster had intervened in school affairs on behalf of her son, the district’s documents amounted to a master class in how to respond to a political controversy: hit’em [critics] hard and hit ‘em long. This situation is far from resolved, however.

Also, the school board authorized an investigation into Trustee Foster’s involvement in a fundraiser on behalf of her son’s college fund and a claim filed against the district allegedly by the child’s father. And they passed a resolution praising Foster for her work promoting equity in the district.  Confused yet? It is complicated, to be sure.   [Read more…]

Lively Hoods

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Why are we asking for jobs?

Most jobs are a lopsided trade agreement
where we relinquish the majority of our waking hours,
and our labor and talent
to make someone else
wealthy – wealthier!
in exchange for just enough money to survive.
Sometimes it’s not even enough
…used to be.

What we all really want
and need
is a means of living
that makes being alive meaningful.   [Read more…]

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