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California 2018 Propositions 10-12 | Are They Really About Rent Control, Lunch Breaks and Cage-Free Eggs?

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In the conclusion to this series on statewide propositions, we’ll look at two measures that aren’t what they seem to be and one that is what it seems to be, even though opponents claim otherwise.

Prop 10 asks voters to repeal the law prohibiting communities from regulating what landlords can charge residential tenants. Prop 11 asks voters to legalize a questionable labor policy. And Prop 12 ups the ante on the treatment of animals raised for human consumption.

On Monday, I looked at Propositions 1 through 4, and yesterday it was 5 through 8. If you’re wondering about Prop 9–aka the billionaire scheme to split California into three parts–you won’t find it.

 The “Three States Initiative” was removed from the ballot by California Supreme Court” because significant questions have been raised regarding the proposition’s validity and because we conclude that the potential harm in permitting the measure to remain on the ballot outweighs the potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election.”

 Alas, venture capitalist and cryptocurrency investor Tim Draper has declared he’ll no longer be interested in this form of political tinkering by 2020.   [Read more…]

A Layman’s Guide to the Destroy Public Education Movement

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The destroy public education (DPE) movement is the fruit of a relatively small group of billionaires. The movement is financed by several large non-profit organizations. Nearly all of the money spent is free of taxation. Without this spending, there would be no wide-spread public school privatization.

Last year, researchers from the University of Indiana Purdue University Indianapolis (UIPUI) led by professor Jim Scheurich, who coordinates the urban studies program there, perceived a pattern in the destruction of the public schools. That pattern became the “destroy public education” model. As Ravitch’s “corporate education reform” became more organized and ruthless, the Scheurich team’s DPE model became a better descriptor.   [Read more…]

Ugly Teachers’ Union Smear from State Policy Network

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Edward Ring of the California Policy Center (CPC) just published a scurrilous attack on public schools, teachers and their unions. This mean spirited and factually challenged screed comes from a State Policy Network (SPN) member organization. The baseless attack is more evidence of a conspiracy to avoid federal tax law by masquerading as a non-profit while carrying out a political agenda.

Ring begins by saying private sector unions might not be so bad if they are controlled and admits unions “played a vital role in securing rights for the American worker.” He then delivers this jingoistic slam, “If they [unions] would bother to embrace the aspirations of their members, instead of the multinational corporations their leaders now apparently collude with, they might even support immigration reform.”

However, according to Ring, public sector unions are an abomination and teachers’ unions are the worst of the worst. He states,

“The teachers unions are guilty of all the problems common to all public sector unions. They, too, have negotiated unsustainable rates of pay and benefits. They, too, elect their own bosses, negotiate inefficient work rules, have an insatiable need for more public funds, and protect incompetent members. But the teachers union is worse than all other public sector unions for one reason that eclipses all others: Their agenda is negatively affecting how we socialize and educate our children, the next generation of Americans.”

  [Read more…]

School Choice is a Bamboozle, a Hornswoggle, a Flimflam

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Two central ideologies behind school-choice are: markets always make superior decisions, and the cost of having local control of schools is poor outcomes. Both ideas are demonstrably untrue, but big money and power politics keep them alive.

In 2017, a national survey showed a dramatic drop in support for charter schools. A related Chalkbeat article said,

The survey, conducted by the school choice-friendly journal Education Next, found that slightly more Americans support charter schools, 39 percent, than oppose them, at 36 percent. But that marks a drop from 51 percent support just last year — one of the biggest changes in public opinion seen in the long-running survey, according to Harvard professor and the magazine’s editor-in-chief Marty West.   [Read more…]

Destroying Public Education With Vouchers and Charters in Wisconsin

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This past school year, Wisconsin taxpayers sent $250,000,000 to religious schools. Catholics received the largest slice, but protestants, evangelicals and Jews got their cuts. Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) reveals that private Islamic schools took in $6,350,000. Of the 212 schools collecting voucher money, 197 were religious schools.

The Wisconsin voucher program was expanded before the 2014-2015 school year. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, “Seventy-five percent of eligible students who applied for taxpayer-funded subsidies to attend private and religious schools this fall in the statewide voucher program already attend private schools ….”

Money taken from the public schools attended by the vast majority of Milwaukee’s students is sent to private religious schools. Public schools must adjust for stranded costs while paying to serve a higher percentage of special education students because private schools won’t take them. Forcing public schools to increase class sizes, reduce offerings such as music and lay off staff.   [Read more…]

San Joaquin Valley in the ‘Destroy Public Education’ Crosshairs

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Efforts to privatize public schools in the San Joaquin (pronounced: whah-keen) Valley are accelerating. Five disparate yet mutually reinforcing groups are leading this Destroy Public Education (DPE) movement. For school year 2017-2018, taxpayers sent $11.5 billion to educate K-12 students in the valley and a full $1 billion of that money was siphoned off to charter schools. This meant that education funding for 92 percent of students attending public schools has been significantly reduced on a per student basis.

In July 2017, California’s State Superintendent of Education, Tom Torlakson, announced the revised 2017-2018 budget for K-12 education totaled $92.5 billion. Dividing this number by the total of students enrolled statewide provides an average spending per enrolled student ($14,870). The spending numbers reported above were found by multiplying $14,870 by students enrolled.

The five groups motivating privatization of public schools are:

  • People who want taxpayer supported religious schools.
  • Groups who want segregated schools.
  • Entrepreneurs profiting from school management and school real estate deals.
  • The technology industry using wealth and lobbying power to place products into public schools and supporting technology driven charter schools.
  • Ideologs who fervently believe that market-based solutions are always superior.

  [Read more…]

Racism 101: White Lady Reporter Wants You to Know Black Lives Matter is Coming to National City to Riot

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“…They are demanding answers and they say they are not going to go away until they get them. The groups say next they plan on collaborating with the National Black Lives Matter group and staging riots in the streets if necessary; that is if the National City Police Department doesn’t release police body worn camera [footage] of an incident where a man died in custody.” —NBC 7 Reporter Wendy Fry

UPDATE: “Never mind” says NBC7. “An NBC 7 article referred to demonstrators staging riots in the streets in their pursuit of information. NBC 7 could not attribute that development to a specific community leader and has corrected the text. We greatly regret the error.”

UPDATED UPDATE: The reporter in question is sorry/not sorry

Protests are sometimes loud. They’re always messy. And they’re emotional. They’re challenging for reporters to cover because of the linguistic shorthand used by activists to make their points. 

NBC7’s Wendy Fry takes the cake for decorating her reporting with racist suppositions drawn from the tumultuous protests ongoing at council meetings in National City.
  [Read more…]

iReady: Magnificent Marketing, Terrible Teaching

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iReady is an economically successful software product used in public schools, by homeschoolers, and in private schools. It utilizes the blended learning practices endorsed by the recently updated federal education law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). iReady employs competency-based education (CBE) theory which is also advocated by ESSA. The outcome is iReady drains money from classrooms, applies federally supported failed learning theories and undermines good teaching. Children hate it.   [Read more…]

Immigration Protests Continue Nationwide | Progressive Activist Calendar June 29-July 9, 2018

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It ain’t over till it’s over. Protests, rallies, and phone calls continue as people express their outrage at inhumane and racist policies.

San Diegans protesting the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy towards immigrants and separation of families at the border picketed the Customs & Border Protection (CBP) Sector Headquarters in Chula Vista yesterday.

CBP security personnel by the entranceway heard 2+ hours a recording of the children crying after being forcibly taken from their parent(s). An 800# was prominently displayed offering free legal advice for employees refusing to separate families.

Nearly 600 women were arrested in Washington DC on Thursday, as they staged a sit-in in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office building.   [Read more…]

Philadelphia Story: Another School Choice Failure

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For the last two decades, Pennsylvania’s political leaders have attempted to improve schools in Philadelphia without spending money. In 2001, Governor Thomas Ridge turned to Chris Whittle and his Edison Project to study the school system and create a reform plan. That December, the state of Pennsylvania disbanded the local school board and assumed total control of the district.

Since then, citizens of Philadelphia have endured – with minimal input – a relentless school choice agenda and the loss of public schools in their neighborhoods.

Politicians – not wanting to spend on education – often claim the problem is public schools have become bloated and inefficient. This assertion is normally paired with an attack on teachers’ unions as being the enemy of good pedagogy and progress. The medicine offered to solve these ills is competition and market forces. It is theorized that competition will improve management and force teachers to do their job better.

After two decades of implementing this theory in Philadelphia; test scores are still low, communities are still plagued by poverty and fraud is rampant. Worst of all, the public-school system has been significantly harmed.   [Read more…]

Prohibition 2018: The Paradox in Recovery

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A Journey into the Business of Substance Use Recovery, Mandatory Sobriety and their Role in Housing for San Diegans

A relatively recent affliction since my thirties, Alcoholism has followed me cross-country and has disrupted my life in moments when my anxiety peaked and the urge to self-medicate became imperative.

My name is Orlando Barahona and like my father, I inherited a propensity for self-medication. I suffer from two psychiatric diagnoses as well, which I have come to understand as latent elements in what I now brand a spiritual and intellectual myopia.

From a report submitted by the San Diego Housing Commission and the Health and Human Services, there are forty-one organizations offering residential recovery programs in San Diego County, most listed on the Network of Care website by zip code and specific clientele served.   [Read more…]

Can We Have a Conversation About Capitalism Yet? | Progressive Activist Calendar April 20-30, 2018

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Dig deep enough into any of the issues of the day and you’ll find they all have one thing in common: economics. Yes, indeed, money makes the world go around. And the fact is most of us are getting a smaller piece of the economic pie as the years go by.

Our fearless leader’s tax reform package is worthless and 73% of the American people have already figured that out. Take the illusion of empowerment out of all the ‘reforms’ (of either political party) and what’s left is more wealth for the people who already have it

The contemporary conversations starting back in the days of Occupy about the 99% have evolved. Nowadays we speak of economic justice. Generally speaking, these discussions center on the reallocation of government resources to alleviate the most blatant examples of those falling through the so-called safety net.   [Read more…]

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