Tomalis testimony ignores impact of nearly $1
billion in public school cuts

HARRISBURG (Mar. 5, 2012) ? The president of the state?s largest school employee union said that Education Secretary Ron Tomalis? testimony before the House Appropriations Committee today ignored the fact that school districts across Pennsylvania are cutting programs that work for their students because of nearly $1 billion in state funding cuts.
Mike Crossey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, pointed out that school districts across the state are increasing class sizes and cutting programs that work for students in response to Gov. Tom Corbett?s unprecedented public school funding cuts, a reality that stands in stark contrast to the Corbett administration?s claim that these cuts are really historic increases.
?It is time to stop ignoring the problem and start fixing it,? Crossey said. ?How can you say that the state increased funding for Pennsylvania?s students when school districts are being forced to eliminate programs left and right? It just doesn?t add up.
?Pennsylvanians are seeing through the rhetoric. They know what?s happening in their schools and they know why.?
To help Pennsylvanians understand how these cuts impact the school districts where they live, PSEA launched an online School Funding Cuts Calculator on Feb. 15. The calculator is available at www.savepaschools.org andwww.psea.org/schoolcuts.
?Instead of admitting that there is a funding crisis in the public schools, the secretary seems to want to cover it up,? Crossey said. ?His shell game isn?t working. All you need to do to find out the truth is pick up your local newspaper. I read about more cuts every day.?
Crossey pointed out that Gov. Corbett has eliminated a menu of long-standing state programs to support the public schools, including the charter school reimbursement program, accountability block grant program, education assistance tutoring program, and dual enrollment program. 
?These programs were created to help students learn,? Crossey said. ?They?re gone now, and students are the ones paying the price. This budget is a shell game for public education. We can do better.?
Crossey pointed out how critical it is to focus on providing the funding schools need to pay for programs that are proven to work for their students, like those outlined in PSEA?s Solutions That Work proposal. These Solutions That Work include early childhood education, smaller class sizes, additional learning time for struggling students, and parental involvement.
Learn more about Solutions That Work at www.solutionsthatworkpa.org.
?These program cuts are real, and the impact they are having on students is real,? Crossey said. ?Pennsylvania can do better. We can resolve this crisis if we all work together as the adults in the room.?
Crossey is a special education teacher in the Keystone Oaks School District. An affiliate of the National Education Association, PSEA represents more than 193,000 future, active and retired teachers and school employees, and health care workers in Pennsylvania.
View on PSEA.org


Read The Full Article:
http://keystoneprogress.blogspot.com/2012/03/tomalis-testimony-ignores-impact-of.
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Ann Romney doesn't consider herself rich

This would probably be a good time to avoid talking about whether she's rich or not rich. Especially during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, pretending as though a $200+ million fortune isn't among the super elite of the US is obnoxious. How tone deaf are the Romneys? ABC News:

?We can be poor in spirit, and I don?t even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing,? Ann Romney said in an interview on Fox News. ?It can be here today and gone tomorrow.? Romney?s comment came during a discussion about her battle with Multiple Sclerosis, and specifically in response to a question from Fox?s Neal Cavuto about whether the Romneys are ?oblivious, given your wealth, to the everyday concerns of average folks.? ?How I measure riches,? Romney continued, ?is by the friends I have and the loved ones I have and the people that I care about in my life, and that?s where my values are and that?s where my riches are.?

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Preview of Super Tuesday, Part 1 (AK, GA, ID, MA,
ND)

State: Alaska

Type of election: Caucus

How it works: 24 delegates are at stake and are awarded proportionately.

Official election results: Alaska Division of Elections

Republican candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum (all others have dropped out or are polling at less than 1 percent)

Democratic candidates: There is no Democratic presidential caucus.

Previous performance: In 2008, Romney won the caucus with 36 percent of the vote. Paul finished third with 15.5 percent. Obama won the Democratic caucus with 75 percent of the vote.

Newspapers: Anchorage Daily News, Anchorage Press, full list

Television stations: Full list

Progressive blogs: Mudflats

Latest polling: Basically no polling has been done on the caucus.

Nate Silver says the state will split relatively equally between Romney and Paul, with Santorum coming in third,

Bottom line: This looks to be the one place where Paul has a shot at a victory. It won't really matter, though, in the big picture.

State: Georgia

Type of election: Primary

How it works: 76 delegates are at stake. 31 are awarded statewide proportionately to candidates who get at least 20 percent of the vote. The remaining are awarded three per congressional district, where a majority candidate gets all three or if there is no majority, the delegates are given to the top two candidates 2-1.

Official election results: Georgia Secretary of State

Republican candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum (all others have dropped out or are polling at less than 1 percent)

Democratic candidates: Barack Obama and minor candidates.

Previous performance: In 2008, Romney finished third to Mike Huckabee with 30 percent of the vote. Paul finished fourth with just under 3 percent. Obama won the primary with 66 percent.

Newspapers: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, full list

Television stations: Full list

Progressive blogs: Blog for Democracy

Latest polling: New York Times:

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Report: Minority Students Face More Disclipinary
Actions In Public Schools

Black students, and particularly boys, face much harsher discipline in public schools than other students, according to data gathered by the Department of Education about civil rights and education. One in five black boys and more than one in 10 black girls received an out of school suspension, and black students were three and a half times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers.

And the Civil Rights Data Collection statistics from 2009-10, covering 72,000 schools in 7,000 districts serving about 85 percent of U.S. students K-12, showed that Hispanic and black students make up 45 percent of the student body in schools with zero-tolerance policies, but they accounted for 56 percent of students expelled under those policies. And more than 70 percent of the students involved in school-related arrests or referrals to law enforcement were Hispanic or black:

?Education is the civil rights of our generation,? said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in a telephone briefing with reporters on Monday. ?The undeniable truth is that the everyday education experience for too many students of color violates the principle of equity at the heart of the American promise.?

The department began gathering data on civil rights and education in 1968, but the project was suspended by the Bush administration in 2006. It has been reinstated and expanded to examine a broader range of information, including, for the first time, referrals to law enforcement, an area of increasing concern to civil rights advocates who see the emergence of a school-to-prison pipeline for a growing number of students of color.

“The harsh punishments, especially expulsion under zero tolerance and referrals to law enforcement, show that students of color and students with disabilities are increasingly being pushed out of schools, oftentimes into the criminal justice system,” Deborah J. Vagins, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union?s Washington legislative office, told the New York Times.

Outside of discliplinary actions, the Education Department’s data showed a wide range of racial and ethnic disparities. For example, high schools with more minority students were less likely to offer calculus, but Hispanic and black students were still much less likely to take it. And black and Hispanic students made up 44 percent of students in the survey, but only 26 percent of students in the gifted and talented programs.

Duncan will announce the full results from the civil rights data this afternoon. After the data is available, it will be available here.

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Pressed Four Times, Bachmann Refuses To Condemn
Rush Limbaugh

When Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last November and the band played a song called ?Lyin? Ass Bitch,” she was rightly outraged, saying it showed a clear ?bias on the part of the Hollywood elite and sexism as well.? Rep. Nita Lowey, a Democrat from New York, called the incident “insulting and inappropriate” and said, ?I do not share Michele Bachmann?s politics, but she deserves to be treated with respect.” After a media firestorm, NBC, Jimmy Fallon, and the band all apologized to Bachmann, as they should have.

But Bachmann apparently doesn’t see fit to defend another woman who has come under gender-based attack in the media, repeatedly today refusing to condemn Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke.

Pressed four times on CNN over three minutes, Bachmann deflects four times, pivoting to everything from health care reform to terrorism, unwilling to offer even mild criticism or Limbaugh aside from pointing to his apology. Watch it:

Ironically, Bachmann attacked CNN and the media for supposedly employing a double standard when it comes to conservative women and sexism. But it is Bachmann who seems to be deploying the double standard here, happy to go after her perceived enemies in the mainstream media at NBC, but resistant to condemn her ally, conservative Limbaugh.

When the Daily Beast asked Bachmann last year if she considers herself feminist, she instead described herself as ?pro-woman and pro-man.?

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McConnell Threatens Congressional Resolution
Authorizing Use Of Force Against Iran

Speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on Sunday, President Obama warned that “already there is too much loose talk of war” and that “such talk has only benefited the Iranian government, by driving up the price of oil.” But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), speaking at AIPAC yesterday evening, ignored those warnings when he threatened a congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iran. McConnell told the AIPAC audience:

MCCONNELL: All that’s been lacking until now is a clear declaratory policy. And if the administration is reluctant for some reason to articulate it, then Congress will attempt to do it for them. So tonight I make the following commitment in support of the policy I have proposed, and it is this: If at any time the intelligence community presents to Congress an assessment that Iran has begun to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels or has taken a decision to develop a nuclear weapon. [...]

I will consult with the president and joint congressional leadership and introduce before the Senate an authorization for the use of military force.

Watch the clip:

Congress has not voted on such a resolution since October 2002 when it passed a resolution giving President George W. Bush the authority to use military force to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and initiate the Iraq War.

While McConnell is endorsing an open discussion of military force against Iran, neither the president — as illustrated in his comments to AIPAC on Sunday — former military and intelligence leadership, nor the American public are at ease with the rush to military action.

The IAEA has expressed serious concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program but neither U.N. nuclear agency nor U.S. intelligence reports have concluded that Iran has restarted its nuclear weapons program. Last week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), “our intelligence makes clear that [the Iranians] haven’t made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon.” Panetta said in January that Iran will need “about a year” to produce the nuclear weapon and about 2 to 3 years to “put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort.? But last November, Panetta also warned that using military force would only delay Iran’s nuclear progress.

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GOP Senate Candidate Claims LGBT Protections
Threaten ‘Privacy Rights Of Women In Public Restrooms’

A GOP candidate vying for the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Debbie Stabanow (D-MI) in the fall is urging a local town to abandon a legislative effort to protect gays, lesbians and transgender people from discrimination. Gary Glenn, the American Family Association of Michigan president, has written a letter to the city of Mount Pleasant, warning city commissioners that the measure could threaten children’s privacy in “public facilities”:

We?re hopeful that in a time when local governments face many real and pressing challenges, you do not wish to embroil your community in a debate that typically includes homosexual activists? characterization of Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army and the Boy Scouts as bigots comparable to the Ku Klux Klan, or whether a man who claims to be a woman should have a ?right? enforced by city law to share the women?s shower at a local health club with you or your mother or daughter or sister.

?We respectfully urge you not to even consider adopting such a discriminatory and volatile proposal which is clearly a solution in search of a non-existent problem, intended only to advance homosexual activists? drive to have homosexual behavior and cross-dressing defined by law and endorsed by city government as the moral, social, and legal equivalents of immutable characteristics such as race, ethnic background, and sex.? [...]

?On behalf of our supporters in Mt. Pleasant, we urge you not to adopt such a discriminatory ordinance, which has proven in other jurisdictions to be used to violate the civil and religious free speech rights?and which also poses a threat to the privacy rights of women and children in public restrooms and other public facilities.”

Glenn “led a similar effort in Holland, where the city council eventually rejected the ordinance,” MLive reports.

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GALLUP: States Resisting Affordable Care Act Have
Highest Percentages Of Uninsured

Gallup released a study last week examining uninsurance rates in all fifty states. Interestingly, the states suffer the most pronounced health care crises are not only refusing to do anything about the problem, but in many cases are actively fighting efforts to implement the Affordable Care Act.

According to Gallup, Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents among all 50 states, with 27.6 percent of the state lacking health insurance and the uninsurance rate is above 20 percent in each of the bottom 11 states. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, the state with the model for the federal health care law, enjoys the lowest percentage of uninsured residents, at 4.9 percent:

Twenty-seven states are suing the federal government to block implementation of the ACA and of the 11 states with the worst rates of uninsured residents, only California and Arkansas have not joined the lawsuits. (An Arkansas citizens group has filed a case of its own.) But compare the Gallup study to previous research from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that Republican-represented districts, including those in states fighting the law, could see more residents get coverage than Democratic-represented areas. The areas with the highest rates of uninsured also stand to gain the most from the law’s coverage expansions:

-Zachary Bernstein

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An Attempt to Roll Back Wind in Wisconsin

Source: Free Photo Bank

by Christine Shearer, reposted from Conducive Chronicle

Members of the Wisconsin legislature may vote today ? March 6, 2012 ? to suspend recently agreed upon rules in the state that streamlined and made more efficient the state?s wind siting requirements. Although the legislators pushing for suspension cite the need for local control over wind rules as their motivation, many of them are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), raising questions over just how grassroots their motivation really is.

Pressure for the vote today is reportedly due to State Senator and ALEC member Frank Lasee. Wind supporters are urged to contact the state?s Senators and urge them not to suspend the uniform state siting rules.

Like many states, Wisconsin has a patchwork of differing local setback rules governing the distance wind developers need to leave between turbines and adjacent homes. To streamline the process, the Wisconsin legislature passed the 2009 Wind Siting Law instructing the Public Service Commission (PSC) to create one overarching state siting law for all wind turbines subject to local review.

After an open process, the PSC issued a compromise set of rules (PSC 128) requiring that turbines have a setback from the nearest property line of 1.1 times the height of the turbine, or roughly 450 feet for an average windmill. It establishes the minimum setback distance from neighboring residences at the lesser of 3.1 times the height of a wind tower, or 1,250 feet.

In response, Republican representatives and ALEC members proposed their own legislation to make implementation of larger wind projects much more difficult and protracted.

In October 2011, State Senator Frank Lasee (R) introduced a bill (SB 263) that would declare a moratorium on construction of wind farms over 100 feet, saying larger turbines should not be allowed until the state PSC was in possession of a report that ensures turbines do not cause health problems.

Several studies have already found that while concerns with noise and visual impacts should be taken into account and minimized, the research linking human health issues with wind turbines is minimal and tentative at best ? the research behind ?wind turbine syndrome,? for example, has been discredited several times.

Sen. Lasee is an ALEC member and alternate on the ALEC Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force. ALEC describes itself as the largest ?membership association of state legislators,? but over 98% of its revenue comes from sources other than legislative dues, primarily from corporations and corporate foundations. Through ALEC, corporations vote on ?model legislation? with politicians, often without the input of the local population. While there is not a publicly available ALEC ?model bill? on wind siting rules, Lasee has introduced or co-sponsored legislation similar to ALEC model bills on health care, law enforcement, and landlord rights.

Although Lasee?s bill did not get a hearing, a Republican-controlled legislative committee voted along party lines to suspend the statewide rules in March 2011, on the day the new PSC wind siting rules were to take effect. Governor Scott Walker instead proposed a blanket 1,800-foot setback (over one-third of a mile) from the nearest property line, as part of a ?regulatory reform? bill introduced in January 2011, which the American Wind Energy Association said would essentially shut down the state?s wind industry. Walker also appointed former ALEC Public Sector Board Treasurer Phil Montgomery as head of the Wisconsin PSC in March 2011.

Walker?s increased wind siting setback did not pass, yet wind proponents say the suspension of the statewide rules has aided in jeopardizing over 700 megawatts of wind projects that were proposed in the state, adding up to over $1 billion in financial investment loss.

The suspension will expire by March 15, 2012, and if no new rules are adopted by then, the original PSC rules will go into effect. Yet the debate seems far from over.

Lasee introduced another bill in January 2012 that would allow officials in cities, villages, towns and counties to establish the minimum distance between a wind turbine over 100 feet and a home, even if those rules are more restrictive than any the state tries to enact, overriding the authority of the state PSC.

More recently, the Wisconsin joint committee for review of administrative rules recently voted take up Senate Bill 50/Assembly Bill 72, reportedly due to pressure from Sen. Lasee. The bills would suspend the PSC 128 wind siting rules, forcing regulators at the PSC to start the rule-making process again. A vote may take place as soon as this afternoon: March 6, 2012 (click on the link ?Regular Session?).

Residents of Wisconsin and supporters of wind power who would like to see the state?s uniform wind siting rules take effect are encouraged to contact the state?s Senators and tell them not to suspend the rules, particularly Senators Jon Erpenbach, Kathleen Vinehout, Dale Schultz, Alberta Darling, and Neal Kedzie.

Christine Shearer is a postdoctoral scholar in science, technology, and society studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a researcher for CoalSwarm, part of SourceWatch. She is Managing Editor of Conducive, and author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story. This piece was originally published at Conducive Chronicle.

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After ‘Terra Nova’s Cancellation Does
Science Fiction Have to Be Effects-Heavy

I think that, in the wake of Fox’s decision to cancel Terra Nova, its once-promising but ultimately dull science fiction show about people fleeing a polluted planet to reset humanity’s past, James Poniewozik is right that the failure of the show will diminish the chances of networks taking a chance on purely sci-fi show in the future:

The networks do still occasionally do science fiction, of course; Fringe is still hanging on on Fox, for instance. But since Lost, and the many failures to re-create its success, they?ve tended to focus on small-scale, real-world shows with little sci-fi twists (Person of Interest, Alcatraz) or fantasy (Once Upon a Time, Grimm). The epic-scale, effects-intensive sci-fi show has always been a tough sell on the networks, and to its credit, Terra Nova was trying a brand of sci-fi we hadn?t seen a lot on TV. Now big sci-fi will be an even tougher sell.

This is unfortunate. But it raises what I think is an important question both for the networks and for those of us who would like to see a lot more quality science fiction shows on them: can we think more creatively about communicating that the stories we’re telling are set in the future without using a lot, or any, special effects?

Obviously, the answer ought to be yes. The Handmaid’s Tale, one of the most chilling dystopias in literary memory, requires some mass-produced costumes, but most of the work of communicating that we’re in a very different place with very different values is done through language and the norms that govern the interactions between characters. Children of Men has some effects work of the shooting-things-and-blowing-things-up variety, but most of the way we understand that things are dreadful is, once again, done through costuming, through the news footage that we see aired on television broadcasts the characters watch, through their demeanor and what gets them excited.

In other words, doing world-building due diligence up front could eliminate costly effects work down the line. Language is definitely something that evolves, and evolves rapidly, and is a clear and entirely free way to signal that you’re in a different place. The substitution of “frack” for “fuck” in Battlestar Galactica may have seemed goofy at first, but the term has definitively entered the lexicon, geek and otherwise (I imagine it’s one of the reasons “fracking” for “hydraulic fracturing” sounds persuasively negative, as well as nice and crackly). Ditto for graphic design: the gorgeous orange and white butterfly flag iconography at the heart of Kings, the red logos and typography in Ralph Fiennes’ slightly futuristic adaptation of Coriolanus, or the cut-off corners on the paper in Battlestar were all cheap ways to visually cue that we’re not in the present, at least as we know it. And while etiquette and behavior may seem like dorky considerations, they’re also a terrific way of communicating where power lies, and how intense the division between classes and castes is. Writing a guide to character interaction, whether in terms of address, physical contact, or relative physical positioning might seem silly up front, but it could also create a coherent sense of being in a vastly different setting.

Cool toys and the reshaping of our environment are some of what will make our future look and feel very different. But many of the changes will be seated within ourselves, and our attitudes. We can make science fiction that’s somewhere in between Person of Interest and Terra Nova, and that’s more genuinely interested in exploring possible futures than either one of those shows.

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