Today’s Deseret News has published a piece on how Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is going to vote on vouchers. Now why in the world would the paper publish this? It wouldn’t’ have anything at all to do with the Newspaper Agency Corporation owners’ position on the issue, now would it?
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Tagged choice in education, government corruption, politics, privatization, schools, Utah
Utah residents can avoid huge property and income tax increases over the next 15 years if voters approve the private school voucher program, according to a report commissioned by the Utah Taxpayers Association.
Critics of the proposed voucher plan, however, say the report commissioned by the Taxpayers Association is biased and wrong. If anything, they say, Referendum 1 will lead to increased taxes.
If approved by voters on Nov. 6, the voucher program would provide families with a private-school tuition voucher, ranging from $500 to $3,000 per student, based on parents’ income. It also would appropriate $9.2 million for mitigation money to ease the impact on public schools for five years after students leave and go to private schools.
Yes, and if a chld of a poor working class family wants to take advantage of that, they can’t because $3,000 doesn’t even touch the cost of tuition for private schools.
According to the Taxpayers Association report, Utah’s public school enrollment will have grown by more than 150,000 students by 2016. The past decade saw growth of about 50,000 students.
The outcry this year over increasing property taxes will pale in comparison to the outcry that will erupt when taxes double to fund an influx of students into public schools over the next 15 years, said association vice president Royce Van Tassell.
Then stop having children for crying out loud!
The association’s sister organization, the Utah Taxpayers Foundation, commissioned the study by Aspire Consulting this year to analyze and project student enrollment through 2022.
It may not be a surprise to see the Taxpayers Association come out in favor of vouchers. The association’s president is Utah Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, who voted for the law and co-chairs the Legislature’s Joint Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee.
Van Tassell is the former spokesman for Parents for Choice in Education, a pro-voucher group.
Of course there are private interests at stake here……
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“Taxpayers have a choice: vouchers or massive tax increases,” Van Tassell said in a news release. “There are just no other ways to pay for the tidal wave of children that are already entering Utah’s public schools.” –>
But voucher critics say the report is wrong. “Their base assumption is wrong,” said Lisa Johnson, spokeswoman for Utahns for Public Schools. “Utah does not spend $7,500 for every student.”
She said some students cost more, some less, but according to state and federal sources, the 2006 per-pupil expenditure in Utah was $5,397.
“The Utah Taxpayers Association is a part of the pro-voucher campaign,” Johnson said. “If voters want unbiased information, they should refer to the voter’s guide that plainly states vouchers will cost Utah hundreds of millions of dollars — claiming that vouchers will ease the enrollment burden is ludicrous.”
According to figures from the legislative fiscal analyst, districts could save anywhere from $95 million to $265 million over 13 years with the voucher program — but it would cost the state around $429 million.
Well there ya go. The rest of the picture.
Voucher opponents agree with the report’s enrollment projections.
But the legislative fiscal analyst estimates that only 2 percent of students would switch from public schools to voucher schools. That would translate to around 12,000 students.
Critics also said the Taxpayers Association report is wrong in claiming that public schools will receive funds for voucher students for the foreseeable future.
“In five years, those funds disappear and will cut into public school funds just as more and more students are entering public schools,” Johnson said. “Voters should read the fine print — the five-year cap on assistance for public schools included in the referendum may lead to increased taxes.”
This is but one piece of the larger picture in this country to privatize EVERYTHING.
VOTE NO ON SCHOOL VOUCHERS
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Tagged choice in education, government corruption, politics, privatization, schools, Utah
Of course! And wouldn’t ya know, it’s an election year next year – how conVENient! Excerpts from the article,
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Tagged human needs, living wages, politics, state budget surplus, Utah
C. Fraser Smith
The Baltimore Sun, October 14, 2007
Maria Allwine thinks Baltimoreans are hungry for change but too beaten down by generations of Democratic rule to imagine change is possible.
The Green Party’s candidate for City Council president presses her case in the face of those who say she’s wasting her time contesting the machine.
She goes into the general election campaign with very little on her side. She has no campaign money, rejecting funding from the well-heeled corporate interests as a matter of Green Party principle. Baltimore has even fewer registered Greens than registered Republicans – and Republicans are outnumbered 8- or 9-to-1 by Democrats.
Still, she’s challenging that Democratic establishment to show a scintilla of understanding that current approaches to city problems have done nothing to combat crime or to
reverse the erosion of Baltimore’s quality of life.
She knows that even if she doesn’t win, she’s one of the few aspects of this campaign that make it a campaign. She’s not likely to get much attention from her opponent, City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake, but she’s daring the incumbent to step forward and be accountable for the government that Baltimore has had under Democrats.
A veteran peace activist, Ms. Allwine has run for office before. This time, she says, she’s more serious.
In a sense, Ms. Allwine is waging two campaigns at the same time: for an end to the war in Iraq as well as for council president.
The buttons on her green velour jacket one recent morning made clear her displeasure with the Bush administration and the war.
Then there’s the one that says, “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”
That declaration might work in both her endeavors, ending the war and winning the
election.
By many accounts, the 54-year-old legal secretary was the star of the primary campaign, offering thoughtful, passionate and detailed answers to questions during candidate forums.
Yet Democratic voters showed in the primary that they’re not particularly interested in change. The incumbent council president, Ms. Rawlings-Blake, easily turned back challenger Michael Sarbanes. Many had seen Mr. Sarbanes as the sort of change agent Ms. Allwine aspires to be.
She believes he did not offer enough specific ideas – or sharp enough criticisms – to win over those who are unhappy and looking for new answers.
With no real competition in most of the general election races, there is a virtual vacuum of discussion about critical issues.
“We can’t talk education and crime until we talk poverty,” she says. “We need a comprehensive job training program that jump-starts the city out of its entrenched poverty.”
She would require developers to offer training programs as the price of doing business in the city – particularly, she says, those developers who get tax advantages for local projects.
She would institute a series of audits, imposing accountability and looking for money that could be redirected to things such as community centers for young people.
Ms. Allwine wants a council of neighborhood groups that reflect ordinary people’s concerns.
“We have public policy that doesn’t reflect public opinion or public need,” she says. If
government were serious about improving the city, she says, it would come forth with ideas more challenging than a bill banning baggy pants – an idea advanced recently in the City Council.
“Baggy pants? It just shows the utter lack of vision. How are we ever going to change?
“If you don’t have the courage to say we need to take another direction, you don’t belong in public office,” she says.
C. Fraser Smith is senior news analyst for
WYPR-FM. His column appears Sundays in The Sun.
His e-mail is fsmith at wypr.org
A Green Party colleague of mine alerted me to this project. I find it interesting and with the potential to have much more of an effect than the almost worn out march and rally event:
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Seasons of Discontent: A Presidential Occupation Project (SODaPOP)
By Jeff Leys and Brian Terrell
Nonviolent Civil Resistance During the Presidential Campaign Begins with Nonviolent Occupations of Candidates Headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, on November 8
Hi Ho. Hi Ho. It s off to Washington, D.C. we go. For another demonstration at the seat of power.
But hold on a minute. This fall and winter, the road to the seat of power goes through Iowa with its first in the nation presidential caucus. Let s journey to Iowa, together to bring nonviolent civil resistance and civil disobedience to the campaign offices and headquarters of Presidential candidates both Republican and Democrat who do not publicly pledge to take the necessary concrete steps to end the Iraq war, to rebuild Iraq, to forswear military attacks on other countries, and to fully fund the Common Good in the U.S.
Join this campaign: SODaPOP Seasons of Discontent: A Presidential Occupation Project.
Iowa will be the first stage in this campaign. We invite you to join us in Iowa and then to bring the campaign home with you to your home states as the Presidential election season moves forward.
An Invitation to Iowa
Voices for Creative Nonviolence and our allies in Iowa are in the initial stages of organizing a campaign of nonviolent civil resistance focused upon those who would be President.
This fall and early winter, Republican and Democratic candidates are swarming in Iowa in preparation for the First in the Nation! 2008 caucuses. Campaign headquarters are established in cities and towns across the state and candidates are showing up at public events large and small, shaking hands, jockeying for photo ops kissing babies and pigs. The national and international press is there in force. Representatives of unions, industry and other interest groups from around the nation are gathering, not only to influence the results of the caucus but also to take advantage of the extraordinary access to the candidates the caucus provides, and to draw attention to their issues and causes as the world s attention is focused on the state.
Seasons of Discontent: A Presidential Occupation Project (SODaPOP) will launch on November 7, introducing nonviolent direct action against the war in Iraq into the presidential election process. Activists from around the nation are encouraged to journey
to Iowa to occupy the Iowa campaign headquarters of presidential candidates who do not pledge to concrete plans for complete withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq. Such candidates might also be challenged as they make public appearances around the state without regard for arbitrary free speech zone restrictions that may be established by candidates, parties, police or the Secret Service.
While SODAPOP will launch in early November, we are organizing for two weeks of intensive and extensive actions in Iowa in the weeks immediately preceding the Iowa caucus. The Iowa caucus is currently scheduled for January 14, though it is somewhat fluid as of now. (The date may change since South Carolina Republicans moved up the date of their caucus.)
Whether the caucuses are earlier or later, we are inviting affinity groups from around the country to start organizing a trip to Iowa in the coming months with special attention to the two weeks immediately prior to the caucuses. If you can make it to Iowa
for the SODaPOP kick off in Des Moines on the evening of Wednesday, November 7 followed by the first occupations of campaign headquarters on the next day, Thursday, November 8, please do! We hope to make our witness for peace with nonviolent direct action at the offices of several of the candidates who would prolong the war in Iraq on that day. Otherwise, just let us know when you are coming and which candidate(s) whose pro-war policies you and your community wish to expose and challenge.
SODaPOP Demands
While the demands of the campaign are still being finalized, the initial concept is to occupy the campaign headquarters and offices of Presidential candidates who do not commit to:
For those Presidential candidates who currently hold a seat in the House or Senate, we
set forth the following additional demands:
These demands will be delivered to each of the candidates headquarters in the weeks before the campaign and responses will be publicized. Join us in Iowa at this critical time for weekly, if not daily, acts of nonviolent civil resistance / civil disobedience to seek a redirection of our country s policies and to bring about an end to the Iraq war. We travel to Washington, D.C. for national actions
all the time. Now is the time to travel to Iowa, the heart of our country s heartland, to seek an end to the Iraq war. Arrangements are being made now for hospitality and some support in Des Moines and Iowa City and perhaps several other communities around the
state for the campaign.
Following the Iowa caucus, let us bring SODaPOP to the campaign headquarters of candidates in our respective home states, with the next critical days of nonviolent resistance to be as we approach February 5 (Super Duper Tuesday, when 20 states hold
presidential primaries and caucuses).Please be in contact with us about joining this very critical campaign of nonviolent
direct action, civil resistance and civil disobedience. To participate in SODaPOP, you may reach us via Voices for Creative Nonviolence at 773-878-3815 or via email at info@vcnv.org.
Additional information and resources will also be available on the Voices website.
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Tagged Activism, iraq war, military, nonviolent civil resistance
Tom turned 50 today. It’s also John Lennon’s birthday – he would have been 67 (see post below). It’s a great day in my life……
For his birthday, I presented Tom with airline tickets to go to Georgia (Ft. Benning) for the annual CLOSE THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS event, where over 10,000 people annually vigil at the gates to Ft. Benning in an effort to shut down the “School of Assassins”.
Tom has always wanted to go to this event (as have I!) and so it will be reality this year!
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Tagged Activism, anti-war, civil disobedience, Green Party, human rights, school of americas
The biggest online peace event.
On October 9th 2007, John Lennon’s birthday.
IMAGINE PEACE as Yoko Ono unveils the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
A Green Party colleague from Maine was so inspired by the speech I gave in LA that he came forward to share his speech from 2005 and gave me permisson to post it, so here it is:
It has been at least 35 years since I had the occasion to deliver a rousing speech on the moral monstrosity called The Draft, one of the most putrid violations of progress toward civilization ever invented by those sinister, morally retarded people in power. Upon birth, the universe gives us a tiny sliver of time out of its billions of years of evolution with which to live out a life. That times belongs to each of us individually. The idea that our very lives belong to this or any government is infinite obscenity. This infinite obscenity purports to require us to donate our children as human sacrifices to their god of war and mindless accumulation of wealth for a tiny few of this marvelous planet’s human inhabitants.
The innate love for our children is betrayed by those in high office, including, I must say in all truth, some Democratic liberals who propose conscription as an antidote to the existing poverty Draft which targets children of the poor. This poverty Draft is connected to the export of jobs policies of this adminstration. But to say that the way to correct the class inequalities of the poverty Draft is by instituting conscription is just like saying in 1860 that since slavery of black people is immoral and unjust, that therefore we must enforce slavery on white people too! Same argument! Don’t buy it! All conscription would do is increase the power of tyranny by giving them yet another weapon to use against us who yearn for truth, justice, and peace. Why would we agree to that? The Draft is human sacrifice, not with a single hapless individual as in some primitive societies, but by thousands at a time–a barbaric relic that has no place in real civilization.
The Draft is a death sentence from which one may get a reprieve, depending on luck of the draw. The Draft IS the supreme example of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the 13th Amendment to our Constitution, which reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib)
If our goal is to alert vulnerable young people about this devastating issue, it is imperative that the effort be increased exponentially. The central task is getting information directly into the hands of students, drop-outs, and recent grads. Lots of information is available from folks of my generation. To them, I say if you can work with us older folks to make this happen, then we can create an avalanche of truth and justice.
Concluding, it is up to us, the people, the ultimate sovereign for whom this government was created, to enforce the meaning of “No involuntary servitude.” We cannot expect the current corporate government to be on our side. Those who, no matter of what party, seek to impose a military Draft in whatever name they call it, including “national service” are calling upon our young people to become hi-tech gladiators (kill or be killed) for their wealth accumulation. Those people are truly as Dylan said forty years ago in his song of the same name, Masters of War. About those, the Halliburtons, the Bechtels, and so on–he said, “Not even Jesus could forgive what you do.” Indeed, promoters of those who persist in imperial aggression have already betrayed the spirit of Jesus who declared, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” He did not say “Blessed are the Dow-Jones averages for corporate munitions makers.”
Brothers and sisters of all ages, WE are the Paul and Paula Reveres of our time. We must warn our fellow citizens: “Take cover and prepare to resist. The imperialists are coming!”
When the warmakers say, “But we need more personnel to carry out the mission,” what should we say? Our answer must be: “That mission has no truth, no honor, no justice! END THE EMPIRE!
Jon Olsen 3/19/2005
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Tagged Activism, anti-war, government corrupton, Green Party, iraq, military industrial complex, peace
United for Peace and Justice has called for mass actions on October 27 around the country. Salt Lake City is serving as one of the cities where an action will occur.
I have been contacting the folks who are organizing the event in Salt Lake City for over a month now to request at that the Green Party, a coalition member of UFPJ, be well represented with a speaker. My request has been stalled and finally I got an answer over the weekend – NO. Even after I pointed out that I have been speaking nationally on behalf of the Green Party of the United States and that the Green Party is overwhelmingly welcomed at all other events around the country.
The excuse given to me is that there are many “out of state” people speaking. I was then invited to “buy” tabling space for the Green Party at this event. (Note – at all the national actions I have been to, never has there been a request for people to “pay” for tabling space. People and organizations are invited to just show up with their tabling stuff – and warmly welcomed to do so.)
The fact that Utah organizers are shutting out Greens in this event as a strong visible presence in Salt Lake City is gravely disappointing. They are not being inclusive have THE ONLY PEACE PARTY be able to be a rousing addition to the program. I was so enthusiastically received in LA with my speech that I couldn’t even leave the stage before many participants were approaching me with such positiveness that I knew I had said the right things to be so inspiring.
I am hoping the Utah organizers change their minds and decide to include Greens as part of the October 27 event that will happen in Salt Lake City.
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Tagged Activism, anti-war, Green Party, iraq, military industrial complex, peace
Approximately 1,000 people participated in the Anti-War March and Rally in downtown Los Angeles Saturday, September 29, 2007. The event was organized by the Troops Out Now Coalition. Messages centered around withdrawing troops from Iraq immediately, stopping an impending war with Iran, freeing the Jenna 6, getting Greens elected to office, and diverting funds from war to services for people in the United States.
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Tagged anti-war, Green Party, iraq, military industrial complex, peace
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 