December 31, 2013

Wallstreet to Congress. Just shut up and pass our bills.

Interesting blog:

Wall Street Malfeasance: A Small Sampling from 2013

December 31, 2013

8 tax breaks set to disappear today unless Congress extends them.

From CNN Money:

Dozens of popular tax breaks are on the verge of disappearing.

These seem to me to be related to ordinary working class people.

1. Tuition and fees: A deduction for tuition and fees of up to $4,000 is currently available to parents and students paying for college. More than 2 million taxpayers claimed this break in 2010, saving more than $4 billion, according to the most recent data available from H&R Block.

2. Teachers' expenses: The Educator Expense Deduction aims to help teachers cover the cost of classroom supplies like notebooks, pens and paper that their school doesn't reimburse them for. Elementary and secondary school teachers can qualify for deductions of up to $250 per year, even if they don't itemize.

3. Mortgage insurance premiums: Currently, homeowners are able to deduct their mortgage insurance premiums as residence interest. About 4.2 million taxpayers claimed the tax break in 2010, deducting a total of $5.6 billion in mortgage insurance premiums, according to H&R Block.

..... 8. Mortgage debt forgiveness: A tax break that has been in effect since 2007 allows struggling homeowners to exclude any debt forgiveness they were granted from a bank when calculating their taxable income.

For the more than 6 million Americans who still owe more on their loans than their homes are worth, the expiration of this tax credit Jan. 1 is bad news.

The 4 others involve commuters who take mass transit, energy efficiency, donations through an IRA, and state and local taxes.

December 29, 2013

TBTimes Robyn Blumner great column...Koch Bros and Florida State University. Buying influence.

In 2011 one of my favorite columnists wrote a strongly worded column about the influence the Koch Brothers were buying at Florida State University. She spared no words about the Kochs, and she blasted the Tea Party.

Koch brothers wage a war on Americans

I imagine the tycoons Charles and David Koch must have a war room, or more precisely a “war on liberal ideas” room, where plans are laid for well-funded assaults on progressives. Their targets are easy to guess: Democrats, unions, public school teachers, trial lawyers, environmentalists, the judiciary and academia. Like some deranged game of Risk, the brothers strategically deploy their riches to destroy, marginalize, subvert or infiltrate each of these constituent groups, with the result being that poorly funded progressives are overrun as easily as Poland.

The latest bombshell is from St. Petersburg Times writer Kris Hundley, who exposed a 2008 agreement between the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and Florida State University for $1.5 million. The money was to fund faculty positions in a new program promoting “political economy and free enterprise.” It came with the unconscionable condition that the foundation’s handpicked advisory committee hold veto power during the hiring process.

Disgraceful, yes, but this is just the newest revelation in what has been a well-reported mission by the Koch brothers to use their vast wealth, estimated at $22 billion each, to alter America’s thinking and turn average people against every government program that makes their lives better and more secure.

If you’re reading “Tea Party” here, you’ve got that right — call them the Kochs’ boots on the ground. But the Koch brothers know that they can’t rely solely on America’s angry, gullible know-nothings to change the national direction. Their ultra-conservatism needs a veneer of intellectual credibility, which is why for decades the brothers have lavished resources on a host of think tanks and academic institutions that are willing to make a case for anything a billionaire without a conscience would want.

I was so glad to see that Rachel Maddow recently reminded us of how the Koch Brothers gained influence over hiring and firing in the economics department at Florida State University in Tallahassee. It's a been a couple of years since I have heard it mentioned.



Charles Koch buying sway over university hires is ‘objectively insane’

“Forget naming rights to the stadium, or whatever,” Maddow said, explaining that Koch “purchased hiring rights for the faculty at Florida State’s economics department. And yes, Florida State has the word ‘state’ in it because it is a public university, and yes, it is objectively insane that the state of Florida allowed that to happen.”

As the Tampa Bay Times reported in 2011, a foundation funded by Koch gave $1.5 million to the school’s economics department in 2008, in exchange for Koch having the power to select members of an “advisory committee” that screens prospective new hires. A year later, Koch reportedly rejected 60 percent of job candidates suggested by FSU faculty.

“You can see why Mr. Koch would want to do that sort of thing, if he could find a state crazy enough to let him do it,” Maddow said. “I mean, $1.5 million is nothing to him. He loses that into a hankerchief when he sneezes. But for that pittance, he gets to make sure his conservative billionaire economic ideas get taught and published and propagated under the brand name of something that is supposed to look like a university-level education.”

Unfortunately it is not just FSU. Many other universities are doing the same. Selling out for money. Also from 2011.

Not Just Florida State

When the terms of a 2008 grant agreement between Florida State University and the Charles G. Koch Foundation became public last month, it drew attention to the fund for what some saw as an attempt to exert undue influence over personnel matters.

The foundation has made sizable grants to a number of other colleges and universities -- including six-, seven- and eight-figure gifts to such public institutions as Clemson University, George Mason University, Utah State University and the University of West Virginia.

In at least one case besides that of Florida State, Utah State University, the grant agreements give the foundation a role in reviewing candidates for positions. While the role is less detailed than the one set out at Florida State, it still goes beyond norms of faculty hiring, which generally avoid any formal role for donors beyond designating an area of study. In other cases, the nature of the gifts has raised questions -- with critics suggesting that the subject matter is so narrowly defined that it effectively embraces a political perspective, not a subject of study.

.....“Although the Koch Foundation’s objectives are written so as to sound upbeat and cheerful, they amount to code words calling for the dismantling of the welfare state,” Nelson wrote in an e-mail. “ ‘Economic freedom,’ sounds like mom and apple pie until you realize it means the government shouldn’t collect taxes, and ‘free voluntary processes’ means buy health care on your own if you can afford it.

Last year the students at FSU spoke out against this power play by the Kochs.

The FSU Student Senate has introduced a resolution denouncing the university’s acceptance of big donations from a foundation run by the billionaire Koch brothers to fund positions in the economics department — and to have a say in who gets the appointments.

...The FSU Student Senate resolution decries the Kochs’ “undue influence on academics as established by the current agreement between the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and the FSU Economics department.”

“No public institution should accept funding that is conditional upon a willingness to fulfill or conform to a private entity’s ideological goals,” the resolution states.

The campaign against the FSU-Koch agreement is organized in part by Progress Florida and Florida Watch Action.

December 26, 2013

Only 22% of Democrats show interest in 2014 voting. Maybe "purists" need to be heard.

Of course this is an opinion piece, but maybe I am right. Maybe it's time to listen to the growing group of voices that are begging the party leaders to take firm stands on issues.

That percentage is from a recent poll by CNN/ORC International. If the poll is truly indicative, then Democrats need to be concerned. The real reason for the Democratic voter apathy will be spun by everyone on the left or right or center. We may never know.

Just three in 10 registered voters who were surveyed said they were extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in the upcoming elections, which are still nearly a year away. Democrats are less interested, with just 22 percent saying they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. Republicans have slightly more interest - 36 percent.

But I have some ideas of my own. Would they work? I don't know. I do know one thing. The more our party tries to accommodate the right wing on fiscal policy, the deficit, cutting Social Security, cutting Medicare, dismantling public schools....the less the enthusiasm from the voters. The more our party avoids speaking out clearly on such issues, taking a stand for the people instead of the corporate right, the more it tries to be like the other side...the less the voters seem to care about casting a ballot.

There has to be a two-party system for a country to survive, and there has to be one side standing up to the radical right. Howard Dean was right in 2004: You can't compromise with extremists. They accept no compromise, they just keep pushing their own values. When they actually do lose a small battle they yell loudly that they have won.

Some thoughts:

Stop using the term "purist" to describe those of us who question party stances.

That sets me off more than any word anyone could use. It angers many, not just me. It is MEANT to anger us, to insult us. That is the worst part. It is a wedge, a warning not to be critical when our party refuses to stand up for the safety nets and for public education. It doesn't work, and it could backfire.

Stop letting a few rich men in think tanks control the destiny of our party. From 2001:
How the DLC does it.

Privately funded and operating as an extraparty organization without official Democratic sanction, and calling themselves "New Democrats," the DLC sought nothing less than the miraculous: the transubstantiation of America's oldest political party. Though the DLC painted itself using the palette of the liberal left--as "an effort to revive the Democratic Party's progressive tradition," with New Democrats being the "trustees of the real tradition of the Democratic Party"--its mission was far more confrontational. With few resources, and taking heavy flak from the big guns of the Democratic left, the DLC proclaimed its intention, Mighty Mouse style, to rescue the Democratic Party from the influence of 1960s-era activists and the AFL-CIO, to ease its identification with hot-button social issues, and, perhaps most centrally, to reinvent the party as one pledged to fiscal restraint, less government, and a probusiness, pro free market outlook.

It's hard to argue that they haven't succeeded.

If they want to get America's teachers on board, teachers whose careers are being destroyed by constant testing....they need to stop Arne Duncan's destructive policies. President Obama needs to recognize the harm his basketball buddy has done and make him step down. Arne's arrogance is surely making many in the education field have a lack of enthusiasm about voting next year. Parents are starting to speak out about the harmful high-stakes testing.

The Democrats who are running for re-election in 2014 need to stop toeing the party line on charter school formations and closing public schools. If not, harm will be done.

They need to be brave enough to stand up proudly and say no cuts to Social Security, preserve Medicare. Perhaps they would win more hearts and souls over by simply saying that the best way to "rescue" Social Security is by expanding it to include more people. The newly added people would pay into the system, thus strengthening it greatly.

I see it this way. I always felt I was a Democrat, not just by name but in philosophy. I felt I was supposed to speak out when I could see the party going down the corporate path, leaving the everyday common people behind.

When many of us did that in 2003, we learned quickly that tactic was unwelcome. Instead of defending their reasons for the rightward turning, many turned their anger on "the left", the "liberals" who were at that time against invading Iraq. Then we fought back against cuts to the safety nets, against privatizing public education. The think tanks began to use the words "elitists" as well as purists. They often used the word "fringe", way too often.

As far I as I know, the budget for next year still includes the Chained CPI, also known as the
Superlative CPI. There is no need for these cuts, and the Democrats running next year need to say so.

Those who call us purists need to stop saying so because we are not. We are questioning policy, which is what the people of any party need to do.

Get seniors and teachers on board by backing off policies that are harming them greatly.

Since appealing to the right instead of the left in the party is apparently not working that well right now.....why not try those ideas that folks like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are tossing out there. When two leaders of a small think tank attack them, let the party's leaders jump to their defense instead of avoiding the topic.

December 25, 2013

My best to you. Lost my hubby this year also.

My hubby passed away in the spring. I am getting through the holidays quietly, as that is the only way I can do it.

Last week I accidentally ran across a flag he would put up in place of our FL Gator flag for a few days at Christmas. It was folded up in a drawer. I had forgotten all about it.

It had a picture of the Grinch, and it said in big letters Bah Humbug. It was a large flag, very noticeable.

He used to chuckle when he put it out, and he always took it down before the neighbors got too upset. It was his way of protesting all the ads we were seeing before Thanksgiving. It was tongue in cheek, the neighbors knew it.

It was so hard seeing that flag, one of those things that brings back so much.

You are in my thoughts and prayers. Big hug sent your way.

In fact I am sure it is a group hug.

I will keep that flag as a memory.

December 23, 2013

In 2003 DLC said "fringes" in politics hung out at Dem Underground, mentioned Skinner by name.

It's amazing what pops into my head sometimes lately. I don't believe that was ever true, and I don't think it is true now. I think there is more factual stuff here backed up by sources than you are likely to see at the so-called mainstream corporate media news outlets.

This was at a time when Howard Dean's campaign was seen as a threat to the establishment Democrats, and those of us who worked for his campaign were seen as anti-war lunatics.

The DLC might be defunct, but the Third Way carries on the warnings to "liberals" to stay out of the way or they might get run over.

I finally found the archived link to Randolph Court's article in July 2003 called "Nothing but Net". It was a slam at the Dean campaign and most everyone on what he considered "the left".

Nothing but Net

When the books closed on the Democratic presidential aspirants' second-quarter fundraising drives, it was clear that Howard Dean's anti-war, anti-Bush rhetoric, combined with his use of the Internet, had successfully whipped up a sizable bloc of liberal, protest-oriented supporters in the early stages of the campaign. He had raised more than $10 million since the start of the year, much of it in small donations through the Web; well over 50,000 supporters were gathering to support him through Meetup.com; and he had won a 44-percent plurality in the straw poll staged by the online liberal activist group MoveOn.org. There was a fevered buzz: Dean, everyone surmised, had ascended into the "first tier" of presidential candidates.

But the buzz largely missed what should be an alarming revelation for Democrats: The Internet may be giving angry, protest-oriented activists the rope they need to hang the party. The vaunted new medium for grassroots political organizing may in fact be contributing to the Iowafication of the nominating process, disproportionately magnifying the voices of the activist groups with the loudest, most combative, and populist voices.

Actually the internet did give voice to the liberals of the party. But our purpose was not "to hang the party". Our purpose is and was to strengthen the party by making it stand for things Democrats have traditionally supported.

More...about that site where the fringe hangs out:

Certainly, the fringes of the political spectrum are active online on heavily trafficked discussion boards such as the left-wing democraticunderground.com and the right-wing freerepublic.com. Dean's fiery message resonates in the left-wing haunts. He is the favorite son on democraticunderground.com, according to the site's proprietor, David Allen, and the people posting on that site are an animated bunch. Much of what they post -- about Bush, and about moderate Democrats -- would not be appropriate to repeat here.

They really felt that way about us, that we were fringe. That's a shame because we were not fringe at all, in fact many of us started out as moderates. Many of our group were Republicans hungry for the truth at that time.

AND in my mind it is vital to remember other things said in 2004...why? Because the same thing is going on today. The targets of the wrath of the far right Democrats may be different...can you say Elizabeth Warren? However the message is the same...liberals will harm the party.

From USA Today in 2004...what the young New Democrats had to say about all us fringe leftists.

It's time to pass torch, younger Dems say

Only they did not mean to pass the torch to liberals. Far from it.

(Jamal)Simmons and his fellow "Young Turks" worry about the Democratic Party's dependence on interest groups, their relations with minority groups, the stereotypes that they are weak on defense and values, the Republican appropriation of the "reformer" label and the swaths of America that Democrats seem to have written off."

.."We respect the struggles of the feminist movement, the civil rights movement and Vietnam, but (we) are not defined by those struggles," says Kirsten Powers, 37, a New York-based strategist and commentator for Fox News. "We want to take what is good in liberalism and make it better, and get rid of what is not working."

..."Simmons, Powers and New York City-based consultant Dan Gerstein have been three of the bluntest commentators. "The party in certain respects is fossilized," says Gerstein, 37. "It's trapped in the last vestiges of the New Deal coalition. That coalition is no longer an electoral majority or even close to it."

A former aide to Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., Gerstein wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Democrats have "fallen right back into the elitist, weak-kneed, brain-dead trap" they thought they'd escaped with Bill Clinton."

That's harsh stuff.."elitist, weak-kneed, brain-dead".

Unfortunately for them there are more of us now than there were then.

December 22, 2013

NC home schools to get public money, taxpayer money.

Here is an article from Mother Jones about this. I can only imagine what these vouchers will do to the public school system as far as draining their resources.

Please note that a home school is only required to have a teacher with a high school education. Talk about lowering standards?

North Carolina Home Schools to Get Public School Money

In July, the increasingly right-wing legislature in North Carolina passed a bill to divert $10 million from the public school budget to create vouchers that would give low-income students up to $4,200 a year to pay for private school tuition. Such vouchers are a popular conservative proposal for "reforming" failing public schools.

North Carolina's vouchers, which will become available in 2014, allow public money to go to unregulated private schools that are not required to meet any educational or teacher preparation standards. In addition, thanks to the way the law was written, the money will be available to "home schools"—literally schools set up in someone's house. Homeschooling traditionally has been done by parents. But the state recently changed its home schooling law to allow people who aren't parents or legal guardians educate kids in a group setting. The only requirement for such schools is that the teacher have a high school diploma, that the school keep immunization and attendance records on its students, and that it give kids a national standardized test every year.

NC Policy Watch, a project of the nonprofit North Carolina Justice Center, went out and found some interesting "home schools" that may be eligible for taxpayer funding next year. The Paramount Christian Academy has one teacher who teaches her granddaughter, a neighbor's kid, and one special-needs student. It uses textbooks from Bob Jones University and A Beka Book, whose offerings we've chronicled here at Mother Jones.

As Deanna Pan explained last year, such instructional materials teach Bible-based "facts"—such as the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. The materials also suggest that the Ku Klux Klan "tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross" and that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, for instance. Gay people are singled out for special scorn in one Bob Jones teachers' guide, which says that they "have no more claims to special rights than child molesters or rapists." And math haters—these books are for you.

The reformers want to make the public schools better, they say. Yet they are pushing ideas like this which will weaken public schools by having their resources taken away. These precious resources will be given to private religious schools and home schools with lowered requirements for teachers and almost no standards for the students.

Just as we are entering the intense stages of Common Core with not enough funding to handle it, people with high school educations are being paid to educate their children at home with no required standards.

There are excellent home schools going on in this country. I had several home schooled students enter my 4th-6th grade classes. They were usually outstanding students. But they did not get taxpayer money to do it, they paid for it themselves. That is how it should be.

This is a very strange era for education. Standards are being lowered while it it claimed they are being raised. It's like the "reforms" are moving ahead with defunding public schools and public school teachers who don't have the money to stop them. And these public school advocates are without powerful voices to get people to stop and listen.

December 20, 2013

Terry McAuliffe chose McDonnell's Dr. Bill Hazel for HHS...bodes ill for women.

Why would he do this? He ran on a platform of womens' choice, and now he appoints one of the major advocates of the Transvaginal Ultrasound Before An Abortion



From ABC7 yesterday:

McAuliffe to retain Hazel as HHR secretary

HE’S A KEEPER: Another holdover for Terry, per the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe today will retain Dr. William A. Hazel Jr. as Virginia’s Secretary of Health and Human Resources, according to sources close to the decision. Hazel, an orthopedic surgeon from Northern Virginia, has served as health secretary during the administration of Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell and become a crucial player in the debate over whether to expand Virginia’s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.

His reappointment, to be announced today in Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Medicine, reaffirms McAuliffe’s commitment to expand Medicaid to serve as many as 400,000 uninsured Virginians. Hazel enjoys bipartisan support in the General Assembly, and is seen as the incoming administration’s best chance of selling Medicaid expansion to reluctant conservative Republicans, especially in the House of Delegates.” http://bit.ly/1czXWSv

More about Bill Hazel:

Virginia Gov.-elect McAuliffe reappoints anti-choice health director

Hazel, an orthopedic surgeon, is a documented opponent of women’s rights. Just a couple of examples should suffice:

* Hazel helped shepard of a law through the Virginia legislature that mandates an ultrasound be done on each and every pregnant woman seeking an abortion. And get this: The ultrasound would be done regardless of medical necessity, and the woman must pay for it.

* And, as the Richmond Times-Dispatch has reported, Hazel was the guiding light in ramming through the Virginia health and human resources department's draconian new abortion clinic restrictions and regulations.

One more for good measure:

* Hazel also spoke at uber-conservative Liberty University in opposition to the Affordable Care Act. That's the former Lynchburg Baptist College and now “university” that was founded by the late Jerry Falwell in 1971. Liberty U features a code of conduct which levies a $500 fine and 30 hours of disciplinary community service for any student who has an abortion – for any reason.

Why, Terry? Women are fighting for their rights everywhere, so you need a good explanation for this.

December 20, 2013

Bloomberg on poverty. "Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not"

Actually he said worse than that. His full quote was in defense of his homeless policies. He said it was just the way God works.

Dear Mr. Bloomberg: I hate to tell you, but that kind of poverty is caused by man. It is caused by policies in countries where the very rich are so greedy that they try to get richer by taking from the needy. It is going on right now in our country, and it sounds like you are complicit.

“This kid was dealt a bad hand. I don’t know quite why. That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not,” he said.

That is pure arrogance, hubris.

More on this from the link:

Bloomberg Defends Homeless Policies While Calling Dasani Story ‘Extremely Atypical’

After the New York Times published an emotional, five-part series on a homeless 11-year-old girl named Dasani growing up in the city’s shelters, many New Yorkers reacted passionately. Among them was Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, who called the status quo unacceptable and vowed last week to change the city’s approach when he takes office next year.

Asked today if he was similarly moved by the story, current Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Politicker he’d had a different reaction.

While calling her life story “really quite extraordinary,” Mr. Bloomberg insisted Dasani’s situation was not representative of the city’s broader homeless population.

.....Addressing Politicker directly, Mr. Bloomberg also took a direct shot at the media: “I think one of the problems is a lot of journalists have never looked around the world–your smirk shows you haven’t been outside the country and don’t know what poverty means elsewheres.”

December 19, 2013

Chicago closed 50 public schools. Cost to empty them out now up to 30.9 million.

This is a deal voted on hurriedly and without proper discussion. In fact the vote was rushed through in a questionable way.

"In less time than it takes to boil an egg" Chicago closes 50 schools.

History was made in Chicago Wednesday in about 90 seconds, but most of the folks who witnessed firsthand the death of a record 50 Chicago Public Schools didn’t even realize it.

Rather than list the names of the doomed elementary schools, the Board of Education took a single group vote on most of the closings that will affect some 27,000 children. The board secretary read out the numbers assigned to each resolution and asked for the vote.

But onlookers didn’t even get that, as the board president resorted to parliamentary maneuver to speed the process along.

“Madam Secretary, if there are no objections from my fellow board members, please apply the last favorable roll call,” Board President David Vitale said, referring to the previous vote of six ayes and 0 nays. And with that, the bulk of the history — 49 of the 50 schools closed — was made in a unanimous sweep.

Now the cost has more than tripled to clear out the schools that were closed. The cost is not being discussed in a public way, so people are likely not aware.

Now what I want to know is what kind of city will sign a contract with a company to empty out the school buildings before the vote is even taken.

More overruns: Cost to empty out closed Chicago schools now set to triple

Back in April—even before the vote to close 50 schools—the district signed a contract with logistics firm Global Workplace Solutions to move all the things out of schools. Price tag: $8.9 million.

GWS worked throughout the summer to inventory and move computers, books, furniture and other supplies from closed schools into so-called Welcoming Schools.

In September, the district quietly doubled the amount of the contract, to $18.9 million. Chicago Public Schools’ closing czar said the reason for the overrun had to do with the volume of stuff movers found in the 43 shuttered buildings they are emptying out.

Now, the agenda for Wednesday’s school board meeting shows the board will vote on another increase, this time to $30.9 million, more than tripling the amount of the original contract with GWS.

As they voted in April to close the schools, most people there were not even aware they had done it because of the way they maneuvered the vote.

From the 1st link:

Columnist Mark Brown

In the end, the board was so tone deaf to its audience that on the crucial vote that closed most of the schools, they used the parliamentary maneuver of adopting the previous favorable roll call — instead of taking the extra 30 seconds to each say “yes” once more. The average person in attendance didn’t even know the closings had been approved until it was over. -- "CPS closings vote shows it’s time for an elected school board"

And now 30.9 million of the taxpayers' money is going to be used to move stuff from the schools that most did not want closed in the first place.