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Saving Public Education

Posted on October 15, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Selling The Soul Of Public Education by Maya Schenwar in TruthOut.

The Text: As we traipse through these weeks of conventioning, I know that the my-parents-showed-me-what-hard-work-means tales are getting a bit old. Still, please indulge me for a couple of paragraphs.

My dad taught for 34 years in inner-city public high schools in Chicago. For much of my childhood, my mom taught elementary school, also in a Chicago public school. They are two of the most hard-working people I’ve ever met, and I will forever be inspired by their capacity for personal sacrifice to serve the common good.

Growing up, I thought it was normal for adults to spend nights bent over towering stacks of papers, to fill weekends with lesson plans, to jump on the phone after dinner to speak with non-English-speaking parents in Spanish about their kids’ struggles. And there was the ugly side: my dad’s class sizes crept larger, books became scarcer, administrations grew more vicious, the threat of “reconstitution” (kicking out a school’s teachers based on students’ standardized test scores) loomed gigantic. I confess that observing my parents’ challenges and trials up close over the course of 18 years convinced me not to become a teacher. It also convinced me that teaching was one of the most important jobs in the universe.

Confronting The Auto Bailout

Posted on October 14, 2012 in Articles

The Article: 3 answers to the auto bailout debate by Chris Isidore in CNN Money.

The Text: The U.S. auto industry’s recovery is one of the biggest success stories of the last four years.

American automakers are reporting improving sales and record profits and hiring additional workers to meet surging demand.

But President Obama’s bailout of the auto industry in 2009 is still a source of great controversy in this year’s presidential election.

A War On Reproductive Rights?

Posted on October 13, 2012 in Articles

The Article: The Widespread War On Reproductive Rights by Lynsi Burton in TruthOut.

The Text: More than 1,100 bills aiming to restrict reproductive health access were introduced in state legislatures in 2011. By the end of the year, 135 of these measures were enacted in 35 states. The trend continued in the first half of 2012, with legislatures passing 95 new provisions related to birth control and abortion. But supporters of reproductive rights are pushing back.

When a “personhood amendment” that would grant human rights to a fertilized egg was put on the ballot last November in Mississippi—a Bible Belt state with a legacy of entrenched conservatism—pro-choice activists knew they faced an uphill battle against an initiative that would undercut access to safe and legal abortion and outlaw many forms of birth control, the morning-after pill, and in-vitro fertilization.

Mississippians for Healthy Families, aided by students, civil rights activists, and faith leaders, organized successfully to defeat the bill, winning 58 percent of the vote. It is difficult, if not impossible, for women and medical professionals to pinpoint the exact moment an ovum is fertilized, so the new law would have been impossible to follow consistently. Had it passed, it would have necessitated a Supreme Court challenge, and thus an opportunity to reverse Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion.

The Roots Of Voter ID Laws

Posted on October 12, 2012 in Articles

The Article:
A Ballot Box Tactic Has Deep Historical Roots by Sherrilyn Hill in The Root.

The Text: In states from Florida to Pennsylvania, Republican Party efforts to diminish minority voting strength for this year’s presidential election are a sobering reminder that the struggle for full civil rights is not over. But it’s not only black voters who should be concerned about Republican voter-suppression tactics. The GOP’s war on voting is a serious attack on the fundamental workings of our democracy. It is, at its core, an attempt to negate the important victories of the early 1960s that laid the foundation of our modern representative democracy.

To understand the breadth of the threat represented by voter-ID laws and other new practices designed to suppress votes in Democratic districts, it’s important to realize that the effort to dismantle obstacles to voting rights for black voters in the South during the early 1960s did more than just enfranchise African Americans. It exposed the myriad ways in which key aspects of the American electoral system were fundamentally unfair for all voters. In particular, the disproportionate power afforded to underpopulated rural jurisdictions over the more populous cities was corrected by the Supreme Court in a series of cases that dismantled the framework of unequal voting power that had existed in the South since the turn of the 20th century.

The door opened in 1962 when, in Baker v. Carr, the Supreme Court decided that it could rule on cases raising constitutional challenges to state apportionment practices. In that case, the challenge was to Tennessee’s failure for more than 60 years to adjust its state legislative districts, despite massive changes in the state’s population. A year later, in Gray v. Sanders, the court outlawed Georgia’s county-unit voting system, a vote-counting scheme that benefited less populous counties in the state.

The Great Science Debate

Posted on October 11, 2012 in Articles

The Article: Romney Out-Debates Obama by Lauren Helmuth in Slate.

The Text: President Obama has assembled the most scientifically accomplished administration since the time of the founding fathers. His head science adviser, John Holdren, is a physicist, a MacArthur genius, and a former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is lousy with university deans, officers of the National Academies of Science, and Nobel Prize winners. The head of NOAA, Jane Lubchenco, is a marine scientist and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has a Nobel Prize in physics.

And these folks aren’t just in D.C. for decoration. A few years ago, Obama issued a memorandum to all heads of executive departments and agencies on the subject of scientific integrity. It began:
Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health, protection of the environment, increased efficiency in the use of energy and other resources, mitigation of the threat of climate change, and protection of national security.

With that dream team in his corner, and with his powerful belief in the scientific method, you’d think Obama would have an overwhelming advantage over Mitt Romney in a debate of the top American science questions. You’d be wrong.