Spirit of Horatio Alger stronger than ever!
RL here.
The name of the leftist rag? Business Week, which published an article titled "Waking Up From the American Dream." The article summarizes recent research showing that social mobility in the United States (which was never as high as legend had it) has declined considerably over the past few decades. If you put that research together with other research that shows a drastic increase in income and wealth inequality, you reach an uncomfortable conclusion: America looks more and more like a class-ridden society.
......Let's talk first about the facts on income distribution. Thirty years ago we were a relatively middle-class nation. It had not always been thus: Gilded Age America was a highly unequal society, and it stayed that way through the 1920s. During the 1930s and '40s, however, America experienced what the economic historians Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the Great Compression: a drastic narrowing of income gaps, probably as a result of New Deal policies. And the new economic order persisted for more than a generation: Strong unions; taxes on inherited wealth, corporate profits and high incomes; close public scrutiny of corporate management--all helped to keep income gaps relatively small. The economy was hardly egalitarian, but a generation ago the gross inequalities of the 1920s seemed very distant.
Now they're back. According to estimates by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez--confirmed by data from the Congressional Budget Office--between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. (Those numbers exclude capital gains, so they're not an artifact of the stock-market bubble.) The distribution of income in the United States has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality.
......It is true, however, that America was once a place of substantial intergenerational mobility: Sons often did much better than their fathers. A classic 1978 survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25 percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23 percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of upward mobility was a real experience for many people.
......Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?
One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You'd also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you'd try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.
Meanwhile, on the spending side, you'd cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.
And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you'd do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you'd privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.
It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it?
Where is this taking us? Thomas Piketty, whose work with Saez has transformed our understanding of income distribution, warns that current policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete." If he's right--and I fear that he is--we will end up suffering not only from injustice, but from a vast waste of human potential.
Goodbye, Horatio Alger. And goodbye, American Dream.
Goodbye Horatio Alger? I think not. Today's news has an item which proves that the Horatio Alger spirit is alive and well in America and that hard work combined with the proper deference to authority will always result in success.
Like a modern day Ragged Dick, a homeless person risked his own life and welfare in order to assist a stranger who is obviously a far better person. And, like the famed Alger characters, this homeless man was handsomely rewarded for his hard work and personal risks.
William Dominick had stopped at a Waffle House in Bradenton, where armed robbers smashed out the windows of his silver Mercedes sedan while he sat in the driver's seat, according to the Manatee County Sheriff's Office.
Popping open the trunk, the robbers grabbed two steel cases plus a briefcase and ran toward a black luxury car with tinted windows. An intervening homeless man hit one of the robbers, who dropped and left behind the largest case, reports show.
"It had $700,000 to $800,000 inside," Dominick said Thursday of the recovered case. The contents included an 1879 U.S. gold coin worth $150,000 and a $10,000 bill valued at $75,000, he said.
"The blessing is that that homeless guy was there," said Dominick, who gave the man a $100 bill.
The missing briefcase and the second steel case, which weighed about 30 pounds, held $250,000 in merchandise, Dominick said.
"I've offered a $100,000 reward," said the dealer, who runs Westwood Rare Coin Gallery in Naples and a New York suburb. "I'll do whatever's needed to get these guys in jail."
Now, naysayers like Krugman will hear about this generous coin dealer, the courageous victim of a horrendously violent crime, and loudly exclaim that a $100 reward for thwarting the robbery of $800,000 worth of goods is hardly magnanimous, especially when the same dealer is offering $100,000 for the return of merchandise worth far less, but that's just old-fashioned class warfare.
See, Krugman and his crowd just wont admit the fact that this homeless person, if truly deserving, will take that $100, make some shrewd investments, say in rare coins, and become another Horatio Alger success story. Why, the homeless person might even be able to buy a name. Fred. Or Joe. Or some other nice name.
Anyway, the point I'm making is that $100 is all the homeless man needs. Giving the homeless man anything more would simply be coddling, ultimately weakening the character and determination of the homeless man and dooming the the homeless man to a life of handouts.
Kudos to William Dominick, and I'm sure that his homeless hero will soon have a moniker of his own!
Poor timing
This report is making the rounds.
Tax refunds sought by 1.6 million poor Americans over the last five years were frozen and their returns labeled fraudulent, although the vast majority appear to have done nothing wrong, the Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate told Congress yesterday.
A computer program identified the refund requests as suspect and automatically flagged the taxpayers for extra scrutiny for years to come, the advocate said in her annual report to Congress. These taxpayers were not told that the I.R.S. criminal investigation division suspected fraud.
The advocate, Nina Olson, said the I.R.S. devoted vastly more resources to pursuing questionable refunds sought by the poor - which under the highest estimate is $9 billion - than to the $100 billion in taxes not paid each year by people who work for cash and either fail to file tax returns or understate their income.
As for the suspected fraud in refund requests, Ms. Olson said her staff sampled the suspect returns and found that 66 percent were entitled to the amount sought or more. Another 14 percent were due a partial refund. She expressed doubt that many among the remaining 20 percent had committed fraud.
......"At a minimum, this procedure constitutes an extraordinary violation of fundamental taxpayer rights and fairness," Ms. Olson wrote, adding that it "may also constitute a violation of due process of law."
Her staff's sample of frozen returns found that the average reported income was about $13,000 and the refund due was about $3,500.
About three-quarters of those affected were employed parents who applied for the earned-income tax credit, under which all income and Social Security taxes can be returned and, in some cases, a payment made.
Which makes the timing of this corporate welfare education scheme* rather unfortunate.
This week a consortium of public and private nonprofit groups began trying to get employers in the Tampa area to encourage low- and middle-income workers to take advantage of the earned income credit this tax season. The credit can reduce the amount of taxes owed. Taxpayers can qualify for between $399 and $4,400 in tax credits.
On Tuesday, the consortium, called the Prosperity Campaign, approached employers in the West Shore business district, where an estimated 4,000 businesses are situated.
"There are lots of entry-level workers we need to reach," said Ron Rotella, executive director of the Westshore Alliance, a business group that plans to help educate workers about the overlooked credit.
Daley says she hopes the campaign is a success. Bosses benefit if workers are educated about the tax credit.
"It gives you a much better employee," Daley said. "I may work harder because my boss appreciates me."
Uh, yeah... my boss appreciates me to the point of underpaying me so severely that the government feels obligated to supplement my meager pay.
*Government subsidized payroll in the form of a tax credit that employers are touting as extra income.
Hillsborough Homeland Schools Initiative works as planned
When Hillsborough County first rolled out its new school choice plan, critics weren't sure that it would accomplish its goal of resegregation, but, defying the naysayers, the school board has managed to turn the clock back 50 years in an impressively short period of time.
The plan is brilliant in its simplicity, yet just burdensome enough to discourage undesirable students from actually making a choice, thus ensuring that the good schools are able to fill up with a homogeneous non-mix of students on their way to one of Florida's lily white universities, while the poor schools are left to make do with underachievers and other undesirables.
First, the school board crafted rules that put the burden on poor and minority parents to take action if they wanted their kids to remain in the better school away from their neighborhoods. If parents desired a healthy learning environment they were to fill out a school choice application. Or maybe just an intent to return form. Before one deadline or another. If the proper application was not returned to the school board, the children would be housed in neighborhood schools.
The only group of students who had to make this choice were those who were being bused to desirable schools from poor neighborhoods. Whiter, wealthier kids were simply kept in the good schools nearer to their homes.
If parents from poor neighborhoods failed to indicate a preference to have their children return to the good school which they had been attending, they were to indicate which schools they would rather attend. The only catch: all the good schools were already full of wealthy kids, so there was no room for any students from other neighborhoods.
Now, there were a few glithces at first – some parents of poor and minority students who managed to jump through the confusing application process which involved multiple forms and deadlines were actually informed that their kids would be going to good schools. Thanks to the work of some alert wealthy parents, they were soon set straight.
Blaming a computer glitch, Hillsborough school officials said Tuesday that dozens of students were wrongly assigned to crowded schools through the new controlled choice process.
The computer incorrectly enrolled students in schools in which there is no available space, officials said.
The error means these students will not be able to attend their chosen schools next fall despite being notified by mail last week that they could.
......Students will be enrolled in other schools in their area, preferably those they listed as their second or third choices - as long as those schools have room.
"We're checking name by name, school by school," said deputy superintendent Randy Poindexter. "This has to be corrected."
The problem is the biggest one so far for the choice plan, a new method of assigning students to schools that replaces busing for desegregation. About 47,000 students were eligible to fill out their top three choices of schools in seven geographic regions.
Less than two weeks ago, administrators said 84 percent of the 6,488 students who participated in the choice plan received their first pick of schools.
But as the numbers of students assigned to specific schools began trickling out last week, parents at crowded campuses, including Wilson Middle and Mitchell Elementary, wanted to know why more children were being packed into their already-burgeoning classrooms.
Wilson parent Leigh Joyner complained in an e-mail to School Board members.
"I understand that with Wilson's outstanding performance it is one of the more desirable middle schools to attend - but at what cost?" she wrote. "Giving someone outside the boundaries the choice to attend an already overcrowded school does not make the school choice program successful."
Wilson and Plant High parent Jeanne Tate said she has no problem with additional students assigned to her children's schools if there's room. But since the schools are packed, she said she believes more crowded conditions would take away from the learning process there.
"We're very fortunate we have the quality education those schools provide in a public school setting," she said. "We certainly don't want to detract from that."
The school district has a general policy of closing enrollment at schools at 100 percent of capacity. Through the choice program, students were only supposed to be assigned to schools where space was available.
Poindexter said a random review of student assignments showed many anomalies. One was that several Burns Middle School students who are currently bused for desegregation are now assigned through the choice program to Wilson, which is over capacity.
The students should have been assigned to either Coleman, Madison or Monroe middle schools, all of which have space. Wilson, with 637 students, is built to hold 554.
Coleman, Madison and Monroe have room because no one who is concerned about a strong education wants their kids to go to those schools. But they should be good enough for poor kids, right?
Derwin and Loretha Bozeman applied for choice by the Jan. 9 deadline. They showed up with a worn notification card saying they got their first choice of Tampa's Wilson Middle School for their daughter, Bianqa, who has been attending Pierce Middle School. They then got a letter saying they failed to participate in choice and needed to come to Tuesday's meeting, they said.
``We were told we can go to either Booker T. Washington or back to Pierce,'' Derwin Bozeman said. ``We want Wilson. It's the only blue-ribbon school in the area, and we live closer to Wilson than Pierce.''
As of Friday, the family had made no decision. ``This is like a big evacuation of air from the balloon. We don't know what we're going to do.''
The Bozeman family is among a group of 1,500 families the district erroneously assigned to already-crowded schools. They were all supposed to be called, but the Bozemans said they never were.
Choose One Or The Other
Other families said they had applied for choice and magnet programs and were confused about assignments.
That was another problem for the district, Evans said. Families were encouraged to apply for choice and magnet schools, and computers were supposed to sort them out. Instead, they were assigned to both, snapping up spots that others could have had.
Now families dissatisfied with their assignments are being encouraged to apply for special assignments to any district school they want as long as it has room and they provide their own transportation. The deadline is June 30.
Stupid poor people: they should have known that they wouldn't be allowed to send their daughter to a decent school. Now they've gotten all agitated about it. All they have to do is buy their kid a car or provide some other form of reliable transportation and they can send her to any school in the county. Well, any school that is not already full. What's the big deal?
Anyway, as the resegregation plan started showing results, the school board realized that it had a problem on its hands: so many poor and minority students were being displaced that there just wasn't enough room in the neighborhood ghetto schools to contain all the kids. Something had to be done, so the school board dusted off some moldy old buildings and declared them fit for learning.
Washington K-8 and James K-8 schools started the school year without enough books, teachers and working toilets.
Students at two others, Oak Park Elementary and Franklin Middle, remain in portable classrooms for a second full year. There's limited computer access for Franklin students because their portables lack enough security.
Admittedly surprised by the spike, district officials rushed extra tutors to some of the schools in advance of this week's FCAT testing. They will begin special teacher training in the summer and plan a separate teacher recruiting day, where they will offer more money to experienced teachers.
Frustrated parents are taking note.
``As far as this school getting a fair shake, I don't see it happening,'' said Dwayne Ellis, Franklin's PTA president. His two daughters attend the school.
A year ago, a dozen Hillsborough public schools reported nearly 90 percent or more of their children qualified for free or reduced-price meals based on federal guidelines.
Now there are 23 such schools, a transition tied to a district plan to let some families choose their own schools.
......Hillsborough is following a nationwide pattern of resegregation as it enters its first year of school choice.
The choice plan, which went into effect in August, allows families of certain students to choose from schools in their assigned region as long as there is room. That includes families living in Tampa's generally impoverished inner core, where forced busing to the suburbs took place for decades to desegregate schools. It ended this year.
Few families from the inner core ended up choosing schools, so most were assigned to their neighborhood schools.
``This was a predictable outcome,'' said Sam Horton, president of the Hillsborough County branch of the NAACP and a retired educator. ``It was about this way in 1954. It's no different now.''
Of course it was a predictable outcome: the plan was well designed from the beginning to unfairly place the burden on poor and minority parents to educate themselves about the confusing different application deadlines and requirements that were needed just to allow their kids to remain where they were. If there was room. See, if there was room, that meant that the school wasn't all that desirable.
Then some brilliant computer 'glitches' caused many kids whose parents had successfully navigated the labyrinthine application process to be thrown back to inferior homeland schools thus sparing the privileged children the extreme burden of sharing their good fortune.
But the proof is in the numbers. Just how well is this plan actually working to divide the school system into two or more separate and decidedly unequal educational experiences? Let's see:
In the last year before school choice, 53 schools had fewer than 30 percent white students. Now the number is 77. Fourteen of those schools are more than 60 percent Hispanic, up from 10 during busing. Nineteen are more than 60 percent African-American, up from 13.
Good job!
For background on Hillsborough's Homeland Schools Initiatrive, see the following BlogWood posts:
School choice separate but equal
Jeb! blames poor for lack of aid
It's New Orleans redux in South Florida, as FEMA drops the ball and Jeb! tries to deflect blame from his brother by taking responsibility for sloppy planning and implementation of disaster recovery.
Well, Jeb!'s not accepting full responsibility – he thinks that people who were unable to stockpile supplies are dumbasses because they failed to attain the financial means necessary to fully prepare for the destruction of a storm that most experts felt would blow through without causing severe damage to South Florida. Really.
"People had ample time to prepare. It isn't that hard to get 72 hours worth of food and water,..." Bush said.
Like the imbecile who blames a rape victim for inviting an attack by dressing provocatively, Jeb! just doesn't get it.
Wal-Mart’s evil plan
Don't be fooled by the rhetorical crap spewing forth from orificial Wal-Mart sources. While the company publicly claims to have seen the light on environmental issues and has even come out in favor of raising the minimum wage, internal documents reveal the truly sinister nature of the evil behemoth.
The AP reports that Wal-Mart is going green, sorta. Seeking to cut costs and salve a wounded reputation, the retailer will buy trucks that get better mileage and try to make do with less cardboard boxes.
And in a bid to divert attention from the fact that Wal-Mart employees can't afford basic necessities such as health care and rent, Wal-Mart has generously called for the feds to raise the minimum wage. The company has no plans to increase the wages it pays to its workers.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. unveiled an environmental plan Tuesday to boost energy efficiency, reduce waste and trim greenhouse gases as part of a wider effort to address issues where it has been pummeled by critics.
Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott said even a slight increase in Wal-Mart pay would eliminate a profit margin that generated $10-billion in profits last year.
Scott said the world's largest retailer had to be a "good steward for the environment" and thought that adopting greener practices would also be good for business by cutting costs.
"We are going to do well by doing good," he said.
But while Wal-Mart touted its environmental plan, Scott rejected calls to increase workers' pay that unions and other critics say is often below poverty level. Instead, he urged Congress to look at raising the U.S. minimum hourly wage for the first time since the mid 1990s.
Finally, in a much ballyhooed move, Wal-Mart loudly announced that it was making health care more affordable. Now, Wal-Mart associates need only fork over a sixth or so of their salary to see a doctor.
But wont all of these progressive sounding moves have an impact on Wal-Mart's huge annual profits? Uh, probably not.
An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.
In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.
To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."
The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.
......Under fire because less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance, Wal-Mart announced a new plan on Monday that seeks to increase participation by allowing some employees to pay just $11 a month in premiums. Some health experts praised the plan for making coverage more affordable, but others criticized it, noting that full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more.
......Ms. Chambers proposed that employees pay more for their spouses' health insurance. She called for cutting 401(k) contributions to 3 percent of wages from 4 percent and cutting company-paid life insurance policies to $12,000 from the current level, equal to an employee's annual earnings.
......Ms. Chambers's memo voiced concern that workers were staying with the company longer, pushing up wage costs, although she stopped short of calling for efforts to push out more senior workers.
She wrote that "the cost of an associate with seven years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with one year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity. Moreover, because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure increases, we are pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart."
The memo noted that Wal-Mart workers "are getting sicker than the national population, particularly in obesity-related diseases," including diabetes and coronary artery disease. The memo said Wal-Mart workers tended to overuse emergency rooms and underuse prescriptions and doctor visits, perhaps from previous experience with Medicaid.
The memo noted, "The least healthy, least productive associates are more satisfied with their benefits than other segments and are interested in longer careers with Wal-Mart."
The memo proposed incorporating physical activity in all jobs and promoting health savings accounts. Such accounts are financed with pretax dollars and allow workers to divert their contributions into retirement savings if they are not all spent on health care. Health experts say these accounts will be more attractive to younger, healthier workers.
"It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo said. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."
Ron Pollack, executive director of Families U.S.A., a health care consumer-advocacy group, criticized the memo for recommending that more workers move into health plans with high deductibles.
"Their people are paying a very substantial portion of their earnings out of pocket for health care," he said. "These plans will cause these workers and their families to defer or refrain from getting needed care."
Fed’s approve Medicaid Eradication Plan
Jeb!’s Medicaid Eradication Plan, which conservatives are fervently hoping to use a model in other states, has been approved by the feds.
A special session of the Florida Legislature will be required for the plan to meet its July 1 target date to start services in Broward and Duval counties. Otherwise, Jeb!'s plan to kill the poor will be delayed until the rules can be enacted in a regular session.
Both the SP Times and the Tampa Trib fail to point out that Florida's rapidly rising Medicaid costs are inflated by a surge in enrollment – Medicaid is actually more efficient at treating patients than the private sector and per patient costs have risen less in Medicaid. Jeb! Refuses to say what the new premiums will cost, but rising profits for HMOs are in the forecast.
Here's a BlogWood post from March with some relevant background on Jeb!’s Medicaid Eradication Plan:
Ever since Social Security was enacted, in 1935, Republicans have been questioning its solvency. They continue to use those same type of arguments today, disingenuously proclaiming that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it, when, in fact, a tiny bit of tinkering, such as raising the Social Security taxable income cap, is all that is really needed to keep the program strong.
In Florida, Jeb! is taking a page from the GOP's anti-Security play book in an attempt to gut the state's Medicaid system which provides health insurance for the poor and disabled.
It's all about money. The affluent self-described conservative ruling class is comprised of greedy, short sighted con men. Born into wealth and power, they see themselves as self made (Jim Hightower would say 'born on third base and thought he hit a triple...'), and they combine a lack of compassion for the lower classes with an avarice that knows no bounds.
The goal is the killing of government services that benefit all citizens, and the preferred method is starvation. Public schools, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare - these are all described as unnecessary wastes of taxpayer dollars, and all are under attack.
First, they cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. The resulting loss of revenue predictably creates a fiscal crisis, and the only way out, we are told, is to cut spending on programs that the poor and middle class rely on to make ends meet and even to stay alive.
Jeb! has pushed through $11 billion in tax cuts since he became Governor. He's proposing even more cuts this year, and, not surprisingly, he's insisting that Medicaid is breaking the state budget's back and that education spending will zoom out of control if the voter mandated class size caps are allowed to fully kick in.
His plan for Medicaid is to privatize by throwing money at HMOs, a group which has given heavily to the GOP cause. Jeb!'s other privatization schemes have largely crashed and burned, proving more costly than government run programs and often being accompanied by graft and corruption.
This time, he'll insure the insurers by instituting draconian caps on Medicaid spending and greatly limiting prescription medications, thus providing EZ profits for the private healthcare providers. Many sick people will fall through the cracks and die, which should improve long term profits, but local municipalities and hospitals will be forced to pick up where the new Medicaid leaves off, a cost shift that will let Jeb! show a 'savings' in the state budget.
Medicaid costs are rising, but that's mostly due to a surge in enrollment - perhaps a result of the low wage jobs that have typically been created under Jeb! - and Medicaid's per patient costs are rising less than private insurance per patient costs. In other words, Medicaid is more efficient than the private sector.
Further, much of Medicaid's costs are paid for by the federal government. The costs to the state are much less than Jeb! would have you believe.
A close look at what we know of Jeb!'s proposal reveals that, much like his brother's Social Security arguments, the 'crisis' is an invention, a PR tool designed to provide cover for the real agenda: the destruction of the social safety net.
Building schools and hatred
Yesterday, the Hillsborough BOCC, led by female female impersonator Ronda Storms (seen here in a fruitless search for an Adam's apple), decided to deal with the county school construction funding crisis by ''studying'' the problem to ensure that a larger regressive sales tax is enacted to ease an increase in school impact fees that would have to be paid by developers – money that would no doubt come right out of the commissioners' pockets in the form of lower campaign contributions in the coming months.
A panel of Hillsborough officials, builders and parents will explore whether to raise sales taxes, impact fees on new homes or both to ease classroom crowding.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms proposed the task force Wednesday as the commissioners discussed whether to restrict development to match classroom capacity.
......Only Commissioner Kathy Castor opposed Storms' proposal for a task force, suggesting it would only delay dealing with growth.
Castor said impact fees could be increased immediately, as recommended by a 2004 study. Hillsborough's $196 impact fee for school sites, the lowest in the state, hasn't been increased in 20 years. The study said a $3,800 fee was necessary to catch up with growth.
But Storms said that if impact fees were increased now, voters wouldn't be willing to approve a sales tax increase referendum next year. "We need both," Storms said, and the tax would "go down in flames."
......Most county schools aren't over capacity, but many in popular growth areas are experiencing severe crowding.
Last week county planners tried to deny rezonings to three developments near crowded schools in east and south Hillsborough under a planning policy adopted in July 2004.
County Attorney Renee Lee stopped the effort, saying the county needs an ordinance to enforce the policy.
Ronda continued her recent attacks against the school board, somehow trying to lay blame for being underfunded at the feet of an agency for which she and her board control funding.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Ronda Storms scolded School Board officials Wednesday for failing to ease a classroom congestion problem that they now call a crisis.
The former high school English teacher criticized them for taking four years to ask commissioners to impose a sales tax or raise impact fees despite knowing for some time that they needed to overcome what has become a $364-million deficit in the school district's five-year construction plan.
Storms also chided School Board members and superintendent MaryEllen Elia for missing Wednesday's County Commission meeting. They were at a workshop on team building that they said had been scheduled for months.
"If the School Board thought this was important, they should have been here," Storms said.
She and five other commissioners approved forming a task force in two weeks, with commissioners, School Board members, builders, parents and activists, to discuss ways to ease crowding.
...and the school board shot back.
"We were told everything was fine," Storms said.
Past school officials' statements about capacity "were true at the time they made those statements," but no longer are, Olson responded. "Surely Ronda knows the difference between then and now."
Rapid growth and the class-size amendment have worsened the problems recently, school officials have said.
Olson said it wouldn't be appropriate for the school board to attend the county board's meeting, and that school officials have tried to schedule a joint meeting with county officials to discuss concurrency. She said Jim Norman, chairman of the commissioners, asked today to delay a meeting scheduled for Nov. 10,
Olson tried to sound a conciliatory note.
"I hope the commissioners and the school board can work together on this," she said. "I know we all care about kids."
School board member Jennifer Faliero, who has tangled with Storms recently, was more blunt.
"This is a deflection tactic this commissioner chooses to engage in when the arrow of accountability is pointed at her," Faliero said.
She said school officials have kept the commissioners fully informed about school capacity problems. "They have our five-year plan, they know our deficit. ... It's ultimately up to the commissioners -- they are the only ones who can approve a zoning permit."
Has Miss Ronda become a tax and spend liberal? Don't worry – she hasn't lost her instinctive hatred toward anyone who does not conform to her narrow notions of normalcy.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor said she was only trying to repair Hillsborough's reputation as unfriendly to gay rights when she asked commissioners Wednesday to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation for private and public employees.
But the request backfired when commissioners, led by Ronda Storms, not only refused Castor, but voted 5-2 to make it harder for voters to decide the issue.
They required that the workplace protection of gays can't be put on a referendum ballot unless at least five commissioners approve it. Before Castor's request, only four votes were needed. Castor and Tom Scott dissented.
......"Don't be mean-spirited," Castor pleaded, but commissioners approved it with little discussion. Two South Tampa residents, Jeanine Minge and Melissa Lewis, waited all day for commissioners to vote, and when they did, shortly before 5 p.m., they shook their heads in disgust.
"It just shows that when they said they weren't discriminating against gays, they in effect were discriminating against gays," Lewis said. "They're doing everything they can to silence a community," Minge said. "It's appalling."
One Bright White Florida Future
One Bright White Florida Future
Florida's Bright Futures is a popular college scholarship program, but the fact that it is strictly merit based with no income cap restrictions leads to the scholarships being awarded to many people who would go to college with or without state aid while truly needy poor and minority students whose only chance for higher education may be a program like Bright Futures are left to fend for themselves.
Publicly funded merit scholarships are a form of public welfare program, and can perhaps best be understood through analogy with a similar public benefit. We do not provide food stamps to people who can afford to eat anyway-doing so would do nothing to promote the overall nutritional health of the nation. Similarly, from the perspective of public policy and the use of public resources, it makes little sense to give financial aid to individuals who would attend college without that assistance. Doing so does little to move us toward the goal of promoting college access for needy students.
Bright Futures is funded by lottery money and the scholarships pay 100 percent of tuition to any state student who qualifies academically (through a combination of standardized tests, which tend to disfavor minority students, and actual grades) and attends a state school. Unfortunately, since lotto buyers tend to have lower incomes and stem from less educated backgrounds, funding merit based scholarship programs with lottery proceeds is a regressive form of taxation: it tends to shift wealth from the poor to the rich.
A BMW School
The joke is that with the Bright Futures Scholarship Program footing their tuition bills, UF students can spend the money from their parents' savings on luxury cars.
A Student Financial Affairs survey suggests that's no joke.
Though the voluntary survey has only a 35-percent response rate, the 2002 results showed that the median income of UF students' parents was between $85,000 and $90,000. Twenty-one percent of parents reported incomes of more than $150,000, said Karen Fooks, Student Financial Affairs director.
Now, the founders of our democracy believed that government should provide for its citizens the opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's right there in the The Declaration of Independence. Of course, for more and more people, the pursuit of happiness requires a decent education, and we are simply denying that opportunity to a large portion of our citizens.
First, Jeb! killed affirmative action, replacing it with One Florida, a strictly merit based admissions system. Grades and extracurricular activities are important, but ignoring other factors such as economic and family history leads to exactly the situation we find ourselves in today: black enrollment in state universities is down even as overall enrollment continues to increase.
Oh, and did I say that under One Florida universities are barred from considering a student's family situation? That's not 100 percent accurate. Although race and other socio economic factors have been banned, legacy students – those kids whose close relatives attended the school in question - are still given preferential treatment in admissions. The very same folks who decry affirmative action as unfairly stacking the deck in favor of “unqualified” minorities believe that legacy admissions, in which truly unqualified offspring of wealthy alumni are welcomed with open arms, are just fine.
And if a black student should find herself barred from one of Florida's 4 year colleges, well, that's the way it goes. Maybe she should simply lower her aspirations to a more reasonable level.
"Because Bright Futures just looks at merit, it's not as effective in meeting the needs of the community," Barnhill said. "It's fair, but unfair in the sense that many people receiving the money don't need it as much."
Amending Bright Futures to add an income-level component is an unlikely solution. Politicians don't want to touch the program, which doled out $347 million last year.
Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, is a member of a new task force aimed at increasing university access. If a student can't afford a university education with a Bright Futures Scholarship, she said, there's always community college.
In fact, black enrollment at community colleges is up 20 percent from the 2000-01 school year — a number many university officials point to when looking for their black freshman class.
"I wanted to go to Syracuse University but I ended up going to a city college," Lynn said. "It cost very little, and I had a fantastic experience. Was it my choice? No. But if you really want a degree, you need to go to places that are accessible."
That's right: this woman is in charge of increasing university access and her answer to students who are denied access is for them to simply stop demanding access. I mean, wouldn't it be better if we could all just get along by going along?
In 2000, when Bush's One Florida initiative began, blacks made up 17.6 percent of the freshmen enrolling at state universities. This year, that figure dropped to 14.1 percent.
Also, for the first time in five years, the total number of black freshmen decreased, falling in more than half of the universities by a total of 566 students.
But while black student numbers dipped this year, the total black population in Florida continued to rise.
Blacks make up 13.8 percent of Florida's university enrollment but 15.3 percent of Florida's population — an increase from 14.6 percent in 2000.
The NAACP, which opposed the end of affirmative action in university admissions, says the growing black population in Florida and decreasing freshman enrollment are signs of One Florida's failure.
Adora Obi Nweze, president of Florida's NAACP, said new recruiting efforts aimed at blacks have not been enough to offset the end of affirmative action.
"We said five years ago that this day would come," she said. "It's unfortunate that we in Florida won't accept the fact that we have a serious problem in education for black children."
Yet the only “fact” that Jeb! and his apologists are accepting is that even as black enrollment slips, Hispanic enrollment is increasing. This is technically correct, but in the true spirit of Plessy v Ferguson, it turns out that half of the Hispanic students are segregated enrolled at a single university.
The University of Florida remains the state's largest university, with more than 48,000 students. It's followed by the University of Central Florida with 45,000-plus students.
FIU is the fifth-largest university in the state, but it is also home to more than 20,000 Hispanic students, or nearly half of the entire Hispanic student population in Florida's public universities.
The overall number of Hispanic students attending a public university jumped more than 6 percent from 2004.
Hispanics now make up more than 16 percent of the overall student population and more than 18 percent of this year's freshman class.
But while Hispanic enrollment continues to rise, the number of blacks attending Florida universities has declined from a year ago. Six of the state's 11 public universities -- including UF, FAU, FIU and Florida State University -- reported a drop in their number of black students.
And the percentage of this year's freshman class that is black is at its lowest level since Bush became governor in January 1999.
Ignoring the separate but equal thing, Florida Hispanics also tend to vote Republican, but I'm sure that's just coincidence.
Anyway, the bottom line is that poor and minority students in Florida, for the most part, find it more difficult to gain admission to a 4 year state college, and even if they do manage to get a foot in the door, Bright Futures, which does not cover expenses other than tuition, may not be enough to allow them to attend a school away from their immediate family.
Students from wealthy, educated families simply do not require the assistance that Bright Futures gives them. These students are likely to attend university regardless of any state sponsored stipends. With their family connections, they are likely to land well paying jobs after graduation, and with legacy admissions, their kids will have an easy time getting into a good school too.
Students from poor, uneducated families require much much more than simple tuition assistance. These students are unlikely to attend university regardless of any state sponsored stipends. With their lack of connections, they are likely to be working for minimum wage and no benefits until they die, and with the sorry state of affairs in which we find ourselves, their kids are likely to suffer the same fate.
So, instead of paying rich white people to have babies and send them to college, we should be imposing an income cap on the Bright Futures program and easing eligibility requirements for low income and minority students. Oh, and One Florida for people who look like Jeb Bush and another Florida for everyone else just isn't going to cut it any longer.
Jeb! uses state money to stifle choice
His own GOP dominated legislature wouldn't give him the cash for a "Pregnancy Support Services Program," so he snuck in a line item in his office budget for "crisis counseling." As previously noted, the GOP, and especially Jeb!, just don't like democracy.
Gov. Jeb Bush is pushing forward with a $2 million state-sponsored, anti-abortion contract that will include a toll-free hot line directing pregnant women exclusively to local service providers who do not provide abortions.
Bids on the contract must be submitted by 2 p.m. Monday, and are limited to agencies that "adhere to a strict policy of not promoting, referring, or counseling for abortion," according to Bush's request for proposals.
Bush had asked lawmakers for $4 million in the state's health and human services budget to fund the "Pregnancy Support Services Program."
Instead, he wound up with half that amount in his own office budget in a line item called "crisis counseling."
Abortion-rights advocates and opponents, as well as some lawmakers, were unaware the funds were included in the budget when asked about it.
The contract makes Florida one of just a handful of states to use taxpayer dollars to support anti-abortion agencies.
Bush's plan is based on a similar program in Pennsylvania, paid for by the state's Department of Public Welfare and administered by Real Alternatives, a nonprofit organization based in Harrisburg.
......The Florida plan awards a single contractor $2 million to set up the hot line, coordinate with local organizations to provide "information, education, counseling and support services solely to encourage and promote childbirth," and launch a statewide ad campaign publicizing the 800 number.
Abortion-rights proponent Stephanie Grutman of Planned Parenthood said that the $2 million could pay for 55,000 cycles of birth control for low-income women.
"Think about how many unintended pregnancies we could prevent," she said.
Grutman said Planned Parenthood is considering challenging the contract in court.
Tampa on 29 cents per day
Hillsborough County is wringing its hands and trying to figure out just what to do with the estimated 11,000 homeless people on our streets. Remember: this is a community that gives away sports palaces worth hundreds of millions of dollars to millionaire billionaire capitalists who turn around and set ticket and concession prices that prevent the average citizen from ever stepping foot inside, yet the best we can do for the homeless is allocate 29 cents per day per homeless person. That's just .08% of the county budget.
After more than a year of meetings, a countywide task force offered recommendations Monday to provide homeless people with affordable housing, medical care, job training and employment.
But the plan hinges on a familiar goal: Hillsborough County must find a dedicated source of money to attract federal grants and provide such services.
The goal is a hot potato for politicians, who don't want to be associated with increasing taxes.
In Miami-Dade County, organizers created a penny restaurant tax to generate money for programs to help the homeless; more than 30 percent comes from tourists. In Broward County, the county government got permission to augment its budget with proceeds from a state gas tax that, in turn, allows Broward to operate three homeless assistance centers.
There are ways to be creative, said Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who spearheaded the formation of the Tampa-Hillsborough Citizens Task Force on Homelessness.
But finding the source doesn't necessarily mean an additional tax, she said.
During a task force meeting with social service providers, religious leaders and law enforcement officers, Iorio suggested scouring existing funds countywide.
She pointed to Hillsborough County's millage as one area to study.
"I know the county would like to see a solution, too," Iorio said after the meeting.
Hillsborough's growing homeless population totaled 11,000 during the latest count in January.
The county already funds social service programs, including those that benefit the homeless, Assistant County Administrator Manus O'Donnell said.
This year's budget, which takes effect Oct. 1, has earmarked $524,000 in local and federal money for case management for the homeless and $628,000 for cash assistance to the homeless, O'Donnell said.