The composition of the U.S. Senate could soon partly claim another urban victim - homeland security funds for New York City.
The city that bears the starkest terrorist target on its back must compete with 64 cities for shrinking funds, from $887 million to $725 million in the current budget that runs to Sept. 30. The 20 percent cut was part of the Republican-imposed budget deal reached between President Obama and members of Congress.
New York House members attempted to pare down the number of eligible cities from 64 to 25 or less, but Senate members vetoed the idea, according to The New York Daily News.
U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey, a Westchester Democrat, told the News that the city will lose $27 million because of the large number of competitors.
“It is appalling that a united House position - and common sense - weren’t enough to convince the Senate that the most at-risk areas need this security funding,” she said.
Rep. Pete King, a Long Island Republican, added, “I guess Nashville has the Grand Ole Opry, but in terms of landmarks at risk and assets being targeted, nothing comes close to New York City.”
Besides Nashville, other cities eligible to compete for anti-terror funds are Anaheim, Calif., Bridgeport, Conn., Baton Rouge, La., Omaha, Neb., Toledo, Ohio, and Richmond, Va., according to the News.
It is a common practice for lawmakers to respond to a situation which mainly affects one or a few communities by spreading funds to other towns which do not need it for this purpose. That’s why state money is often allotted to wealthy as well as poor school districts.
On the federal level, we are stuck with a dual system of tradeoffs. All House members represent the same number of people, but senators can demand more because each state is represented by the same number of senators no matter what the population.
As a result, senators from a large state must concede even more than they would if the Senate was based on proportionate representation.
James Madison was among five framers of the Constitution who saw this coming. So did some critics during the ratification process in 1787 and 1788.
Madison nonetheless fought for ratification because the smaller states demanded equal representation in the Senate or there would be no Constitution.
New Jersey and Maryland, then small states, are now large, liberal northeastern states, and Delaware’s Democratic senators typically side with the Democratic bloc.
The decision made more than two centuries ago is expected to cost NYC $27 million today. Ground Zero is located eight blocks from the downtown Manhattan site where George Washington was inaugurated as our first president on April 30, 1789.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
NY state political deal for tuition grants?
While Albany’s leaders performed New York’s version of the chainsaw massacre on public services, they scrounged up $18 million to allot tuition aid to students attending some private religious schools.
Most of the beneficiaries are likely to be 5,000 men who apply to attend Orthodox rabbinical schools.
One can argue that this measure breaches the separation wall of church and state, but the larger concern is whether rabbinical students should be cut a break while public schools and public colleges and universities are being hammered by state funding reductions.
We would never conclude that tuition aid was a political deal. We cannot bring ourselves to suggest that Gov. Andrew Cuomo along with Democratic and Republican lawmakers are trying to cement election help from the large, active bloc of Orthodox Jewish voters in Brooklyn and suburbs like Monsey in Rockland County and the Five Towns area on Long Island.
The New York Times explains that the money “would be available to any theological student who met a new set of criteria for the state’s so-called Tuition Assistance Program grants.” Brooklyn Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district in Boro Park is home to a large Orthodox population, has for 10 years sought to amend the TAP laws by gutting a ban on state tuition aid for undergraduate students who attend yeshivas and other religious schools that the state Board of Regents has not chartered.
This time, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was praised by Orthodox figures for pressing for inclusion of the new rules in the 2011-12 budget. Skelos, a Republican, represents Cedarhurst, Lawrence and other Orthodox communities in what is known as the Five Towns in Nassau County.
New York Jewish Week cited a report in City Hall News that Skelos reportedly discussed with Orthodox Jewish leaders a potential special Senate election in Brooklyn where the district has been represented by a Democrat. Orthodox leaders denied this, and Hikind said Skelos supported the rule change in the past.
Last October, Cuomo told an Orthodox leader during his campaign for governor that he favors the grants.
Most galling about this funding is that state leaders cry poverty and yet have money for a program that carries political dividends.
The Times specifies that the new budget slashes 10 percent of aid to public colleges and universities.
Fortunately, a legal challenge is being considered by Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C., on church-state grounds, according to Jewish Week.
Advocates for the grants point out that the money is allocated to the students, not the schools. However, their money will be spent on the schools once they are accepted and attend the schools.
Of course, certain Supreme Court justices may not see it that way.
Only Orthodox schools will benefit because seminaries for Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist students are graduate schools.
The grants also have gender and political implications. The Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper, correctly notes in an April 15 editorial that this program comprises “a built-in gender bias.” It is traditionally men who train to become rabbis at Orthodox schools.
Many members of the cloth tend to become involved in political issues. Rabbis of all Jewish denominations regularly take positions on Israel. While almost all rabbis are supportive of Israel, Orthodox rabbis are more likely to take extreme positions opposed by many non-Orthodox Jews.
In other words, New York taxpayers will fund the education of rabbis who will probably stake out positions in conflict with American foreign policy interests, such as settlements.
Most Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis take positions that support both Israeli needs and American foreign policy interests. True, some rabbis and other Jews may go as far as to side with Israel’s detractors. None of this precludes legitimate criticism of Israel.
These grants also provide ammunition for anti-Semitism. Critics of the state’s budget cuts might accuse Jews of receiving special treatment. It is hard evidence to them that the Jews run the state of New York.
A segment of Jews is receiving special treatment and a segment of the Jewish community is flexing its political muscles.
Unfortunately, some people might think this way of all Jews.
Most of the beneficiaries are likely to be 5,000 men who apply to attend Orthodox rabbinical schools.
One can argue that this measure breaches the separation wall of church and state, but the larger concern is whether rabbinical students should be cut a break while public schools and public colleges and universities are being hammered by state funding reductions.
We would never conclude that tuition aid was a political deal. We cannot bring ourselves to suggest that Gov. Andrew Cuomo along with Democratic and Republican lawmakers are trying to cement election help from the large, active bloc of Orthodox Jewish voters in Brooklyn and suburbs like Monsey in Rockland County and the Five Towns area on Long Island.
The New York Times explains that the money “would be available to any theological student who met a new set of criteria for the state’s so-called Tuition Assistance Program grants.” Brooklyn Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whose district in Boro Park is home to a large Orthodox population, has for 10 years sought to amend the TAP laws by gutting a ban on state tuition aid for undergraduate students who attend yeshivas and other religious schools that the state Board of Regents has not chartered.
This time, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was praised by Orthodox figures for pressing for inclusion of the new rules in the 2011-12 budget. Skelos, a Republican, represents Cedarhurst, Lawrence and other Orthodox communities in what is known as the Five Towns in Nassau County.
New York Jewish Week cited a report in City Hall News that Skelos reportedly discussed with Orthodox Jewish leaders a potential special Senate election in Brooklyn where the district has been represented by a Democrat. Orthodox leaders denied this, and Hikind said Skelos supported the rule change in the past.
Last October, Cuomo told an Orthodox leader during his campaign for governor that he favors the grants.
Most galling about this funding is that state leaders cry poverty and yet have money for a program that carries political dividends.
The Times specifies that the new budget slashes 10 percent of aid to public colleges and universities.
Fortunately, a legal challenge is being considered by Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C., on church-state grounds, according to Jewish Week.
Advocates for the grants point out that the money is allocated to the students, not the schools. However, their money will be spent on the schools once they are accepted and attend the schools.
Of course, certain Supreme Court justices may not see it that way.
Only Orthodox schools will benefit because seminaries for Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist students are graduate schools.
The grants also have gender and political implications. The Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper, correctly notes in an April 15 editorial that this program comprises “a built-in gender bias.” It is traditionally men who train to become rabbis at Orthodox schools.
Many members of the cloth tend to become involved in political issues. Rabbis of all Jewish denominations regularly take positions on Israel. While almost all rabbis are supportive of Israel, Orthodox rabbis are more likely to take extreme positions opposed by many non-Orthodox Jews.
In other words, New York taxpayers will fund the education of rabbis who will probably stake out positions in conflict with American foreign policy interests, such as settlements.
Most Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis take positions that support both Israeli needs and American foreign policy interests. True, some rabbis and other Jews may go as far as to side with Israel’s detractors. None of this precludes legitimate criticism of Israel.
These grants also provide ammunition for anti-Semitism. Critics of the state’s budget cuts might accuse Jews of receiving special treatment. It is hard evidence to them that the Jews run the state of New York.
A segment of Jews is receiving special treatment and a segment of the Jewish community is flexing its political muscles.
Unfortunately, some people might think this way of all Jews.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Gov. Christie's marble rye
No wonder Newman was disgusted with Jerry Seinfeld’s shenanigans. It was Seinfeld who set the precedent for a successful professional to mug an elderly Jewish woman.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, must have viewed the television segment when Seinfeld mugged an old Jewish lady to snatch her marble rye. What else could have inspired Christie to endorse an assault on Democratic state Sen. Loretta Weinberg? She is female, elderly and Jewish?
Certainly, Christie went too far when he proclaimed that the press might wish to “take the bat out” on Weinberg because of her alleged hypocrisy over pensions. In all seriousness, Christie might have gone so far as to violate the New Jersey Criminal Code.
Christie’s words were threatening, and no matter what he meant his comment could at least encourage some nut to harm or harass the senator. Perhaps Christie’s remark might constitute the crime listed as “terroristic threats.”
This chapter in the Christie saga dates to an April 3 report in The Star-Ledger of Newark when Weinberg suggested that Christie neglected to criticize a political ally’s pension arrangement in the same spirited manner that he attacks others with questionable pension arrangements.
Weinberg referred to Essex County executive Joseph DiVincenzo, who retired in 2010, started collecting a pension and then returned to the county executive job, according to The Bergen Record of Hackensack. He makes $222,000 yearly between his pension and salary.
Though he is allied with Christie, DiVincenzo is a Democrat. Weinberg also collects a pension based on her time in a full-time Bergen County position and in other government jobs. Her annual take is $85,000 between the pension and legislative salary.
During a news conference on April 13, 2011, Christie said Weinberg might be eligible for a “hypocrisy award.”
“I mean, can you guys please take the bat out on her for once?” the governor said. “Here’s a woman who knows she did it, yet she comes to you and is pining…’Oh! My goodness! How awful this is! What a double standard!’ But she’s the queen of double standard.”
The wording of the “terroristic threats” definition makes one wonder if Christie indeed committed a crime.
The law reads: “A person is guilty of a crime of the third degree if he threatens to commit any crime of violence with the purpose to terrorize another or to cause evacuation of a building, place of assembly, or facility of public transportation, or otherwise to cause serious public inconvenience, or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.”
I have no doubt that Christie was speaking metaphorically, but that is my personal opinion, and probably that of most people. However, the governor still used literal words of an action that could “terrorize another” or “cause serious public inconvenience.”
In practical terms, the governor uttered these words “in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.”
Christie did not consider that someone out there might get it in their head to “take the bat out on” the senator.
Your average prosecutor would conclude that the governor did not intend physical harm, but should they ignore his “reckless disregard” for what could follow?
Even if his remark does not rise to a criminal standard, Christie was plainly irresponsible. He should have known better. He is an attorney and he spoke in a forum that is now being watched nationwide.
Christie might wish to recall the outcome of Seinfeld’s crime: It cost his father the presidency…of his condominium board, that is.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, must have viewed the television segment when Seinfeld mugged an old Jewish lady to snatch her marble rye. What else could have inspired Christie to endorse an assault on Democratic state Sen. Loretta Weinberg? She is female, elderly and Jewish?
Certainly, Christie went too far when he proclaimed that the press might wish to “take the bat out” on Weinberg because of her alleged hypocrisy over pensions. In all seriousness, Christie might have gone so far as to violate the New Jersey Criminal Code.
Christie’s words were threatening, and no matter what he meant his comment could at least encourage some nut to harm or harass the senator. Perhaps Christie’s remark might constitute the crime listed as “terroristic threats.”
This chapter in the Christie saga dates to an April 3 report in The Star-Ledger of Newark when Weinberg suggested that Christie neglected to criticize a political ally’s pension arrangement in the same spirited manner that he attacks others with questionable pension arrangements.
Weinberg referred to Essex County executive Joseph DiVincenzo, who retired in 2010, started collecting a pension and then returned to the county executive job, according to The Bergen Record of Hackensack. He makes $222,000 yearly between his pension and salary.
Though he is allied with Christie, DiVincenzo is a Democrat. Weinberg also collects a pension based on her time in a full-time Bergen County position and in other government jobs. Her annual take is $85,000 between the pension and legislative salary.
During a news conference on April 13, 2011, Christie said Weinberg might be eligible for a “hypocrisy award.”
“I mean, can you guys please take the bat out on her for once?” the governor said. “Here’s a woman who knows she did it, yet she comes to you and is pining…’Oh! My goodness! How awful this is! What a double standard!’ But she’s the queen of double standard.”
The wording of the “terroristic threats” definition makes one wonder if Christie indeed committed a crime.
The law reads: “A person is guilty of a crime of the third degree if he threatens to commit any crime of violence with the purpose to terrorize another or to cause evacuation of a building, place of assembly, or facility of public transportation, or otherwise to cause serious public inconvenience, or in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.”
I have no doubt that Christie was speaking metaphorically, but that is my personal opinion, and probably that of most people. However, the governor still used literal words of an action that could “terrorize another” or “cause serious public inconvenience.”
In practical terms, the governor uttered these words “in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror or inconvenience.”
Christie did not consider that someone out there might get it in their head to “take the bat out on” the senator.
Your average prosecutor would conclude that the governor did not intend physical harm, but should they ignore his “reckless disregard” for what could follow?
Even if his remark does not rise to a criminal standard, Christie was plainly irresponsible. He should have known better. He is an attorney and he spoke in a forum that is now being watched nationwide.
Christie might wish to recall the outcome of Seinfeld’s crime: It cost his father the presidency…of his condominium board, that is.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
How 20% of Americans drive agenda
When the government shutdown might have happened, a hotel in my neighborhood - downtown Philadelphia - lost $86,000 in business.
An annual event to recall a historic pre-Revolutionary War battle in Concord, Mass., was canceled; Washingtonians were force-fed an abortion ban by Congress; and New York City members of Congress fretted as to how federal budget plans will ravage the Big Apple.
That makes it official. Of 305 million or so Americans, 60 million of our fellow citizens are running this country. Mostly because the Speaker of the House of Representatives believes party unity trumps public duty.
The most ultra-conservative Republicans in the House dictated the agenda which ended with a pact to slash $38.5 billion from the 2011 budget on April 8, no matter how the remainder of Republicans regarded this action.
That is primarily because Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republican leaders wants the GOP to stick together.
Members of Congress are elected to represent the will of their constituents, yet almost since our nation was established they must frequently choose between loyalty to their party, and responsibility to their constituents and the good of their country.
The political party system is a necessary evil. Few candidates can get elected to office without a strong organization behind them, certainly in presidential contests and large-state elections (in terms of population) for the Senate and governor.
There is no question that the president and Congress should make their best efforts to reduce the debt. They should always be careful when spending our money. However, Republicans exploited the budget mess while a Democrat occupies the White House. They never advocated fiscal restraint when a Republican president bulldozed his way into two tangled wars and tax cuts for the wealthy.
How can we take Boehner and his gang seriously?
There is a point when responsible political figures will know when to hold off on political advantages and simply do what is best for their country.
Boehner probably could have formed a coalition of Democrats and Republicans at any point before the agreement was reached, but he had to attain approval from House members aligned with the tea party.
If not, Republican House members could be challenged by hard-right candidates in the primaries. Or, one day the party can just fracture and split apart.
It is doubtful that the majority of Americans support most Tea Party positions, nor do they support all Democratic endeavors. Most people want sensible policies that will end the economic chaos and provide stability.
There are people out there who share the rigid attitudes of Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachman, both Republican House members, but I have always estimated their support to be 20 percent. Consider that many prevail in Republican primaries because the moderate Republicans have either become independents or registered as Democrats. This leaves the Republican Party with voters who are far more conservative than their senators and representatives.
There are other factors that feed into this mess. President Obama made some ill-advised moves that upset enough voters to elect more Republicans to Congress. Plus, Obama tempers his policies to attract independent votes in swing states for his re-election bid next year, and Democrats generally are trying to protect other Democratic members of Congress who appear to be vulnerable.
Damage was done when Boehner simply threatened a shutdown to begin on April 9. An unidentified hotel in center city Philadelphia was denied $86,000 in business because a government conference planned then was canceled by organizers the week before, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Ed Grose, director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, told the Inquirer that three hotels reported cancellations.
A confused Joanne Rogers said her family flew from Australia in hopes of visiting Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. “We thought it was quite strange that something like this could happen,” she said while visiting Philadelphia.
Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Mass., was to be the site on April 9 of the annual commemoration of the battle between the Brits and the colonials at Meriam’s Corner that helped ignite the Revolutionary War, but that was canceled because of fear of the threatened government shutdown, according to The Boston Globe.
“It’s really a shame that so many visitors won’t be able to experience this,” said Nancy Nelson, superintendent of the park. “It’s disappointing and a great loss for the visitors around the country and the globe who come here to get a full understanding of the events that set our nation’s struggle for liberty in motion.”
Washington Mayor Vincent C. Gray was among 41 people arrested at a rally on Capitol Hill on Monday, April 11, 2011, to protest pending congressional action that would impose new rules on the city. Republicans took advantage of a constitutional provision which gives Congress “exclusive legislative authority” over Washington. The budget deal revives a ban against the city spending its own money on abortions for low-income women and mandates a program to provide school vouchers.
According to The Washington Post, Gray said, “I’m tired of being a pawn in a political game. D.C. deserves to be free. All we want is to be able to spend our own money.”
Protesters were especially incensed by a Post report that Obama told Boehner, “John, I will give you D.C. abortion.” The president made this offer partly as a trade to drop a demand to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
DC Vote head Ilir Zherka asked the demonstrators, “Is D.C. the president’s to give?” The crowd shouted “No!”
Members of New York City’s congressional delegation decried both the pending 2011 budget and the subsequent 2012 budget for their disproportionate effects on their constituents.
“Many of the things hurt like mass transit and public housing funds are particularly New York oriented,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan told The New York Daily News.
Rep. Anthony Weiner of Queens projected that the proposed 2012 budget would eliminate $94 billion from the city over 10 years. “Republicans want to permanently extend tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires without paying for it,” he said.
Before Congress held any votes on the budget pact, four of America’s most prominent cities were shafted just by the threat of a government shutdown.
John Boehner could have prevented this turmoil.
An annual event to recall a historic pre-Revolutionary War battle in Concord, Mass., was canceled; Washingtonians were force-fed an abortion ban by Congress; and New York City members of Congress fretted as to how federal budget plans will ravage the Big Apple.
That makes it official. Of 305 million or so Americans, 60 million of our fellow citizens are running this country. Mostly because the Speaker of the House of Representatives believes party unity trumps public duty.
The most ultra-conservative Republicans in the House dictated the agenda which ended with a pact to slash $38.5 billion from the 2011 budget on April 8, no matter how the remainder of Republicans regarded this action.
That is primarily because Speaker John A. Boehner and other Republican leaders wants the GOP to stick together.
Members of Congress are elected to represent the will of their constituents, yet almost since our nation was established they must frequently choose between loyalty to their party, and responsibility to their constituents and the good of their country.
The political party system is a necessary evil. Few candidates can get elected to office without a strong organization behind them, certainly in presidential contests and large-state elections (in terms of population) for the Senate and governor.
There is no question that the president and Congress should make their best efforts to reduce the debt. They should always be careful when spending our money. However, Republicans exploited the budget mess while a Democrat occupies the White House. They never advocated fiscal restraint when a Republican president bulldozed his way into two tangled wars and tax cuts for the wealthy.
How can we take Boehner and his gang seriously?
There is a point when responsible political figures will know when to hold off on political advantages and simply do what is best for their country.
Boehner probably could have formed a coalition of Democrats and Republicans at any point before the agreement was reached, but he had to attain approval from House members aligned with the tea party.
If not, Republican House members could be challenged by hard-right candidates in the primaries. Or, one day the party can just fracture and split apart.
It is doubtful that the majority of Americans support most Tea Party positions, nor do they support all Democratic endeavors. Most people want sensible policies that will end the economic chaos and provide stability.
There are people out there who share the rigid attitudes of Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachman, both Republican House members, but I have always estimated their support to be 20 percent. Consider that many prevail in Republican primaries because the moderate Republicans have either become independents or registered as Democrats. This leaves the Republican Party with voters who are far more conservative than their senators and representatives.
There are other factors that feed into this mess. President Obama made some ill-advised moves that upset enough voters to elect more Republicans to Congress. Plus, Obama tempers his policies to attract independent votes in swing states for his re-election bid next year, and Democrats generally are trying to protect other Democratic members of Congress who appear to be vulnerable.
Damage was done when Boehner simply threatened a shutdown to begin on April 9. An unidentified hotel in center city Philadelphia was denied $86,000 in business because a government conference planned then was canceled by organizers the week before, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Ed Grose, director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, told the Inquirer that three hotels reported cancellations.
A confused Joanne Rogers said her family flew from Australia in hopes of visiting Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. “We thought it was quite strange that something like this could happen,” she said while visiting Philadelphia.
Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Mass., was to be the site on April 9 of the annual commemoration of the battle between the Brits and the colonials at Meriam’s Corner that helped ignite the Revolutionary War, but that was canceled because of fear of the threatened government shutdown, according to The Boston Globe.
“It’s really a shame that so many visitors won’t be able to experience this,” said Nancy Nelson, superintendent of the park. “It’s disappointing and a great loss for the visitors around the country and the globe who come here to get a full understanding of the events that set our nation’s struggle for liberty in motion.”
Washington Mayor Vincent C. Gray was among 41 people arrested at a rally on Capitol Hill on Monday, April 11, 2011, to protest pending congressional action that would impose new rules on the city. Republicans took advantage of a constitutional provision which gives Congress “exclusive legislative authority” over Washington. The budget deal revives a ban against the city spending its own money on abortions for low-income women and mandates a program to provide school vouchers.
According to The Washington Post, Gray said, “I’m tired of being a pawn in a political game. D.C. deserves to be free. All we want is to be able to spend our own money.”
Protesters were especially incensed by a Post report that Obama told Boehner, “John, I will give you D.C. abortion.” The president made this offer partly as a trade to drop a demand to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
DC Vote head Ilir Zherka asked the demonstrators, “Is D.C. the president’s to give?” The crowd shouted “No!”
Members of New York City’s congressional delegation decried both the pending 2011 budget and the subsequent 2012 budget for their disproportionate effects on their constituents.
“Many of the things hurt like mass transit and public housing funds are particularly New York oriented,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan told The New York Daily News.
Rep. Anthony Weiner of Queens projected that the proposed 2012 budget would eliminate $94 billion from the city over 10 years. “Republicans want to permanently extend tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires without paying for it,” he said.
Before Congress held any votes on the budget pact, four of America’s most prominent cities were shafted just by the threat of a government shutdown.
John Boehner could have prevented this turmoil.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Cheapening the Constitution
When the Constitution was recited at the U.S. House of Representatives last January, 2011, 221 members must have been snoozing when one of their colleagues recited Article 1, Section 7.
Or maybe they were being advised by Antonin “the-Federalist-Papers-are-sacred” Scalia.
Whatever moved them, a majority of the House voted for a bill on April 1 that is blatantly unconstitutional.
All of its supporters are Republicans, the very ones who insisted that the Constitution and its 27 amendments be recited when Congress opened its current legislative action.
To their credit, 15 Republicans voted against H.R. 1255 as did all Democrats. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, said that the provision in question “violates my conscience and the Constitution, and I cannot vote for it.”
Every American citizen should be offended, and so should the millions of foreigners who envy our society and look up to the United States as a model of democracy.
Our system is not perfect, but the 221 representatives who voted for the bill cheapened our way of doing the people’s business.
H.R. 1255 calls for a fiscal year 2011 spending bill, already passed by the House, to become law if the Senate would not pass a spending law by April 6.
There is a reason that the bill failed to become law after April 6 - the Constitution, which the Republican majority recited last January. The Constitution requires that a bill can only become law after both houses pass a law and the president signs it, or the president refuses to sign and both houses override his veto by a two-thirds vote.
The provision reads, “Every bill which shall have passed The House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.
“If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law.”
Scalia, the Supreme Court justice who calls himself an “originalist,” has recommended that Americans read the Federalist Papers to understand the Constitution’s meaning. Three constitutional scholars warn against reliance on the Federalist Papers. Even a layperson can recognize why they consider the Papers to be a sales pitch, in so many words, to convince New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution.
In the less than genteel debates over the April 1 budget bill, The Hill newspaper quoted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor saying, “Funding the government at the levels passed by House Republicans might be what Senator Reid wants, but surely even he would agree that it’s a better alternative than shutting down the government.” (The Hill, 4/1/11)
Cantor, a Republican from the Richmond, Va., area, was referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Some Democratic representatives recommended that Cantor and his flock read children’s books on the Constitution such as “House Mouse, Senate Mouse,” according to The Hill. The ever-snarky Anthony Weiner of Queens said, “It’s a much thinner book and it rhymes.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco interjected the most mature comment when she declared, “What you see on the floor today is no example of democracy in action. It’s silly. The Republican leadership is asking its members to make a silly vote.”
I beg to differ with her assessment. This was democracy in action. Not for your average mouse, but moreso for 221 horse’s asses.
Or maybe they were being advised by Antonin “the-Federalist-Papers-are-sacred” Scalia.
Whatever moved them, a majority of the House voted for a bill on April 1 that is blatantly unconstitutional.
All of its supporters are Republicans, the very ones who insisted that the Constitution and its 27 amendments be recited when Congress opened its current legislative action.
To their credit, 15 Republicans voted against H.R. 1255 as did all Democrats. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, said that the provision in question “violates my conscience and the Constitution, and I cannot vote for it.”
Every American citizen should be offended, and so should the millions of foreigners who envy our society and look up to the United States as a model of democracy.
Our system is not perfect, but the 221 representatives who voted for the bill cheapened our way of doing the people’s business.
H.R. 1255 calls for a fiscal year 2011 spending bill, already passed by the House, to become law if the Senate would not pass a spending law by April 6.
There is a reason that the bill failed to become law after April 6 - the Constitution, which the Republican majority recited last January. The Constitution requires that a bill can only become law after both houses pass a law and the president signs it, or the president refuses to sign and both houses override his veto by a two-thirds vote.
The provision reads, “Every bill which shall have passed The House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.
“If after such reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a law.”
Scalia, the Supreme Court justice who calls himself an “originalist,” has recommended that Americans read the Federalist Papers to understand the Constitution’s meaning. Three constitutional scholars warn against reliance on the Federalist Papers. Even a layperson can recognize why they consider the Papers to be a sales pitch, in so many words, to convince New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution.
In the less than genteel debates over the April 1 budget bill, The Hill newspaper quoted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor saying, “Funding the government at the levels passed by House Republicans might be what Senator Reid wants, but surely even he would agree that it’s a better alternative than shutting down the government.” (The Hill, 4/1/11)
Cantor, a Republican from the Richmond, Va., area, was referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Some Democratic representatives recommended that Cantor and his flock read children’s books on the Constitution such as “House Mouse, Senate Mouse,” according to The Hill. The ever-snarky Anthony Weiner of Queens said, “It’s a much thinner book and it rhymes.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco interjected the most mature comment when she declared, “What you see on the floor today is no example of democracy in action. It’s silly. The Republican leadership is asking its members to make a silly vote.”
I beg to differ with her assessment. This was democracy in action. Not for your average mouse, but moreso for 221 horse’s asses.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Guv, meet the judge
What pests some judges can be.
You set out to eliminate pre-school programs, cripple a union, raise college tuitions or dishonor a trailblazing political figure, and one of these unelected jurists obstructs your endeavors to ruin…er, serve…your state.
So far, our favorite cheesy governor (from a literally cheesy state) was stopped dead in his tracks by a judge’s order; another judge assailed school cuts by the Republicans’ Great White Hope, quite literally; lawsuits were filed against two other governors; and the lone Democratic governor among them might be answerable to legal issues over school funding.
Five governors so far…and counting.
It is no surprise that the policies aggressively pushed by these governors are headed for court. Wisconsin’s Senate possibly violated the state’s open meetings laws; courts in New York and New Jersey previously ordered those states to cough up adequate funds for poor school districts; and the governors of Maine and Florida proved themselves to be reckless from the outset.
One had to wonder if some of these new governors and/or their states’ legislatures have been flouting the law. Are other state governments headed for court?
In Wisconsin, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi expended three separate days of hearings telling Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his associates in the legislature that their bill to curb collective bargaining and other union practices could not be implemented because the Senate violated the state’s open meetings law when it passed the bill; Madison is part of Dane County‘s jurisdiction.
Sumi must have been boiling inside when she said from the bench on March 29, 2011: “Now that I’ve made my earlier order as clear as it possibly can be, I must state that those who act in open and willful defiance of the court order place not only themselves at peril of sanctions, they also jeopardize the financial and governmental stability of the state of Wisconsin…Apparently that language was either misunderstood or ignored, but what I said was, ‘the further implementation of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 is enjoined.’ That’s what I now want to make crystal clear.” Wisconsin State Journal.
Sumi issued a temporary restraining order against implementation of the law on March 18, but the state government initiated the process for hiking employees’ health insurance premiums and retirement contributions as well as ending automatic collection of union dues, The Wisconsin State Journal reported.
The hearings before Sumi were triggered by a March 9 vote of a legislative conference committee - both chambers are controlled by Republicans - to severely limit collective bargaining and other union practices. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozane filed a lawsuit on grounds that the legislature failed to provide 24 hours’ notice before the initial vote on the legislation was taken.
After Sumi threatened to impose sanctions, Walker backed off implementing the law.
Back east, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the legislature could soon be ordered by the state Supreme Court to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to the schools.
A Superior Court judge appointed by the Supreme Court stated in a report on March 22, 2011, that reductions in school funding violated the state constitution’s mandate to provide “a thorough and efficient” school system and particularly impacted impoverished districts, according to The New York Times.
Christie slashed $475 million from an $11 billion budget that was already in place, soon after he took office in 2010. Christie and the legislature subsequently cut that aid by $820 million from the previous year, or 8 percent, for the 2010-11 fiscal year that started July 1. No money was allocated to the wealthier districts, and Christie proposed a $250 million hike for the 2011-12 fiscal year.
Judge Peter E. Doyne was named by the court as a special master to determine if the aid allocations in 2010 satisfied the requirements set by previous court rulings, the Times reported. His appointment stems from the case of Abbott v. Burke in which the Supreme Court in 1985 ruled that education in poor districts was substandard under the constitution. The court ordered the state to increase its funding.
The court could again order the state to provide more funds for education.
“It is clear the state has failed to carry its burden,” Doyne wrote. “Despite the state’s best efforts, the reductions fell more heavily upon our high-risk districts and the children educated within those districts. The aid reductions have moved many districts further away from adequacy.”
Michael Drewniak, Christie’s press secretary, replied, “The Supreme Court should at last abandon the failed assumption of the last three decades that more money equals better education and stop treating our state’s fiscal condition as an inconvenient afterthought.”
David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that if the Supreme Court accepts Doyne’s report then the law center will seek full future financing.
Law professor Michael Rebell warned New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature that they will violate the state constitution if they enact $1.5 billion in proposed school aid reductions. The legislature subsequently cut aid to education, though less than originally planned. Cuomo is the only Democrat among these governors.
In an op-ed in The New York Daily News on March 17, 2011, Rebell recounted that in 2007 he served as attorney for the plaintiff in “a precedent-setting case” to provide school funding for needy districts.
Rebell wrote, “The state’s highest court ruled that the existing system for financing public education was unconstitutional - and in response, the Legislature adopted far-reaching reforms to ensure all students their constitutional right to ‘the opportunity for a sound basic education.’”
He noted that the legislature “promised schools in New York City and (other) high-need districts” $5.5 billion more in basic funding to be phased in over four years. “The promised increases have been stalled,” he continued. “If Cuomo’s proposed $1.5 billion cuts are enacted, virtually all of the state aid funding gains that New York City and other high-need districts have achieved since 2007 will be wiped out. Should this budget proposal be adopted, the state clearly will be violating its Constitution.
“Constitutional rights are a permanent affirmative obligation of the government; they cannot be put on hold because there is a recession or a budget deficit. As the U.S. Supreme Court clearly put it in 1992, ‘Financial constraints may not be used to justify the creation or perpetuation of constitutional violations.’”
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has already been sued twice and could face more legal challenges, according to The Miami Herald. Rosalie Whiley of Miami filed a petition in state Supreme Court for Scott signing an executive order less than an hour after he was inaugurated on Jan. 4 to freeze up to 900 new rules.
Whiley, who is blind, claims one of the stalled rules will facilitate her ability to apply for food stamps online. She said she must reapply for food stamps every six months, and wants Scott’s executive order revoked.
“Because of my visual handicap, I have to get someone to come in and put in information for me online,” she said. “I’m really concerned. He’s coming in and he’s disrupting a lot of things that are going to affect a lot of people. A lot of people.”
Sandy d’Alemberte, one of Whiley’s attorneys, said that agency heads - not the governor - are authorized to make rules, according to the Herald. “He has no authority to do that,” he said. “The Legislature gives rule-making authority to those agencies, not the governor.”
Earlier, two state senators from both sides of the aisle sued over the governor’s decision to turn down federal money for high-speed rail, though that suit was rejected by the court, the Herald reported.
Scott has also been assailed for signing an executive order to compel drug testing for many current state employees and job applicants, but attorneys and legal scholars said federal courts have usually ruled that such policies violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches, according to the Herald.
Three artists, a labor leader, an attorney and an industrial hygienist filed a lawsuit on April 1, 2011, asking the U.S. District Court in Portland, Me., to force Maine Gov. Paul LePage to reveal the site of a controversial mural, ensure that it is sufficiently preserved and protected and return it to the lobby of the Department of Labor in Augusta, according to The Portland Press Herald.
“The governor is trying to erase the working history of the people of Maine,” said Jeffrey Young, attorney for the six plaintiffs. “We’re trying to preserve and protect the rights of the people of Maine. We don’t need the governor telling us what we should or shouldn’t know about.”
LePage ordered the mural removed a week prior to the lawsuit filing, claiming that he heard complaints from some business owners who believed that the mural is hostile to employers. The 36-foot-long mural depicts scenes out of Maine labor history including a 1937 shoe factory strike in Lewiston-Auburn and Rosie the Riveter at Bath Iron Works.
Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s entire administration and the first female presidential Cabinet member ever, is depicted in one mural meeting with women and children she had helped through support of more humane labor laws.
The governor, who has already enraged Mainers over more substantial issues, touched off a storm of outrage almost immediately after he announced that the mural would be removed.
Now six Mainers have made a federal case out of it. Worth all this trouble, guv?
You set out to eliminate pre-school programs, cripple a union, raise college tuitions or dishonor a trailblazing political figure, and one of these unelected jurists obstructs your endeavors to ruin…er, serve…your state.
So far, our favorite cheesy governor (from a literally cheesy state) was stopped dead in his tracks by a judge’s order; another judge assailed school cuts by the Republicans’ Great White Hope, quite literally; lawsuits were filed against two other governors; and the lone Democratic governor among them might be answerable to legal issues over school funding.
Five governors so far…and counting.
It is no surprise that the policies aggressively pushed by these governors are headed for court. Wisconsin’s Senate possibly violated the state’s open meetings laws; courts in New York and New Jersey previously ordered those states to cough up adequate funds for poor school districts; and the governors of Maine and Florida proved themselves to be reckless from the outset.
One had to wonder if some of these new governors and/or their states’ legislatures have been flouting the law. Are other state governments headed for court?
In Wisconsin, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi expended three separate days of hearings telling Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his associates in the legislature that their bill to curb collective bargaining and other union practices could not be implemented because the Senate violated the state’s open meetings law when it passed the bill; Madison is part of Dane County‘s jurisdiction.
Sumi must have been boiling inside when she said from the bench on March 29, 2011: “Now that I’ve made my earlier order as clear as it possibly can be, I must state that those who act in open and willful defiance of the court order place not only themselves at peril of sanctions, they also jeopardize the financial and governmental stability of the state of Wisconsin…Apparently that language was either misunderstood or ignored, but what I said was, ‘the further implementation of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 is enjoined.’ That’s what I now want to make crystal clear.” Wisconsin State Journal.
Sumi issued a temporary restraining order against implementation of the law on March 18, but the state government initiated the process for hiking employees’ health insurance premiums and retirement contributions as well as ending automatic collection of union dues, The Wisconsin State Journal reported.
The hearings before Sumi were triggered by a March 9 vote of a legislative conference committee - both chambers are controlled by Republicans - to severely limit collective bargaining and other union practices. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozane filed a lawsuit on grounds that the legislature failed to provide 24 hours’ notice before the initial vote on the legislation was taken.
After Sumi threatened to impose sanctions, Walker backed off implementing the law.
Back east, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the legislature could soon be ordered by the state Supreme Court to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to the schools.
A Superior Court judge appointed by the Supreme Court stated in a report on March 22, 2011, that reductions in school funding violated the state constitution’s mandate to provide “a thorough and efficient” school system and particularly impacted impoverished districts, according to The New York Times.
Christie slashed $475 million from an $11 billion budget that was already in place, soon after he took office in 2010. Christie and the legislature subsequently cut that aid by $820 million from the previous year, or 8 percent, for the 2010-11 fiscal year that started July 1. No money was allocated to the wealthier districts, and Christie proposed a $250 million hike for the 2011-12 fiscal year.
Judge Peter E. Doyne was named by the court as a special master to determine if the aid allocations in 2010 satisfied the requirements set by previous court rulings, the Times reported. His appointment stems from the case of Abbott v. Burke in which the Supreme Court in 1985 ruled that education in poor districts was substandard under the constitution. The court ordered the state to increase its funding.
The court could again order the state to provide more funds for education.
“It is clear the state has failed to carry its burden,” Doyne wrote. “Despite the state’s best efforts, the reductions fell more heavily upon our high-risk districts and the children educated within those districts. The aid reductions have moved many districts further away from adequacy.”
Michael Drewniak, Christie’s press secretary, replied, “The Supreme Court should at last abandon the failed assumption of the last three decades that more money equals better education and stop treating our state’s fiscal condition as an inconvenient afterthought.”
David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that if the Supreme Court accepts Doyne’s report then the law center will seek full future financing.
Law professor Michael Rebell warned New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state legislature that they will violate the state constitution if they enact $1.5 billion in proposed school aid reductions. The legislature subsequently cut aid to education, though less than originally planned. Cuomo is the only Democrat among these governors.
In an op-ed in The New York Daily News on March 17, 2011, Rebell recounted that in 2007 he served as attorney for the plaintiff in “a precedent-setting case” to provide school funding for needy districts.
Rebell wrote, “The state’s highest court ruled that the existing system for financing public education was unconstitutional - and in response, the Legislature adopted far-reaching reforms to ensure all students their constitutional right to ‘the opportunity for a sound basic education.’”
He noted that the legislature “promised schools in New York City and (other) high-need districts” $5.5 billion more in basic funding to be phased in over four years. “The promised increases have been stalled,” he continued. “If Cuomo’s proposed $1.5 billion cuts are enacted, virtually all of the state aid funding gains that New York City and other high-need districts have achieved since 2007 will be wiped out. Should this budget proposal be adopted, the state clearly will be violating its Constitution.
“Constitutional rights are a permanent affirmative obligation of the government; they cannot be put on hold because there is a recession or a budget deficit. As the U.S. Supreme Court clearly put it in 1992, ‘Financial constraints may not be used to justify the creation or perpetuation of constitutional violations.’”
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has already been sued twice and could face more legal challenges, according to The Miami Herald. Rosalie Whiley of Miami filed a petition in state Supreme Court for Scott signing an executive order less than an hour after he was inaugurated on Jan. 4 to freeze up to 900 new rules.
Whiley, who is blind, claims one of the stalled rules will facilitate her ability to apply for food stamps online. She said she must reapply for food stamps every six months, and wants Scott’s executive order revoked.
“Because of my visual handicap, I have to get someone to come in and put in information for me online,” she said. “I’m really concerned. He’s coming in and he’s disrupting a lot of things that are going to affect a lot of people. A lot of people.”
Sandy d’Alemberte, one of Whiley’s attorneys, said that agency heads - not the governor - are authorized to make rules, according to the Herald. “He has no authority to do that,” he said. “The Legislature gives rule-making authority to those agencies, not the governor.”
Earlier, two state senators from both sides of the aisle sued over the governor’s decision to turn down federal money for high-speed rail, though that suit was rejected by the court, the Herald reported.
Scott has also been assailed for signing an executive order to compel drug testing for many current state employees and job applicants, but attorneys and legal scholars said federal courts have usually ruled that such policies violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches, according to the Herald.
Three artists, a labor leader, an attorney and an industrial hygienist filed a lawsuit on April 1, 2011, asking the U.S. District Court in Portland, Me., to force Maine Gov. Paul LePage to reveal the site of a controversial mural, ensure that it is sufficiently preserved and protected and return it to the lobby of the Department of Labor in Augusta, according to The Portland Press Herald.
“The governor is trying to erase the working history of the people of Maine,” said Jeffrey Young, attorney for the six plaintiffs. “We’re trying to preserve and protect the rights of the people of Maine. We don’t need the governor telling us what we should or shouldn’t know about.”
LePage ordered the mural removed a week prior to the lawsuit filing, claiming that he heard complaints from some business owners who believed that the mural is hostile to employers. The 36-foot-long mural depicts scenes out of Maine labor history including a 1937 shoe factory strike in Lewiston-Auburn and Rosie the Riveter at Bath Iron Works.
Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s entire administration and the first female presidential Cabinet member ever, is depicted in one mural meeting with women and children she had helped through support of more humane labor laws.
The governor, who has already enraged Mainers over more substantial issues, touched off a storm of outrage almost immediately after he announced that the mural would be removed.
Now six Mainers have made a federal case out of it. Worth all this trouble, guv?
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Maine madness: A man without murals
To: Paul LePage, Maine’s gov
Subject: Your taste in art
Oh, Paul, you moved too hastily.
Your discomfort with that 36-foot-wide mural recounting Maine’s commie-pinko history…er, labor history…rates sympathy, but there is a solution that should satisfy everyone.
Your spokeswoman, Adrienne Bennett, made a valid point when she told The New York Times: “The Department of Labor is a state agency that works very closely with both employees and employers, and we need to have a décor that represents neutrality.”
We heartily concur that Judy Taylor, who created the mural, got hysterical in saying, “I don’t agree that it’s one-sided. It’s based on historical fact. I’m not sure how you can say history is one-sided.”
We’re surprised you have not dubbed Taylor one of those “idiots” who protested the mural’s removal or instructed her to “kiss my butt” as you suggested to the NAACP some weeks ago.
Lynn Pasquerella, upset about your regard for the late Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, went into a temper tantrum as evidenced by her March 30 letter to the Times. Pasquerella is president of Mt. Holyoke College, Perkins’s alma mater.
She wrote: “Perkins, who is buried in Maine, also had deep roots there. She is an extraordinary role model for girls and women seeking inspiration in a world that needs more female leaders. Moreover, she sets an example for the political figures of today as to how service to our nation’s working people must always be at the core of our national enterprise.”
That last line was a jab at you, Paul, considering these wild accusations that you do not care about ordinary people.
In case you are as forgetful as you are idiotic - your enemies’ attitude, of course - let’s backtrack.
First, you ordered the removal of this mural which documents Maine’s labor history in the reception area of the state’s Department of Labor building in Augusta, and then you ordered it removed to a secret location - all because business executives might feel uncomfortable there.
Perkins is drawn in one mural conferring with some of the women and children whose lives she helped improve as secretary of labor under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After graduating Mt. Holyoke, she would go on to witness the tragic Triangle Waistshirt fire in Lower Manhattan and, as Pasquerella points out, aided Roosevelt “in bringing about landmark reforms like the Wagner Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and Social Security.”
You also ordered renaming a number of rooms which are already named after Perkins and other labor figures.
Some balance is needed that calls for a two-step solution. Retrieve the mural and re-display it. Then, display an alternate artist’s rendering that your business associates will appreciate.
Got it! A huge portrait of a shark on any wall nearest to the labor mural. That should make your corporate friends more comfortable, especially their lawyers.
Let’s carry this further. At the state’s Ethics Commission, we can set up a huge photo of Richard Nixon when he flung his arms in the air before boarding a helicopter.
At your business development office, we could display a massive white whale to reflect the flabby, contented nature of business leaders, who are presumably mostly white, and it would be in keeping with nautical themes tied to Maine.
No lobsters, of course. We don’t want anyone to see red.
The Waste Management office can be decorated with notes containing your quotes and your photo can hang at the Maine Developmental Disabilities Council.
As a periodic visitor to Maine, I would think that displaying any mural anywhere in Augusta is the most effective means of concealing it from the world, and perhaps from the rest of Maine. Augusta is hardly the attraction we find in Bar Harbor, Camden, Portland, Ogunquit or Sebago Lake. Should the mural be displayed at the Labor office once again, Augusta will likely be a must-see draw for many tourists.
If you don’t like it, Paul, you can kiss my butt.
Subject: Your taste in art
Oh, Paul, you moved too hastily.
Your discomfort with that 36-foot-wide mural recounting Maine’s commie-pinko history…er, labor history…rates sympathy, but there is a solution that should satisfy everyone.
Your spokeswoman, Adrienne Bennett, made a valid point when she told The New York Times: “The Department of Labor is a state agency that works very closely with both employees and employers, and we need to have a décor that represents neutrality.”
We heartily concur that Judy Taylor, who created the mural, got hysterical in saying, “I don’t agree that it’s one-sided. It’s based on historical fact. I’m not sure how you can say history is one-sided.”
We’re surprised you have not dubbed Taylor one of those “idiots” who protested the mural’s removal or instructed her to “kiss my butt” as you suggested to the NAACP some weeks ago.
Lynn Pasquerella, upset about your regard for the late Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, went into a temper tantrum as evidenced by her March 30 letter to the Times. Pasquerella is president of Mt. Holyoke College, Perkins’s alma mater.
She wrote: “Perkins, who is buried in Maine, also had deep roots there. She is an extraordinary role model for girls and women seeking inspiration in a world that needs more female leaders. Moreover, she sets an example for the political figures of today as to how service to our nation’s working people must always be at the core of our national enterprise.”
That last line was a jab at you, Paul, considering these wild accusations that you do not care about ordinary people.
In case you are as forgetful as you are idiotic - your enemies’ attitude, of course - let’s backtrack.
First, you ordered the removal of this mural which documents Maine’s labor history in the reception area of the state’s Department of Labor building in Augusta, and then you ordered it removed to a secret location - all because business executives might feel uncomfortable there.
Perkins is drawn in one mural conferring with some of the women and children whose lives she helped improve as secretary of labor under Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After graduating Mt. Holyoke, she would go on to witness the tragic Triangle Waistshirt fire in Lower Manhattan and, as Pasquerella points out, aided Roosevelt “in bringing about landmark reforms like the Wagner Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act and Social Security.”
You also ordered renaming a number of rooms which are already named after Perkins and other labor figures.
Some balance is needed that calls for a two-step solution. Retrieve the mural and re-display it. Then, display an alternate artist’s rendering that your business associates will appreciate.
Got it! A huge portrait of a shark on any wall nearest to the labor mural. That should make your corporate friends more comfortable, especially their lawyers.
Let’s carry this further. At the state’s Ethics Commission, we can set up a huge photo of Richard Nixon when he flung his arms in the air before boarding a helicopter.
At your business development office, we could display a massive white whale to reflect the flabby, contented nature of business leaders, who are presumably mostly white, and it would be in keeping with nautical themes tied to Maine.
No lobsters, of course. We don’t want anyone to see red.
The Waste Management office can be decorated with notes containing your quotes and your photo can hang at the Maine Developmental Disabilities Council.
As a periodic visitor to Maine, I would think that displaying any mural anywhere in Augusta is the most effective means of concealing it from the world, and perhaps from the rest of Maine. Augusta is hardly the attraction we find in Bar Harbor, Camden, Portland, Ogunquit or Sebago Lake. Should the mural be displayed at the Labor office once again, Augusta will likely be a must-see draw for many tourists.
If you don’t like it, Paul, you can kiss my butt.
Friday, April 1, 2011
camden
Standing in front of the Walter Rand Transportation Center, waiting for a bus. At 10 on a Saturday night. In downtown Camden.
Creepy. Many strangers. On occasion, someone would ask me for money, but otherwise nothing threatening ever occurred. I still felt the need to be wary.
Camden is universally known as a small urban cesspool across the Delaware River from Philadelphia and, shortly before Jan. 18, 2011, was ranked the second most violent city in the United States. I have frequently visited southern New Jersey and even lived in nearby Oaklyn for a year. Like many people, I studiously avoid Camden whenever possible.
Since living in downtown Philadelphia, I often took day trips to New York City by taking the bus to Camden so I could pick up the River Line train to Trenton, a 30-mile trip costing $1.35 each way. The main alternative is a commuter train that runs from center city Philadelphia to Trenton costing $9 each way; in Trenton, passengers transfer to a New Jersey Transit train to Manhattan’s Penn Station.
On Jan. 18, Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd laid off 168 police officers and 67 firefighters, respectively half and one-third of the two departments.
Two days later, 20-year-old Anjanea Williams was fatally shot at 2 p.m. on the 1700 block of Broadway when a man whose face was concealed fired in the direction of Williams and some of her relatives, authorities told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. What brought this on is still a mystery, but Camden’s residents are bound to become more vulnerable to crime.
Certainly, I wonder about the wisdom of passing through Camden late at night to save transit money.
When Camden police officers and firefighters lost their jobs, Camden County Prosecutor Warren Faulk said in a statement, or understatement, “Losing so many officers will make our task of putting dangerous people into prison through convictions and pleas more difficult,” as quoted in the Inquirer.
The Inquirer catalogued a long list of factors: budget mismanagement by both state and city officials; a 50-year decline in home ownership and taxable businesses; a low tax-collection rate; costly services in a city with a century-old infrastructure and a poor population; a recent state takeover that forbade tax hikes and offered tax abatements to new development; and various costs due to personnel factors.
_____________________________________________________
“I came in full of idealism - I was going to change my city,” Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport, Connecticut’s most populous city, told a New York Times reporter. “You get involved in government because you want to do more for the people, you want to show them that government can work and local government, by and large, really does work for the people.”
Instead, Finch caved to the same forces as other mayors, laying off 160 city employees. Mayors throughout the nation, gathering in Washington during late January 2011, testified to similar nightmares of cutting services, sending city workers to the unemployment lines, raising taxes and bracing for declining tax revenues and aid reductions from their own states, according to The New York Times.
The 200 mayors pressed their federal agenda as they visited President Obama and members of Congress, urging more spending on transportation and retaining the Community Development Block Grant program.
Many of these mayors expect their state governments to withhold more funds rather than help them since most states face moderate to devastating deficits. Among our largest states, California, population 36.9 billion, faces a $25.4 billion deficit; Illinois, 12.9 million, $15 billion; Texas, 24.7 million, $13.4 billion; and New Jersey, 8.7 million, $10.4 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, as reported in The New York Times.
Four states - Alaska, Arkansas, North Dakota and Wyoming - are not projecting shortfalls, according to the study.
Massachusetts will hold back $116 million from higher education and $115 million from human services if Gov. Deval Patrick’s $30.5 billion budget plan is adopted by the state House and Senate, The Boston Globe reported.
Birth control and other family planning services would be cut by 21 percent and school health services would be reduced by 16 percent. Two state prisons would close, space to treat 160 mentally ill patients would be eliminated and 900 state government jobs would be abolished, all of which is aimed at closing a $1.2 billion budget gap.
A proposed 27 percent cut to programs for newborns and young children with disabilities spurred swift protests from advocates for early intervention programs. “In all my years in politics I’ve never seen such a shortsighted decision,” said Senate Majority Leader Frederick Berry a few days later, according to the Globe.
These services cover occupational, physical and speech therapy for children from birth to 3 years old with developmental delays. The Globe explained that children with autism and cerebral palsy are among those eligible for services, and advocates say more than half of those in early intervention avoid needing special education services when they reach school age.
Existing programs, funded by the state at $29.4 million this year, provide services for more than 30,000 children, advocates told the Globe. They claimed that Patrick’s proposed reduction to $21.5 million would abolish or reduce services for up to 15,000 children.
Children in New York state who are blind, deaf or severely disabled - whose education has been financed by the state for more than a century - are the focus of proposed cuts that could close 11 schools which serve 1,500 of these children. Gov. Cuomo’s budget would expect local school districts to fund schools for these children and receive partial state reimbursement later, according to The New York Daily News.
Cuomo’s plan would abolish all up-front funding to three schools in the Bronx, one school each in Queens and Brooklyn and six other schools serving such children.
“The students who come to our school are some of the most vulnerable people in the state,” Frank Simpson, superintendent of the Lavelle School for the Blind in the Bronx, told the News.
Advocates claim it will take too much time to obtain the money, which will be a $14 million reduction from $112 million yearly.
Critics of the various budget cuts charge that public safety is being jeopardized. Philadelphia is attempting to save $3.8 million on firefighter overtime by closing three stations on a rotational basis each week so firefighters from those stations can substitute for others who are sick or are on vacation. When two children died in a fire in the city’s Olney section, questions were raised if firefighters would have arrived earlier had one nearby firehouse not been closed under this policy that day.
It would be a stretch to draw conclusions. The firefighters who responded were stationed at a firehouse 1.2 miles from the scene, and the closed firehouse was a few blocks closer. How many firehouses are even 1.2 miles away from the average fire scene? However, the potential for such an outcome cannot be minimized.
When Claudette Nicholas, 70, perished in a fire in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn on Feb. 11, city and union officials bickered over whether staffing reductions should be blamed for her death. Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, contended that the reductions meant four fewer firefighters were available to operate hose lines in the early minutes of the response, which would compel the FDNY to use more engine companies, according to The New York Daily News.
“Reduced staffing levels in engine companies,” Cassidy said, “threaten civilian and firefighter lives, while in the long run costing the city more than it saves.” FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon retorted that at least two engine companies arrived within five minutes, which is under the department’s average response time, the newspaper reported.
The budget situation spurred questions from a Brooklyn Democrat, City Councilman Stephen Levin, if reduced finances could be linked to the beating death of 4-year-old Marchella Pierce on Sept. 2, 2010. During a council hearing a month after Marchella’s death, John Mattingly, commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, claimed that this tragedy “had to do with poor practice,” the NY News reported.
However, ACS still faced projected cuts, and both Levin and Councilman Brad Lander called for said cuts to be held to the same lower level as those for uniformed services.
In Philadelphia, social workers who monitor child abuse and neglect complaints are severely overworked, making it impossible to adequately guarantee the safety of children on their caseloads. This writer speaks from personal experience, and of course is not personally familiar with NYC’s child-welfare agency.
In Evesham Township, N.J., parents raised a concern that schoolchildren may be forced to cross a congested, 45-m.p.h. road to reach school. “How can you put safety below savings?” asked Sharyn Pertnoy Schmidt, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Evesham has already cut 20 positions, frozen staff pay and charged parents for after-school sports, clubs, activities and school trips, the Inquirer reported. Statewide, 5,650 teachers were laid off during 2010 after state aid was slashed by 5 percent.
For 40 years, students were required to spend two days at the 450-acre Camp Schmidt in Prince George’s County to learn about the health of the streams whose waters flow into the Chesapeake Bay, according to The Washington Post. The camp, which hosts 7,000 students each year, could close June 30.
However, the camp’s future was threatened in February 2011 when the Prince George’s County Board of Education voted to slash $1 million from its budget that was spent for eight full-time positions there; it isg part of filling a $155 million gap in the system’s $1.6 billion budget. The Post reported that the board is also cutting 400 teachers and 92 librarians.
Local residents have joined a “Save Camp Schmidt” group on Facebook. “When kids don’t have authentic experiences in the natural environment, we have left blank some of the critical bricks that they need in their educational foundation,” said longtime supervisor of environmental education John J. Neville. “It is hard for young people to understand something like the importance of the Chesapeake Bay watershed when they have never visited a stream.”
Two school board members are personally familiar with the camp. “I went to Camp Schmidt four times with my children in the 1990s,” said Donna Hathaway Beck, board vice chairwoman. “It is more than an environmental experience - it is a cultural experience that speaks to the wealth and beauty of the county.”
Added board member Carolyn M. Boston: “I am very sad this had to be part of the budget this year. I hope that we can find the money to keep Camp Schmidt open.”
Thanks to cuts in school programs in Toledo, Ohio, boxing has emerged as a popular sport. A New York Times article chronicles how hundreds of teen-agers participated in boxing clubs after the school district terminated all athletic teams for middle school students and high school freshmen. Also cut were high school cross-country, wrestling, golf and boys’ tennis teams, along with all intramural activities that include cheerleading and dance teams.
Parents are willing to pay for boxing activities, as nurse’s assistant Tambria Dixson pays $90 monthly to a gym for her three sons. “Paying for it is a struggle,“ she says. “But the kids in our neighborhood who aren’t involved in athletics are getting involved in gangs. So yes, it’s worth it.”
Detroit schools are losing 8,000 students yearly, which automatically results in state cuts of $7,300 in state money each year for every student who leaves. Despite vigorous efforts to control costs, the Times reports, its budget deficit rose from $200 million in 2009 to $327 million in 2011.
School management had proposed shuttering 50 schools because of falling enrollment, but reduced the number to 30 schools after parents and school employees urged that their schools be kept open, according to the Times.
Meanwhile, the district’s 2009 test scores in the national math proficiency test were the lowest in the test’s 21-year history.
Science-minded students in Riverside, Cal., who attend schools in the Alvord Unified School District were denied participation in the district’s annual science fair during the 2009-10 school year because there was no money to hold the fair, according to the New York Times. Grey Frandsen, president of the Alvord Educational Foundation, was incredulous about this and said he would seek out sponsors.
“Here in Southern California, our economy has been decimated,” he said. “The science and technology fields are some areas of bright hope.”
The Times account reports that science fairs nationwide have been jeopardized because sponsors have withdrawn support and some schools have cut back on extracurricular activities. Two major science fairs in the St. Louis area have lost corporate donations, and the statewide competition in Louisiana was nearly canceled in 2010.
Paula Golden, director of the Broadcom Foundation, argued that students interested in science are needed to compete in the global economy; Broadcom funds a national science competition for middle school students. “Without a body of young people who are innovators and scientists and engineers, we cannot sustain any kind of growth economically,” she said.
Back east, the school system in Scarborough, Me., is confronted with losing more than $1.1 million in state money, federal stimulus funds and other revenue sources, which translates to the equivalent of 12 full-time teaching positions and part-time jobs, according to The Portland Press-Herald.
The Board of Education spent an hour on March 17, 2011, listening to 13 residents, all of whom assailed the proposed cuts. They pointed to how they affect class size, how programs should be upgraded and not diminished and the difficulties caused by activity fees, the Press-Herald reported.
“Children are not like roads,” said Debra Fuchs-Ertman. “They will not remain static over the next few years and they will not get the chance to redo these school years when the economy gets better.”
In Missouri, a county public defender wonders aloud: “Is someone in prison who might have been acquitted if we had had more resources?”
Rod Hackathorn, public defender for a three-county district including Ozark County, adds, “You don’t know. I’m sure that it’s happened, and I don’t know who it has happened to. And that (is) the scariest part of this all.”
Hackathorn’s district was one of two in Missouri to announce in summer 2010 that it was turning down cases because they are overburdened and lack staff to serve all defendants, The New York Times reported. The Times piece noted that nine other districts were taking steps to follow suit, and Public Defenders in other states have either sued over their caseloads or rejected new cases.
In one instance in Missouri, Christian County Judge John S. Waters said, “It flies in the face of our Constitution. It flies in the face of our culture. It flies in the face of the reason we came over here 300 and some-odd years ago to get out of debtors’ prison…I’m not saying the public defenders aren’t overworked. I don’t know how to move his case and how to provide what the law of the land provides.”
The public defender’s office had repeatedly begged the judge to release it from representing a defendant charged with stealing prescription pain pills and a blank check because of its workload. The Missouri Supreme Court subsequently rescinded the assignment pending further court proceedings, the Times reported.
“What you have is a situation where the eligible pool of clients is increasing, crime rates are potentially increasing, while the resources often for public defenders are going down,” said Jo-Ann Wallace, president and chief executive of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.
Public-funded legal defense for indigent citizens charged with serious crimes was required as a result of the 1963 Supreme Court ruling, Gideon v. Wainwright.
However, Missouri’s public defenders office told the Times that $21 million more than $34 million it was slated to receive in 2010 is needed to staff it adequately. That would fund 125 more attorneys, 90 more secretaries, 109 more investigators, 130 more legal assistants and more space.
Mental-health programs have suffered in Washington state as a mid-year cut of $19 million imposed by Gov. Christine Gregoire during fall 2010 resulted in the closing of a 16-bed evaluation and treatment center and a 30-bed ward at a state hospital, David A. Dickinson, director of the state’s Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery, told the Times.
Previously, the state reduced Medicaid payment rates to mental health providers, and Gregoire, a Democrat, and called for new reductions of $17.4 million in the next two years.
The Times also referred to mental-health cuts in Arizona, Kansas, Iowa and Mississippi. At least $2.1 billion has been taken from state mental health budgets in the three fiscal years prior to 2011, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors.
Michael J. Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said adult day treatment centers have closed; funds for outpatient counseling, medications and family support services have been taken away; case managers have lost their jobs; and more than 4,000 beds in psychiatric hospitals have been eliminated, according to the Times.
Referring to her state’s mental-health programs, Gregoire said, “This budget does not represent my values, and I don’t think it represents the values of this state.”
In the Pittsburgh suburb of Ross, Tyler Boyer told a Post-Gazette reporter that he waited 70 minutes for a bus on March 28, 2011, the first weekday when severe cuts in bus service went into effect. He said four packed buses passed him until he joined with others to carpool downtown.
For five years, Kara Griffith caught a 7:27 a.m. bus in New Kensington each day to her job as a financial consultant in Pittsburgh, but on March 28 she had to start arriving at the stop at 7:05 a.m.
“The buses are packed. It’s standing room only. Some buses will pass you up,” she said. “For what I pay each month for a bus pass, and I get this kind of service? You raise your rates but give us poor service?”
One day earlier, Allegheny County’s Port Authority eliminated 29 bus routes and reduced service on 37 other routes while laying off 180 drivers and other employees. The authority blames a $55 million deficit on the loss of state funds.
Interestingly, a case could be made that Pittsburgh‘s Point State Park - first the site of Fort Duquesne and then Fort Pitt - indirectly inspired the creation of America. In 1754, then-Lt. Col. George Washington led colonial troops toward that site to ensure erection of a British fort to control the waterways where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River.
Along the way, Washington’s troops fought French soldiers in a brief battle at a spot known as Jumanville Glen. The engagement triggered events leading to the French-Indian War, which led to King George III’s demands for taxation to pay for the war, which resulted in the Revolution.
No doubt that Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and the remainder of America’s founders would feel proud and fulfilled that a great country evolved from a task that originated with them. However, they would probably be aghast to discover that an important city like Pittsburgh would be stripped of basic services like its bus operation.
Not to mention all the other cities, schools and towns that have been devastated in the wake of this recession.
Creepy. Many strangers. On occasion, someone would ask me for money, but otherwise nothing threatening ever occurred. I still felt the need to be wary.
Camden is universally known as a small urban cesspool across the Delaware River from Philadelphia and, shortly before Jan. 18, 2011, was ranked the second most violent city in the United States. I have frequently visited southern New Jersey and even lived in nearby Oaklyn for a year. Like many people, I studiously avoid Camden whenever possible.
Since living in downtown Philadelphia, I often took day trips to New York City by taking the bus to Camden so I could pick up the River Line train to Trenton, a 30-mile trip costing $1.35 each way. The main alternative is a commuter train that runs from center city Philadelphia to Trenton costing $9 each way; in Trenton, passengers transfer to a New Jersey Transit train to Manhattan’s Penn Station.
On Jan. 18, Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd laid off 168 police officers and 67 firefighters, respectively half and one-third of the two departments.
Two days later, 20-year-old Anjanea Williams was fatally shot at 2 p.m. on the 1700 block of Broadway when a man whose face was concealed fired in the direction of Williams and some of her relatives, authorities told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. What brought this on is still a mystery, but Camden’s residents are bound to become more vulnerable to crime.
Certainly, I wonder about the wisdom of passing through Camden late at night to save transit money.
When Camden police officers and firefighters lost their jobs, Camden County Prosecutor Warren Faulk said in a statement, or understatement, “Losing so many officers will make our task of putting dangerous people into prison through convictions and pleas more difficult,” as quoted in the Inquirer.
The Inquirer catalogued a long list of factors: budget mismanagement by both state and city officials; a 50-year decline in home ownership and taxable businesses; a low tax-collection rate; costly services in a city with a century-old infrastructure and a poor population; a recent state takeover that forbade tax hikes and offered tax abatements to new development; and various costs due to personnel factors.
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“I came in full of idealism - I was going to change my city,” Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport, Connecticut’s most populous city, told a New York Times reporter. “You get involved in government because you want to do more for the people, you want to show them that government can work and local government, by and large, really does work for the people.”
Instead, Finch caved to the same forces as other mayors, laying off 160 city employees. Mayors throughout the nation, gathering in Washington during late January 2011, testified to similar nightmares of cutting services, sending city workers to the unemployment lines, raising taxes and bracing for declining tax revenues and aid reductions from their own states, according to The New York Times.
The 200 mayors pressed their federal agenda as they visited President Obama and members of Congress, urging more spending on transportation and retaining the Community Development Block Grant program.
Many of these mayors expect their state governments to withhold more funds rather than help them since most states face moderate to devastating deficits. Among our largest states, California, population 36.9 billion, faces a $25.4 billion deficit; Illinois, 12.9 million, $15 billion; Texas, 24.7 million, $13.4 billion; and New Jersey, 8.7 million, $10.4 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, as reported in The New York Times.
Four states - Alaska, Arkansas, North Dakota and Wyoming - are not projecting shortfalls, according to the study.
Massachusetts will hold back $116 million from higher education and $115 million from human services if Gov. Deval Patrick’s $30.5 billion budget plan is adopted by the state House and Senate, The Boston Globe reported.
Birth control and other family planning services would be cut by 21 percent and school health services would be reduced by 16 percent. Two state prisons would close, space to treat 160 mentally ill patients would be eliminated and 900 state government jobs would be abolished, all of which is aimed at closing a $1.2 billion budget gap.
A proposed 27 percent cut to programs for newborns and young children with disabilities spurred swift protests from advocates for early intervention programs. “In all my years in politics I’ve never seen such a shortsighted decision,” said Senate Majority Leader Frederick Berry a few days later, according to the Globe.
These services cover occupational, physical and speech therapy for children from birth to 3 years old with developmental delays. The Globe explained that children with autism and cerebral palsy are among those eligible for services, and advocates say more than half of those in early intervention avoid needing special education services when they reach school age.
Existing programs, funded by the state at $29.4 million this year, provide services for more than 30,000 children, advocates told the Globe. They claimed that Patrick’s proposed reduction to $21.5 million would abolish or reduce services for up to 15,000 children.
Children in New York state who are blind, deaf or severely disabled - whose education has been financed by the state for more than a century - are the focus of proposed cuts that could close 11 schools which serve 1,500 of these children. Gov. Cuomo’s budget would expect local school districts to fund schools for these children and receive partial state reimbursement later, according to The New York Daily News.
Cuomo’s plan would abolish all up-front funding to three schools in the Bronx, one school each in Queens and Brooklyn and six other schools serving such children.
“The students who come to our school are some of the most vulnerable people in the state,” Frank Simpson, superintendent of the Lavelle School for the Blind in the Bronx, told the News.
Advocates claim it will take too much time to obtain the money, which will be a $14 million reduction from $112 million yearly.
Critics of the various budget cuts charge that public safety is being jeopardized. Philadelphia is attempting to save $3.8 million on firefighter overtime by closing three stations on a rotational basis each week so firefighters from those stations can substitute for others who are sick or are on vacation. When two children died in a fire in the city’s Olney section, questions were raised if firefighters would have arrived earlier had one nearby firehouse not been closed under this policy that day.
It would be a stretch to draw conclusions. The firefighters who responded were stationed at a firehouse 1.2 miles from the scene, and the closed firehouse was a few blocks closer. How many firehouses are even 1.2 miles away from the average fire scene? However, the potential for such an outcome cannot be minimized.
When Claudette Nicholas, 70, perished in a fire in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn on Feb. 11, city and union officials bickered over whether staffing reductions should be blamed for her death. Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association, contended that the reductions meant four fewer firefighters were available to operate hose lines in the early minutes of the response, which would compel the FDNY to use more engine companies, according to The New York Daily News.
“Reduced staffing levels in engine companies,” Cassidy said, “threaten civilian and firefighter lives, while in the long run costing the city more than it saves.” FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon retorted that at least two engine companies arrived within five minutes, which is under the department’s average response time, the newspaper reported.
The budget situation spurred questions from a Brooklyn Democrat, City Councilman Stephen Levin, if reduced finances could be linked to the beating death of 4-year-old Marchella Pierce on Sept. 2, 2010. During a council hearing a month after Marchella’s death, John Mattingly, commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, claimed that this tragedy “had to do with poor practice,” the NY News reported.
However, ACS still faced projected cuts, and both Levin and Councilman Brad Lander called for said cuts to be held to the same lower level as those for uniformed services.
In Philadelphia, social workers who monitor child abuse and neglect complaints are severely overworked, making it impossible to adequately guarantee the safety of children on their caseloads. This writer speaks from personal experience, and of course is not personally familiar with NYC’s child-welfare agency.
In Evesham Township, N.J., parents raised a concern that schoolchildren may be forced to cross a congested, 45-m.p.h. road to reach school. “How can you put safety below savings?” asked Sharyn Pertnoy Schmidt, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Evesham has already cut 20 positions, frozen staff pay and charged parents for after-school sports, clubs, activities and school trips, the Inquirer reported. Statewide, 5,650 teachers were laid off during 2010 after state aid was slashed by 5 percent.
For 40 years, students were required to spend two days at the 450-acre Camp Schmidt in Prince George’s County to learn about the health of the streams whose waters flow into the Chesapeake Bay, according to The Washington Post. The camp, which hosts 7,000 students each year, could close June 30.
However, the camp’s future was threatened in February 2011 when the Prince George’s County Board of Education voted to slash $1 million from its budget that was spent for eight full-time positions there; it isg part of filling a $155 million gap in the system’s $1.6 billion budget. The Post reported that the board is also cutting 400 teachers and 92 librarians.
Local residents have joined a “Save Camp Schmidt” group on Facebook. “When kids don’t have authentic experiences in the natural environment, we have left blank some of the critical bricks that they need in their educational foundation,” said longtime supervisor of environmental education John J. Neville. “It is hard for young people to understand something like the importance of the Chesapeake Bay watershed when they have never visited a stream.”
Two school board members are personally familiar with the camp. “I went to Camp Schmidt four times with my children in the 1990s,” said Donna Hathaway Beck, board vice chairwoman. “It is more than an environmental experience - it is a cultural experience that speaks to the wealth and beauty of the county.”
Added board member Carolyn M. Boston: “I am very sad this had to be part of the budget this year. I hope that we can find the money to keep Camp Schmidt open.”
Thanks to cuts in school programs in Toledo, Ohio, boxing has emerged as a popular sport. A New York Times article chronicles how hundreds of teen-agers participated in boxing clubs after the school district terminated all athletic teams for middle school students and high school freshmen. Also cut were high school cross-country, wrestling, golf and boys’ tennis teams, along with all intramural activities that include cheerleading and dance teams.
Parents are willing to pay for boxing activities, as nurse’s assistant Tambria Dixson pays $90 monthly to a gym for her three sons. “Paying for it is a struggle,“ she says. “But the kids in our neighborhood who aren’t involved in athletics are getting involved in gangs. So yes, it’s worth it.”
Detroit schools are losing 8,000 students yearly, which automatically results in state cuts of $7,300 in state money each year for every student who leaves. Despite vigorous efforts to control costs, the Times reports, its budget deficit rose from $200 million in 2009 to $327 million in 2011.
School management had proposed shuttering 50 schools because of falling enrollment, but reduced the number to 30 schools after parents and school employees urged that their schools be kept open, according to the Times.
Meanwhile, the district’s 2009 test scores in the national math proficiency test were the lowest in the test’s 21-year history.
Science-minded students in Riverside, Cal., who attend schools in the Alvord Unified School District were denied participation in the district’s annual science fair during the 2009-10 school year because there was no money to hold the fair, according to the New York Times. Grey Frandsen, president of the Alvord Educational Foundation, was incredulous about this and said he would seek out sponsors.
“Here in Southern California, our economy has been decimated,” he said. “The science and technology fields are some areas of bright hope.”
The Times account reports that science fairs nationwide have been jeopardized because sponsors have withdrawn support and some schools have cut back on extracurricular activities. Two major science fairs in the St. Louis area have lost corporate donations, and the statewide competition in Louisiana was nearly canceled in 2010.
Paula Golden, director of the Broadcom Foundation, argued that students interested in science are needed to compete in the global economy; Broadcom funds a national science competition for middle school students. “Without a body of young people who are innovators and scientists and engineers, we cannot sustain any kind of growth economically,” she said.
Back east, the school system in Scarborough, Me., is confronted with losing more than $1.1 million in state money, federal stimulus funds and other revenue sources, which translates to the equivalent of 12 full-time teaching positions and part-time jobs, according to The Portland Press-Herald.
The Board of Education spent an hour on March 17, 2011, listening to 13 residents, all of whom assailed the proposed cuts. They pointed to how they affect class size, how programs should be upgraded and not diminished and the difficulties caused by activity fees, the Press-Herald reported.
“Children are not like roads,” said Debra Fuchs-Ertman. “They will not remain static over the next few years and they will not get the chance to redo these school years when the economy gets better.”
In Missouri, a county public defender wonders aloud: “Is someone in prison who might have been acquitted if we had had more resources?”
Rod Hackathorn, public defender for a three-county district including Ozark County, adds, “You don’t know. I’m sure that it’s happened, and I don’t know who it has happened to. And that (is) the scariest part of this all.”
Hackathorn’s district was one of two in Missouri to announce in summer 2010 that it was turning down cases because they are overburdened and lack staff to serve all defendants, The New York Times reported. The Times piece noted that nine other districts were taking steps to follow suit, and Public Defenders in other states have either sued over their caseloads or rejected new cases.
In one instance in Missouri, Christian County Judge John S. Waters said, “It flies in the face of our Constitution. It flies in the face of our culture. It flies in the face of the reason we came over here 300 and some-odd years ago to get out of debtors’ prison…I’m not saying the public defenders aren’t overworked. I don’t know how to move his case and how to provide what the law of the land provides.”
The public defender’s office had repeatedly begged the judge to release it from representing a defendant charged with stealing prescription pain pills and a blank check because of its workload. The Missouri Supreme Court subsequently rescinded the assignment pending further court proceedings, the Times reported.
“What you have is a situation where the eligible pool of clients is increasing, crime rates are potentially increasing, while the resources often for public defenders are going down,” said Jo-Ann Wallace, president and chief executive of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.
Public-funded legal defense for indigent citizens charged with serious crimes was required as a result of the 1963 Supreme Court ruling, Gideon v. Wainwright.
However, Missouri’s public defenders office told the Times that $21 million more than $34 million it was slated to receive in 2010 is needed to staff it adequately. That would fund 125 more attorneys, 90 more secretaries, 109 more investigators, 130 more legal assistants and more space.
Mental-health programs have suffered in Washington state as a mid-year cut of $19 million imposed by Gov. Christine Gregoire during fall 2010 resulted in the closing of a 16-bed evaluation and treatment center and a 30-bed ward at a state hospital, David A. Dickinson, director of the state’s Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery, told the Times.
Previously, the state reduced Medicaid payment rates to mental health providers, and Gregoire, a Democrat, and called for new reductions of $17.4 million in the next two years.
The Times also referred to mental-health cuts in Arizona, Kansas, Iowa and Mississippi. At least $2.1 billion has been taken from state mental health budgets in the three fiscal years prior to 2011, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors.
Michael J. Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said adult day treatment centers have closed; funds for outpatient counseling, medications and family support services have been taken away; case managers have lost their jobs; and more than 4,000 beds in psychiatric hospitals have been eliminated, according to the Times.
Referring to her state’s mental-health programs, Gregoire said, “This budget does not represent my values, and I don’t think it represents the values of this state.”
In the Pittsburgh suburb of Ross, Tyler Boyer told a Post-Gazette reporter that he waited 70 minutes for a bus on March 28, 2011, the first weekday when severe cuts in bus service went into effect. He said four packed buses passed him until he joined with others to carpool downtown.
For five years, Kara Griffith caught a 7:27 a.m. bus in New Kensington each day to her job as a financial consultant in Pittsburgh, but on March 28 she had to start arriving at the stop at 7:05 a.m.
“The buses are packed. It’s standing room only. Some buses will pass you up,” she said. “For what I pay each month for a bus pass, and I get this kind of service? You raise your rates but give us poor service?”
One day earlier, Allegheny County’s Port Authority eliminated 29 bus routes and reduced service on 37 other routes while laying off 180 drivers and other employees. The authority blames a $55 million deficit on the loss of state funds.
Interestingly, a case could be made that Pittsburgh‘s Point State Park - first the site of Fort Duquesne and then Fort Pitt - indirectly inspired the creation of America. In 1754, then-Lt. Col. George Washington led colonial troops toward that site to ensure erection of a British fort to control the waterways where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River.
Along the way, Washington’s troops fought French soldiers in a brief battle at a spot known as Jumanville Glen. The engagement triggered events leading to the French-Indian War, which led to King George III’s demands for taxation to pay for the war, which resulted in the Revolution.
No doubt that Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and the remainder of America’s founders would feel proud and fulfilled that a great country evolved from a task that originated with them. However, they would probably be aghast to discover that an important city like Pittsburgh would be stripped of basic services like its bus operation.
Not to mention all the other cities, schools and towns that have been devastated in the wake of this recession.
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