Excerpted from Democracy Now transcripts:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, Amy, one of the things I’ve been trying now for a couple of years is to try to figure out why is it that so many hedge fund managers, wealthy Americans and big banks, Wall Street banks, have — executives of Wall Street banks, have all lined up supporting and getting involved in the development of charter schools. And I think I may have come across one of the reasons: there’s a lot of money to be made in charter schools. And I’m not talking just about the for-profit management companies that run a lot of these charter schools.

It turns out that at the tail end of the Clinton administration in 2000, Congress passed a new kind of tax credit called a New Markets Tax Credit. And what this allows is it gives an enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in under-served communities, and it’s been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools. And I focused on Albany, New York, which in New York state is the district with the highest percentage of children in charter schools. Twenty percent of the schoolchildren in Albany are now attending charter schools. And I discovered that quite a few of the charter schools there have been built using these New Markets Tax Credits.

And what happens is, the investors who put up the money to build the charter schools get to basically virtually double their money in seven years through a 39 percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re collecting interest on the loans, as well as getting the 39 percent tax credit. They piggyback the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits, like historic preservation or job creation or Brownfields credits. The result is, you can put in $10 million and in seven years double your money.

And the problem is that the charter schools end up paying in rents the debt service on these loans. And so, now a lot of the charter schools in Albany are straining paying their debt — their rent has gone up from $170,000 to $500,000 in a year, or huge increases in their rents, as they strain to pay off these loans, these construction loans. And the rents are eating up huge portions of their total cost. And, of course, the money is coming from the state.

So, one of the big issues is that so many of these charter schools are not being audited. No one knows who are the people making these huge windfall profits as the investors. And often there are interlocking relationships between the charter school boards and the nonprofit groups that organize and syndicate the loans. And so, there needs to be sunlight on this whole issue. And the state legislature right now is considering expanding charter school caps, but one of the things I press for in my column, there has to be the power of the government to independently audit all of these charter schools, or we’re not going to know how public dollars are ending up in the coffers of Wall Street investors.

Footnote (not mine): For those of you not well versed in tax law, remember this: a tax credit (as opposed to a tax deduction) is not deducted from your income before figuring out how much tax you owe. Instead, it is deducted dollar for dollar from the tax dollars you owe. Take, for example a new, young teacher who is making $50,000 and has a single tax deduction of $500. That lowers the teacher's adjusted gross income to $49,500. Roughly speaking, the teacher would have paid $12,550 or so in taxes on his $50,000 salary. With the $500 deduction and the reduction of income to $49,500, the teacher's taxes for that year would be reduced to $12,500 a reduction of $50. But change the deduction to a $500 tax credit. Instead of subtracting the $500 figure from the $50,000 the teacher earned during the year, you would direct/deduct it from the $12,500 she or he had to pay Uncle Sam. Instead of the $50 saving the tax deduction gave the teacher, she or he would get the full $500. Now multiply those numbers in terms of the kind of income hedge funds receive and consider the consequences.

Educated Response to the YouTube video of “racist white girls in Arizona.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzTXVbArO4A

1. Why are you recording in shadow? Are you embarrassed about what you are saying? Afraid your friends and family might not agree with your blatantly racist attitude?
2. The Arizona law regarding immigration that you speak of was written almost entirely by a prison company whose profits are down. You can look this up. They need to increase profits, so they lock up illegal immigrants that, other than being in this country illegally, have committed no crime. Often they are just hard working people trying to create a better life for themselves and their families.
3. Politicians supported the law because they don’t want to be seen as incapable of leading and helping their constituents, which is their job. The idea of illegal immigration as a problem is a wonderful distraction from the reality of them having sold out their constituent in favor of the wealthy and corporate interests.
4. Do you honestly believe that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs? Often these are the people working two and three jobs that no one else wants because they don’t pay enough.
5. Let’s step back in time for a moment and think about how Arizona came to be a state. Arizona was part of a land grab from Mexico that occurred as a result of the Mexican-American war. Arizona, New Mexico and part of California were forcefully sold to the United States. So, when you so blatantly claim that “we were here first,” think deep and hard. In reality, they were here first.
6. Another point that is often neglected is this: we are all immigrants. The only non-immigrants are the Native Americans, and if you go back far enough even they immigrated.

Ironically, your claim to be American is in itself an error. Mexicans too are Americans, and so is anyone else who lives in North or South America.

In honor of the events of 9/11:

A recent poll indicates that two-thirds of all Americans think that it’s o.k. to sacrifice some of our basic rights and liberties in order to be safe from terrorism. You can read more about this poll on WTOPnews.com: http://www.wtop.com/?nid=755&sid=2530314

Do you agree or disagree with the idea that the government should restrain rights and liberties in order to preserve our security? Why or why not?

1. The government should NOT restrain rights and liberties to preserve our security. Rights that are once surrendered are rarely returned, and security is an ill-defined concept – what constitutes security for one person is imprisonment for another.

I wonder how the American people would respond to the aforementioned threat, if they knew that in order to guard against it FBI fraud specialists were diverted from their jobs monitoring white collar crime, and this decision likely lead the country and the world to the recession we have now.

Are some of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights in danger of becoming extinct? Which ones? Why are they in danger, and what can citizens do to be sure that these fundamental rights remain strong?

2. All of the amendments to the bill of rights are in danger, for what good are rights if no one takes up action in their defense. It is true that corporate America, the wealthy and powerful will always seek to defend their rights at any cost, but they are distorting a system that once corrupted defends no one.

Citizens seeking to defend their rights should be aware of what they are and how the system operates that protects them. Everyone should exercise their real political voice and not just follow party allegiance.

What rights might you be willing to sacrifice, personally, in order to feel safer and more secure? What rights are so important to you that you would be willing to risk the potential of another terrorist attack in order to be sure you could still exercise those rights?

3. I would not be willing to part with any of my Constitutional rights or freedoms to prevent some vague threat. Terrorism can, and does, come from any and all corners of the idealistic spectrum. Are we to live in shelters fearing the worst of humanity, or do we follow the holy word and do unto others as we would have done unto us?

The reality of school reform is that we, as a country, are not committed to it any more than we are committed to ending poverty. The reality of school reform is that we are in the process of dismantling the social welfare system in the United States.

If you are familiar with the concept of the ‘tragedy of the commons,’ then you might be aware that we have too many people at the middle and the top trying to reap unearned benefits from the system to provide for themselves and their cohorts.

Think about the reality of wealth in the U.S. The top 1% of the population controls nearly 50% of the wealth in the country. With this recent economic shift, those numbers are growing.

How do you erase, or eliminate, economic disparities? Education is a good place to start, but in order to truly educate you have to make people aware of the disparities. Our system does not do that. Our system pushes the idea that economic disparity is somehow good because the system is open and anyone can achieve success, which is a vision that severely distorts reality.

The reality is, without a true education the majority of people are reduced to parroting what they see or hear in popular media, which is itself the voice of a privatized corporate agenda.

The biggest tragedy of the mess is that the people themselves, unwittingly, are the largest shareholders in the systems corruption. Corporations chase short-term gains at the expense of long-term value. They do this to increase day-to-day earnings for their investors. Who are the largest investors? Surprise, it’s you and me. We invest in pension systems and 401k’s through our work, and these vehicles are “managed” in our interest [non-voting stock] by supposedly benevolent officials whose only concern is profits. They care not for us in particular nor the demise of our jobs.

I find myself wondering more and more these days about how long it takes, how much of the system is dismantled, before history comes full circle and we find ourselves in another French revolution.

I find myself ever more disgusted with politics and media these days. What is covered, and more irritatingly, not covered by politicians and media hucksters is mind numbing.

The following is an article about poverty in America that was published in England, of all places. One could hardly imagine why?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/aug/10/america-poverty-criminalised

We keep hearing in the media about rioting in London and whatnot, but what media outlets fail to print or acknowledge is the growing unrest here at home.

The claim is that these are just unruly people, and this type of unrest will not be tolerated and we need more policing.
What this fails to acknowledge, is the link to poverty and unemployment.
Hello? Wake up call, is that you?
The French Revolution happened for a reason. Are we in America, and the world, reaching a tipping point?

Been a while I know, but I am currently working on a MA in Counseling and have not had significant time to reflect and post here. The following is a comment I posted:

Maybe it’s time we rethink No Child Left Behind [NCLB]. The reality of increasing violence and truancy in schools has to do with the fact that schools are rewarded, or not punished, for decreasing violence and truancy. So, what we are seeing are school administrators, with an acknowledging nod from the board, falsifying data. There are no fights in the schools; just minor skirmishes that do not need to be reported. Truancy is not a problem if we do not acknowledge it.

The result of these silent but far-reaching measures is that students who face no consequences for rampant absenteeism, class-cutting, and yes fighting, increase their brazen actions. What is more, the students who might otherwise be compliant are forced to join gangs as their only means of defense, since justice is denied.

It’s time to reconsider NCLB. It’s time to rethink every child going to college. Maybe it’s time to reconsider the definition of insanity and work out a new model for education.

Outsourcing Personnel

The current silence in the media today regarding outsourcing is horrifying. A sound and reasoned debate is desperately needed, and tragically short. The only voice in the media is entirely one-sided and not at all useful. The fallacy of this debate as proposed by Corporate America is that it’s somehow good for America. This proposal rests on three premises that are essentially false.
The first premise is that there are insufficient professionals – engineers and scientists – to supply American business demands. American universities do not graduate enough math and science majors to supply corporate interests. Thus, corporations must look overseas for their supply of professionals. If one understands the nature of capitalism, anytime there is a supply shortage demand increases and costs escalate. What is not generally understood is that this is good for America. By increasing salaries, more students are likely to study math and science to guaranty their future career success. However, by outsourcing companies have managed to subvert capitalism by acquiring their personnel overseas at a fraction of the cost. By doing this, they manage to drive down the costs of professional salaries to those commensurate with the third world, where professionals do not have nearly the same education costs as those in the U.S. Further, by driving down professional salaries corporations have reduced the likelihood that prospective students would go to the trouble of studying key subject areas – if there is no reward in doing so, they are not likely to do it. This further reduces the amount of students studying math and science, which is the basis of the argument.
The second premise is that by outsourcing corporations claim that they are able to reduce costs and pass those savings on to the consumer in the form of low cost products – thus pushing that money into the economy. This proposition is actually laughable. By firing three million workers this is somehow good because now those people could buy cheaper products, if they had jobs. Further, the rest of us who managed to maintain employment are now given the privilege of paying more for services – for providing healthcare for those now uninsured, for sustaining higher taxes or a higher debt burden as a result of a lower tax base, or for providing city services for those not able to pay.
Finally, corporate leadership claims that by outsourcing profits are maintained and American interests are somehow served. This argument rests on the notion that American business is somehow intrinsically American because it originated in the U.S. or serves the U.S. consumer. This, however, is not necessarily the case. Many “U.S.” corporations now register in the Caribbean islands – to reduce their tax liability. They produce their products, if they produce a product, in overseas markets in So. East Asia or Latin America. And, with outsourcing, any professional services required to design and package a product or service is additionally accomplished overseas. Given these conditions, what could be said about a “U.S.” corporation that makes it more American than a foreign corporation that sells products in the U.S?
The sociological terminology associated with this situation is “the tragedy of the commons” – where increasing numbers of users attempt to gain an unfair advantage at the expense of the system that sustains them. Unfortunately, more and more companies are taking advantage of their American association in order to reap the rewards of the American consumer market. At the same time, fewer and fewer companies are concerned with contributing to the economy they so clearly benefit from. If there is no penalty in non-contribution, this kind of behavior will only get worse. In the end, what is to happen when none of them are willing to contribute? An interesting spin on this idea might be outsourcing management at third world salaries and returning the savings to stockholders.