Great Recession | Be a Seed for Change

Campaign for a Fair Settlement
a project of Action for the Common Good

On Wed Oct 16th at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT interact in a discussion about communities around the country undoing corporate public school “reform”

Dear Carmen —

Wall Street bankers are stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from our kids every year. [1]

That’s not a misprint. As part of all the financial shenanigans they engaged in that broke our economy, they managed to entrap school districts around the country in “interest rate swaps” that were sold as ways to guarantee steady income for the critical job of educating our kids. Instead they turned out to be massive drains on school budgets, for example, costing Philadelphia $331 million [2] and Chicago $150 million (and another $36 million every year). [3]

In turn, that financial pressure on school districts (exacerbated by the drop in tax revenues from the Great Recession) has opened up opportunities for Wall Street banker-funded corporate takeovers of our public schools. For-profit charter schools, often online-only, have cropped up nationally, siphoning off critical public school investments, short changing our children’s future to line the pockets of private, usually out-of-state, corporations dedicated primarily to the bottom line.

Parents and teachers around the country have been desperately fighting back against this tidal wave of Wall Street-backed education “reform”. They know we need investment in our public schools so that every child has a quality teacher and access to a well-rounded education that includes history, music, arts, PE and vocational training, NOT investment in Wall Street corporations whose motivations have little to do with kids and everything to do with manipulating state regulation to protect their interests.

A key figure in this fight is prominent public school advocate, Diane Ravitch, whose new book, Reign of Error: the Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, shows how people are fighting back and winning. YOU CAN HEAR AND INTERACT WITH HER LIVE in a forum sponsored by the Our Schools network on Wednesday Oct 16th at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT. RSVP here.

Actor Matt Damon, the son of a public school teacher, says,

“[Diane is] America’s foremost historian in the areas of education policy, she’s a champion of public education, she’s a courageous speaker and she’s a truth-teller.”

She’s keenly aware of the impact that Wall Street’s stolen money and increased investments in for-profit education are having on our schools.

“We cannot have great, education by having one set of publicly funded schools (charters and vouchers) that pick and choose their students, kicking out the losers, excluding students with disabilities and English learners, and operating free of state laws, and a second publicly funded system, required to take all students, including those rejected or ejected by the other system. Great school systems aim for equity, as the Finnish scholar Pasi Sahlberg says, and get excellence.” [4]

Join a discussion with Diane Ravitch on Wednesday October 16th at 8pm EDT/5pm PDT and hear how communities around the country are undoing corporate “reform” and creating equity and justice in their public schools.

It’s time we started getting those hundreds of millions back.

In Solidarity,

Brian Kettenring, Executive Director, Action for the Common Good

[1] “Riding the Gravy Train: How Wall Street is Bankrupting Our Public Transit Agencies by Profiteering off of Toxic Swap Deals”, ReFund Transit Coalition, June 2012, page 4.
[2] “Too Big to Trust? Banks, Schools, and the Ongoing Problem of Interest Rate Swaps”, Sharon Ward, PA Budget and Policy Center, January 2012, page 1.
[3] http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/19251143-452/amisha-patel-banks-soak-cps-as-schools-close.html
[4] http://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/10/today-the-blog-has-had-7-million-page-views/

http://www.campaignforfairsettlement.org/

Democrats on the so-called Super Committee are caving to Republican demands and pushing a plan that would make drastic cuts to Medicare.

This is bad policy and bad politics. Cuts like these are the worst possible way to reduce the deficit. They protect the status quo for the richest 1 percent while the 99 percent are expected to sacrifice vital healthcare that they need to survive in tough economic times like these — and they’ll hamstring Democrats running for reelection in 2012.

We’ve been down this road before. Republicans and some Democrats have been pushing plans to destroy Medicare and Social Security for months. We beat them then and we can beat them now with an overwhelming show of grassroots opposition to any plan that cuts Medicare.

Join me and tell Washington that this deal is Dead On Arrival.

Pledge to oppose any candidate — Republican or Democrat – who votes for a plan that cuts Medicare and Medicaid benefits for the 99 percent.

The facts are simple: The average income of Medicare beneficiaries is about $22,000 a year. Our nation’s seniors can’t afford to have their benefits cut and hard-working Americans can’t afford to have their eligibility for Medicare raised to 67.

As more and more people lose employer-provided health insurance, the last thing the nation’s seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income children who depend on Medicaid need is for the federal government to slash these vital programs.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid did not cause the run-up in federal deficits. We have President Bush’s huge tax cuts for the top 1 percent, the unpaid costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the Great Recession caused by reckless, un-American, and potentially criminal behavior on Wall Street to thank for the mess we’re in.

Washington needs to make sure those who caused this mess pay to clean it up — not seniors, not Americans with disabilities, and certainly not low-income children who depend on Medicaid to survive.

Send a message to Washington now — Stand against cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security or stand alone for reelection.

This is a fight we will win, if we stand up and fight. Because when we work together, we’re unstoppable.

Thank you for everything you do.

-Jim

Jim Dean, Chair
Democracy for America