ACLU SUES 30 CALIFORNIA PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICTS OVER “PAY TO LEARN” POLICIES
Dear Beverly Hills, Burbank, Long Beach and Orange County school districts: WTF????
It’s the perfect story for the first day of public school classes.
The LA Times’ Jason Song lays it out here:
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the state of California on Friday for allowing school districts to charge students for books, uniforms, classes and other basic supplies.
The Orange County Register gives a lot more of the details. For example, they report that Loara High School in the Anaheim Union District, charges $86 for all their AP exams. (Poor kids don’t need to take AP exams, I guess.)
Also listen to Adolfo Guzman Lopez’s report on KPCC.
This is—how to put it?— illegal, according to a 1984 California Supreme Court decision.
Here’s a little of what the ACLU’s Mark Rosenbaum said when he announced the lawsuit on Friday.
The idea of educating every child at public expense ranks with political democracy as one of the United States’ great original social contributions. Each of these ideas rests on a hallowed belief that every child is capable of reaching his or her fullest potential only when we encourage and honor accomplishment based on merit and hard work and disavow class distinctions.
It is for this reason that free public schools are the linchpin of our democracy. That free public schools are the constitutionally ordained mechanism by which the American dream is made accessible to all children regardless of class or social status.
But in California, for thousands and thousands of children, the state imposes a cover charge and minimum on the American Dream, because the public schools are not free or open to all on equal terms. There does not exist in California a true system of free public schools….
Check out the So Cal ACLU website for more of the details plus the actual filing.
$578 MILLION RFK SCHOOL COMPLEX OPENS FOR BIZ (AND KIDS) TODAY, MONDAY
The LA Times Howard Blume reports on the controversial school and its grounds in anticipation of the first day of school.
OBAMA IGNORES TRADITIONAL DEM FEAR OF BEING “SOFT ON CRIME”
Or at least we hope that’s the trend for the Obama White House. Not that it will win him any elections, you understand. But it is cheering to see POTUS beginning to do the right, logical and moral thing in this particular arena.
Josh Gerstein has the details in this extended piece in Saturday’s Politico. Here is how it begins:
For years, it was one of the GOP’s most potent political epithets — labeling a Democrat “soft on crime.”
But the Obama White House has taken the first steps in decades to move away from a strict lock-‘em-up mentality on crime — easing sentences for crack cocaine possession, launching a top-to-bottom review of sentencing policies and even sounding open to reviewing guidelines that call for lengthy prison terms for people convicted of child pornography offenses.
The moves — still tentative, to be sure — suggest that President Barack Obama’s aides are betting that the issue has lost some of its punch with voters more worried about terrorism and recession. In one measure of the new political climate surrounding the issue, the Obama administration actually felt free to boast that the new crack-sentencing bill would go easier on some drug criminals.
“The Fair Sentencing Act marks the first time in 40 years that Congress has reduced a mandatory minimum sentence,” said White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, who billed the new legislation as “monumental.”
Obama’s signing of long-debated legislation last month to reduce the disparity between prison sentences for crack and powdered cocaine is being hailed by some advocates as a watershed moment in the nation’s approach to criminal justice.
Now if only the California state legislature would grow themselves some balls…er…. strength of their convictions.
DECIDING WHO TO KILL: JOHN GRISHAM CHALLENGES A WOMAN’S DEATH SENTENCE
In his Op Ed in Sunday’s WaPo, novelist John Grisham discusses the whimsical and utterly inconsistent nature of the application of the death sentence as he explores the case of a Virginia woman who was sentenced to death, while the men who actually did the killing got life.
(In reading it, one is reminded that skilled writers are more fun to read on nearly any topic.
Here’s a clip. But do read it all.
Her name is Teresa Lewis, she is the only woman on death row at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, and her appeals have all but expired. If she is executed, she will become another glaring example of the unfairness of our death penalty system.
Lewis is not innocent. She confessed to the police, pled guilty to the judge and for almost eight years has expressed profound remorse for her role in two murders.
As with most violent crimes, a recitation of the facts of this case would fill pages; still, a brief summary drawn from news reports, letters and affidavits is useful.
FRANZEN ON FRESH AIR
Jonathan Franzen’s much-ballyhooed new book Freedom isn’t exactly a social justice issue, but it is very, very, very good—hype or no hype. (I read it, loved it, am sad it’s already over.)
In any case, the author was interviewed on Fresh Air last Thursday, If you have any interest in or curiosity about Franzen and/or this book that has folks quarreling loudly, do listen.
IF CALIFORNIA LEGALIZES POT, WILL THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SUE?
CBS and THE AP say that Ex-DEA officials are pushing the DOJ to sue California if we pass Prop. 19, the
Wonder how much the state would save if we didn’t have to spend millions on educating illegals Celeste? or paying for their health care? You liberals can’t have it both ways. An education through high school should be free but cutting costs can only do so much. Seems to me people on the left only want to delve into the root causes of our problems when they don’t include taking money from people they champion. It’s as hypocritical a way to think as there is.
In the meanwhile, where I don’t have much of a problem “now” with rock and powder cocaine sentences being in line with each other, the president is attempting to give a free pass to illegals and we’ll be, in fact it’s already started, deporting much fewer in his remaining term.
State and local budgets can’t seem to come up with the money for all public school programs. When I was in high school in the 90s, I had to pay for my own AP tests.
Sure Fire should know by now that Celeste is opposed to any immigration laws being enforced, she lives in the fantasy world where the U.S. can support all the poor immigrants of the world.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-illegal-welfare-20100906,0,3446997.story
“Welfare payments to children of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles County increased in July to $52 million, prompting renewed calls from one county supervisor to rein in public benefits to such families. The new figure represents an increase of $3.7 million from July 2009 and makes up 23% of all county welfare and food stamp assistance, according to county records.”
WTF:
1. That’s a preposterous and untrue statement. For the record, I am very strongly in favor of immigration reform that will allow us to settle on laws and policies that are practical, humane and that we are prepared to enforce.
What we have now is a situation where large moneyed interests do NOT in fact want the laws enforced because they benefit from the lax enforcement. At the same time, some of those same interests who are benefiting from illegal immigration, blame the immigrants—who are simply trying to make their lives better—for every social ill in the country. I find that loathsome.
In fact, I find demonizaton of any kind loathsome—not to mention counterproductive.
And, 2. WTF, please reread Rule #4 of the 10 Rules for Commenting. Sooner rather than later would be appreciated.
Dearly wealthy,
You’ve taken everything. You have enough. You’ve left most Americans with barely enough to live on. Don’t take schools away from our children, too. Please?
RE: Obama, drug sentences,
Good for him. But the real issue is the criminalization of drugs in the first place. Marijuana criminalization is rooted in a time when goofy films like “refer madness” were considered valid sources on the effects of the drug. Most Americans have caught on to the fact that the film and its insinuations of marijuana are absurd. Our laws haven’t.
Crack cocaine: There was no need for stiffer sentencing in the first place. The items which turn regular cocaine into crack are items you could buy at a grocery store. You’re giving people longer prison sentences for misusing baking soda? That’s American. It’s the cocaine that causes the high. If we’re going to criminalize a rather dangerous high that depressed people will seek in one form or another, the amount of the actual drug which induces the high should be the determining factor of the punishment.
Many sociologists have made rather convincing cases that these stiffer “Crack cocaine” sentences have eventually resulted in black drug addicts serving longer prison sentences than white addicts. It’s time for this ridiculous disparity to go. Great job, Obama. No matter whatever the political consequences may be. I’ll take a president who stands by their principals for 4 years than one who plays politics for 8.
Celeste, the one thing you fail to take into account is cost. That’s where people like you lose people like me. Seems the president doesn’t want laws enforced either so to blame only “moneyed interests” seems kind of a narrow view of what’s taking place.
Obama does it for his voter base and his wrong headed idea that redistribution of wealth is good idea. How’s those actions any less “loathsome” than the people who benefit from an illegal workforce?
The high of “rock” cocaine is different than the high of powder cocaine and the violence that accompanied, for many years, the use of “rock” at the street level necessitated the sentencing.
Meth has taken over now so the sentence changing makes sense.
Sure Fire, I realize you’ll likely bring up AZ in response to what I’m about to say, but I think it’s a red herring.
In any case, I don’t see how Obama is enforcing our immigration laws any less than George Bush did. (
As much as I disliked Bush as a president, I think he was quite sane on immigration, and fully intended to push through reforms, while at the same time he would have tried to work with Mexico on the economics of the matter. He might have gotten something done on that front had he not gotten sidetracked with 9/11 and everything that came after. It’s a pity, because as a conservative, he could have done the sort of Nixon-in-China thing. But by the time he finally got to it, he’d lost both his will on it, and his political capital.
Even so, Bush was way better on immigration than Clinton. Obama has done neither much better than Bush, nor much worse.
Anyway, that’s my short answer to some of the aspects of issue you brought up. The rest I leave to y’all to discuss.
You guys are leaving out a very important faction of the immigration debate. You know who should be fighting for less immigration more than anyone else? The labor unions.
WHY? The old economic rule that stands fast, regardless of philosophy, ideology or political will. SUPPLY AND DEMAND.
Supply: With the economy in the toliet, the supply of jobs is at record lows.
Demand: Due to record immigration of unskilled laborers in the last two decades, the demand for jobs is at record highs.
Result: An employer can pay lower wages because of the amount of people needing that job.
The labor unions should be advocating the enforcement of immigration laws in order to limit the supply of labor, which in turn increases the demand for their member’s labor.
If the SEIU (with a largely unskilled labor force) really had their members best interests at heart, they more than anyone, would be speaking out against immigration. But their union leaders do the opposite.
They play politics.
Who suffers? Their membership.
Sure Fire, meth has been around for some time, and has been prevalent in rural America for 2 decades now. It’s nothing new.
SNS. it’s been prevalent a lot longer than that but over the last decade has taken over for cocaine as America’s drug of choice.
Celeste, new polices handed down by I.C.E. limit enforcement actions of their own agents further than anything done in the Bush years.
ATQ has it right on immigration. I’m not sure I agree with your take on the S.E.I.U. as unskilled laborers can earn only so much and thats their work force. Beacuse Hispanics and liberals of all colors have been in chrage of the union for so long the only politics they know are racial ones.
Since I was working meth about 30 years ago I’m wondering where Rob got his two decades info. Oh yeah, and it was around when I was in high school in the late 60’s and early 70’s as well.
Two decades, more made up stuff by our boy wonder.