The Poor Poverty Line

     Government officials tell us how many people are living at or below the poverty line, but they don’t tell us how low the poverty line is. A more appropriate name would be the “near starvation line.” The federal poverty line is based on a formula arrived at in 1963, which set the poverty line at three times the annual cost of food under a “low-cost budget,” without considering housing, fuel costs, or child care costs, all of which have escalated substantially in the past forty-nine years.

The Republican primary: garbage in/garbage out

     In his appreciation of the late Lucio Magri, the Italian Marxist and founder of the exemplary Il Manifesto newspaper, Perry Anderson tells the story in the most recent New Left Review of the trashing a young Magri took from Italian Communist Party elder Enrico Berlinguer for a speech Magri wrote that bordered on the substantive.

     “Magri,” Berlinguer said, “you have yet to learn that in politics one needs the courage of banality.”

Bonus pay for teachers: An ideology, not a solution

The New York Times front-page story extolling bonuses for "highly effective teachers" repeats claims about teacher quality and retention that are both highly inaccurate and widely-promoted, especially by those advancing "free market" policies in education. This piece marks a low in the NYT's journalistic standards in reporting on education.

How school reform gets hijacked by the Billionaire Boys Club: A cautionary tale for the Left

A powerful new video, "The truth behind Stand for Children," tells a cautionary tale for the Left.   Even if you already understand how charter schools have become a vehicle for destruction of public education, take five minutes to watch this concise analysis of how "Stand for Children," which began as a grassroots organization of parents fighting for increased school funding and reform,  was taken over by the most powerful educational lobby in the world, the Billionaire Boys Club.

Occupy Wall Street and the Democrats

New York magazine published an article called "2012=1968?"  Author John Heilemann implies that Occupy Wall Street should forge the "working alliance between Democrats and the movement" that Todd Gitlin hopes for. But in my view this alliance would be a suicidal disaster; it would rob the movement of its potential to spark real change.

Credit cards substitute for student ID's: Next up in the US?

Thanks to a recent blog at the website of a UK teacher union activist, we know may be coming down the road in the corporatization of US public higher education.

Social Security and the 1%

     New Politics’ co-editor, Betty Mandell, recently championed Social Security as a fundamental universal right rejecting any recourse to selectivity through means testing. This is the first line in any robust defense of this “entitlement,” the right to live in dignity with a modicum of comfort in retirement. What is upheld in this is the fundamental distinction between a social insurance program of deferred benefits and a social assistance program.

Occupy Rome

     I am in Rome for a one-week vacation. Yesterday I was traveling on the bus with a friend, just having finished a visit to the beautiful San Giovanni in Laterino church. We were on our way to another church, when I saw out the bus window a large group of people, an array of tents, and at the top of the steps of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni a speaker at the microphone. I knew there was an occupation going on in Rome, so I jumped off the bus and ran over. Sure enough, it was the occupation.

Welcome to the Occupation

[reprinted by permission from Inside Higher Ed]

“Bill O’Reilly has connected the dots to identify me as being behind the occupation,” said Frances Fox Piven. “I’m sorry to say that’s not true.”

Why Occupy Cincinnati? Because We’re a Microcosm of the Country

     The Occupy Wall Street protest now involves thousands and similar protests are taking place in dozens of cities and towns across the country. But why here in Cincinnati?