AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. The Legislature and Rules for Energy Projects
Legislative panel rejects proposed energy project approval rules
by Garry Rayno, unionleader.com, October 15, 2015
CONCORD — A legislative committee told the Site Evaluation Committee Thursday to revise key sections of its proposed rules for approving major energy projects such as Northern Pass or the Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline.
During the last few sessions, lawmakers made major changes to the SEC and its evaluation process for energy projects, seeking greater public input and more explicit standards.
The committee worked for three years with stakeholders to develop the new rules that drew objections from energy industry and business representatives, local officials and activists, although the environmental community generally favored the proposals.
The SEC has 45 days to revise areas of concern raised by Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (JLCAR) members and the legislative panel has 50 days to make a decision on the revised plan.
Whether the Northern Pass transmission project that stretches from the Canadian border to Deerfield, or the Kinder Morgan pipeline along the state’s southern boundary, will be decided under the new rules, depends upon when the SEC begins the formal hearing process, according to Pamela Monroe, SEC administrator.
Applications may be filed for the projects, she explained, but under the statute, if the adjudicative process has not begun before the new rules are adopted, then they would apply, she said.
Business groups including the Business and Industry Association (BIA), called the rules too restrictive and predicted they would raise already higher-than-the-national-
“The BIA’s primary concern is the cost of electricity and New Hampshire’s economic future. We are very concerned that new energy project siting rules recommended by the Site Evaluation Committee for confirmation by JLCAR are overly burdensome, lengthen the process for filing, invite challenges and litigation, and may go beyond statutory authority,” said BIA president Jim Roche in a letter to the committee. “This is incredibly disconcerting to businesses, New Hampshire’s job creators. Rules for siting energy infrastructure projects in New Hampshire must be fair, balanced, clear and expeditious, not the reverse.”
Roche and several other business representatives at Thursday’s meeting cited the planned closing of the Pilgrim Station nuclear power plant in Massachusetts, saying additional generation will be needed.
But the representatives of the environmental community said they generally agree with the proposed rules.
Susan Arnold, representing several environmental groups, said they would like to see some revisions, but in general supported the plans.
“They provide important new concepts for the decision making process for the SEC,” Arnold said. “They are not perfect, but it is great progress.”
Several committee members cited several areas of concern raised by the Legislative Services staff that appear to be contrary to lawmakers’ intent, which were two new concepts, that the project had to provide a “net benefit” and “cumulative impacts” when there are other energy related projects in the same area.
The other major objection spelled out specific criteria for meeting the public interest threshold, which is new to SEC guidelines.
The legislative services staff flagged the three areas as not following legislative intent as the concepts were defeated or removed before legislation was approved or suggested the SEC overstepped its authority.
Sen. Dan Feltes, D-Concord, suggested changes that would do away with the specific guidelines and instead largely leave the judgment to the SEC.
Public Utilities Commission chair Martin Honigberg, who is also the SEC chair, defended the committee’s work, saying the legislature directed the members to revise those areas and develop more specific guidelines.
“It’s not a checklist,” Honigberg told JLCAR members, “it’s a complicated adjudicative process.”
Objections were raised that the rules allowed for eminent domain taking of private property, but Honigberg said state law forbids that and the reference is to the federal process.
Others concerns were raised about the SEC superseding local zoning ordinances and master plans, but others noted projects should be consistent with local land use policies.
He said after the hearing he would hold a SEC meeting and discuss what the members wanted to do to address the concerns.
The SEC could revise the rules to address the concerns, or make selective revisions.
The administrative rules committee can reject or approve the changes or ask for more revisions. State agencies can disregard the committee directions, and implement the rules but generally try to accommodate lawmakers.
During the last few sessions, lawmakers made major changes to the SEC and its evaluation process for energy projects, seeking greater public input and more explicit standards.
The committee worked for three years with stakeholders to develop the new rules that drew objections from energy industry and business representatives, local officials and activists, although the environmental community generally favored the proposals.
The SEC has 45 days to revise areas of concern raised by Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (JLCAR) members and the legislative panel has 50 days to make a decision on the revised plan.
Whether the Northern Pass transmission project that stretches from the Canadian border to Deerfield, or the Kinder Morgan pipeline along the state’s southern boundary, will be decided under the new rules, depends upon when the SEC begins the formal hearing process, according to Pamela Monroe, SEC administrator.
Applications may be filed for the projects, she explained, but under the statute, if the adjudicative process has not begun before the new rules are adopted, then they would apply, she said.
Business groups including the Business and Industry Association (BIA), called the rules too restrictive and predicted they would raise already higher-than-the-national-
“The BIA’s primary concern is the cost of electricity and New Hampshire’s economic future. We are very concerned that new energy project siting rules recommended by the Site Evaluation Committee for confirmation by JLCAR are overly burdensome, lengthen the process for filing, invite challenges and litigation, and may go beyond statutory authority,” said BIA president Jim Roche in a letter to the committee. “This is incredibly disconcerting to businesses, New Hampshire’s job creators. Rules for siting energy infrastructure projects in New Hampshire must be fair, balanced, clear and expeditious, not the reverse.”
Roche and several other business representatives at Thursday’s meeting cited the planned closing of the Pilgrim Station nuclear power plant in Massachusetts, saying additional generation will be needed.
But the representatives of the environmental community said they generally agree with the proposed rules.
Susan Arnold, representing several environmental groups, said they would like to see some revisions, but in general supported the plans.
“They provide important new concepts for the decision making process for the SEC,” Arnold said. “They are not perfect, but it is great progress.”
Several committee members cited several areas of concern raised by the Legislative Services staff that appear to be contrary to lawmakers’ intent, which were two new concepts, that the project had to provide a “net benefit” and “cumulative impacts” when there are other energy related projects in the same area.
The other major objection spelled out specific criteria for meeting the public interest threshold, which is new to SEC guidelines.
The legislative services staff flagged the three areas as not following legislative intent as the concepts were defeated or removed before legislation was approved or suggested the SEC overstepped its authority.
Sen. Dan Feltes, D-Concord, suggested changes that would do away with the specific guidelines and instead largely leave the judgment to the SEC.
Public Utilities Commission chair Martin Honigberg, who is also the SEC chair, defended the committee’s work, saying the legislature directed the members to revise those areas and develop more specific guidelines.
“It’s not a checklist,” Honigberg told JLCAR members, “it’s a complicated adjudicative process.”
Objections were raised that the rules allowed for eminent domain taking of private property, but Honigberg said state law forbids that and the reference is to the federal process.
Others concerns were raised about the SEC superseding local zoning ordinances and master plans, but others noted projects should be consistent with local land use policies.
He said after the hearing he would hold a SEC meeting and discuss what the members wanted to do to address the concerns.
The SEC could revise the rules to address the concerns, or make selective revisions.
The administrative rules committee can reject or approve the changes or ask for more revisions. State agencies can disregard the committee directions, and implement the rules but generally try to accommodate lawmakers.
2. Benefit Change Vote Pushed Back
Lawmakers delay vote on retiree health benefit changes
by the Associated Press, seacoastonline.com, October 16, 2015
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Lawmakers are again pushing off making changes to state retiree health benefits, a move needed to close a $10.6 million hole in the benefit program.
The joint legislative fiscal committee was set to vote on changes Friday, but delayed it until Tuesday. They previously pushed off the decision in September.
Of the state's 12,000 retirees, about 8,800 are over 65 and the rest are under 65. Those older than 65 do not pay premium contributions, but those under age 65 pay 12.5 percent.
One proposal to close the funding hole is to raise the contribution for people under 65 to 15 percent and to increase prescription drug copays for all retirees.
State retirees who packed the committee room last month say the benefits were promised to them and shouldn't be changed.
3. Improving the Budget Process
Budgeting for a Better Tomorrow Today
by New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute, nhfpi.org, October 16, 2015
Given the amount of time required to reach a final agreement on New Hampshire’s budget this year, you could be excused for wanting to put off thoughts about appropriations, revenue projections, or surplus statements for a little while longer. In reality, though, it’s never too soon to consider ways to refine the process by which the Granite State sets its fiscal priorities, particularly since a pair of reports released earlier this week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) suggest that there’s plenty of room for improvement.
CBPP’s first report, Better State Budget Planning Can Help Build Healthier Economies, finds that New Hampshire is among the roughly half of states that fail to follow several key practices in formulating their regular budgets. More specifically, the report recommends that states:
-Project revenues for three or more years beyond the upcoming fiscal year;
-Use a “consensus” approach to completing revenue projections, one in which executive branch officials and members of the legislature all agree to a single set of revenue estimates; and,
-Prepare “current service” budgets – that is, budgets that estimate the cost of maintaining the existing level of programs and services — that extend beyond the budget under consideration.
As CBPP observes, such practices can “increase states’ ability to plan for the future [and boost] the chances they will have the resources to invest in schools and other building blocks of strong economic growth…” New Hampshire, by neglecting these practices, may be eroding the foundation on which long-term prosperity can rest.
In a companion report, Better Cost Estimates, Better Budgets, CBPP examines the practices states follow in drafting and issuing “fiscal notes,” which are assessments of the impact of legislative proposals on state revenues and expenditures. Among the best practices CBPP highlights for ensuring that policymakers and the public have the information they need to weigh changes in law are:
-Preparing fiscal notes for all relevant legislation;
-Ensuring that fiscal notes are prepared by a professional, reliable, non-partisan agency;
-Including the impact of proposed changes in law beyond the next one or two years;
-Updating fiscal notes throughout the legislative process; and,
-Posting fiscal notes online.
New Hampshire already does some of these things well. For instance, the Office of the Legislative Budget Assistant, which is charged in law with the preparation of all fiscal notes, enjoys a well-earned reputation among policymakers of both parties for its impartiality. New Hampshire does come up short in other areas, though. Many fiscal notes for changes in tax policy indicate that the effect of such changes are “indeterminable,” while some fiscal notes are not available in a timely manner. As an example, a fiscal note for SB 9, a central element of the final FY 2016-2017 budget agreement, is not currently available via the legislature’s website.
One overarching theme that unites CBPP’s two reports is the importance of longer-term thinking in setting fiscal policy. Indeed, one refrain that was heard repeatedly in response to concerns about the future consequences of business tax cuts was that New Hampshire traditionally does not consider the impact of tax and spending changes beyond the upcoming biennium. Of course, simply because New Hampshire has followed one approach in the past does not mean it necessarily should do the same in the future. New Hampshire could and should institute reforms that foster a more comprehensive accounting of the costs it will encounter in the years ahead and the resources that will be available to meet them. CBPP’s latest reports offer valuable insights into which practices could be improved and how.
4. Newest Primary Poll
Poll finds Clinton, Sanders in dead heat in N.H.
by Stephanie Ebbert, bostonglobe.com, October 16, 2015
After a commanding performance in this week’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton reclaimed some of the ground she’d lost to Senator Bernie Sanders over the summer, leaving the two candidates in a statistical dead heat in New Hampshire, a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll found.
The survey, conducted Wednesday and Thursday, showed Clinton pulling ahead of Sanders, 37 percent to 35 percent. The poll of 500 likely voters in the Democratic primary had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Among voters who watched the debate, Clinton opened up a 5-point lead over Sanders. And despite a pushback from Sanders’ fervid supporters who thought his strong debate performance was being overlooked by the media, poll respondents overwhelmingly agreed that Clinton won the debate.
Fifty-four percent of respondents said they thought Clinton won the debate to 24 percent for Sanders.
“I think Hillary was so strong and so firm and so certain and so educated in her answers that I was very impressed with her as a candidate,” said Carolyn Marvin, 73, of Portsmouth, N.H. – who nonetheless is a solid vote for Sanders. “But if it’s going to be a Democratic candidate, I think she did amazingly well.”
Still, it was remarkable that Clinton needed to make up ground at all with Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist whose foray into the Democratic primary was initially greeted with bemusement.
Clinton, the former first lady, US senator and secretary of state, had long been presumed to be the Democrats’ nominee-in-waiting.
Suffolk’s last New Hampshire survey of the Democratic primary field in June showed Clinton leading Sanders 41 percent to 31 percent. But Sanders’ popularity surged over the summer at the same time Clinton was dogged by revelations about her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. By August, polls began to show him overtaking Clinton in New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation primary.
This data suggests Clinton voters may be coming home, said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “Everybody talks about Bill Clinton being the Comeback Kid, but she’s trying to become the Comeback Kid here and reclaim what she already had,” he said.
Respondents to the poll -- nearly 62 percent -- said the email issue does not bother them, echoing Sanders’ frustration when the candidate atypically rushed to a rival’s defense during the debate.
“I’m really just sick of hearing about it,” said Sarah Stowe, 39, a Conway, N.H., mother of six who said Clinton’s emails are her own business. “I probably know less about it because I ignore it.”
Those surveyed responded almost exactly the same way to the email question, regardless of whether they had watched the debate. The percentage of voters who are troubled by the story dipped two points, to 36 percent, since June, when Suffolk asked the same question.
[To see the full poll results, click on the following link:
AND NATIONALLY
5. His True Colors
“Moderate” No More
by CAP Action War Room, thinkprogress.org, October 15, 2015
John Kasich’s New Economic Plan Is Another Proposal To Favor The Wealthiest At The Expense Of Working Families
Today, Ohio Governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich released his five-point “action plan” for “reclaiming our power, money, and influence from Washington.” Though light on detail, the plan proposes a number of spending and tax cuts that, coupled with pledges to gut business and energy regulations, Kasich claims will give our nation the “resources to secure our nation, strengthen our families and communities, and reach our God-given potential.”
If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is: While the media has made a big deal of Kasich’salleged status as the “moderate” in the Republican field, Kasich’s plan demonstrates that he is in lock-step with the rest of the Republican field—pushing policies that will favor the wealthy at the expense of working and middle-class families. Here’s a closer look at what his plan will actually do:
- Freeze spending on programs that provide opportunity and economic security to working and middle-class families. Kasich’s plan calls for an eight-year freeze on non-defense discretionary spending, or the funding for core government programs that support working and middle-class families. His budget plan appears to assume that spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act would be eliminated, but because inflation keeps increasing and the population is growing, his proposal to “freeze” the programs for eight years would effectively mean cutting their funding. Non-defense discretionary funding supports a very wide variety of programs including medical care for veterans, disaster prevention and relief, support for K-12 education for low-income students and students with disabilities, job training, Pell Grants, housing and food assistance, and many more. Cutting these programs is not good for the economy: according to a recent CAP report, bolstering non-defense discretionary programs like those targeted by Republican cuts will help families struggling to climb the economic ladder.
- Increase defense spending without increasing funding for programs for families. Kasich’s fiscal “restraint” would not apply to defense spending, since he pledges to raise it by 17 percent between 2017 and 2025. Increases in defense spending will do little to help families who have not shared the benefits of the recent economic recovery. By calling for defense spending increases while allowing other programs supporting working and middle-class families to languish, Kasich is effectively parroting GOP Congressional orthodoxy on the budget, which has called for cuts to non-defense discretionary spending while increasing defense spending.
- Provide tax giveaways to the wealthy. Kasich’s plan includes a number ofchanges to the tax code that would principally benefit the wealthy, including lowering the top tax rate to 28 percent from the current rate of 39.6 percent, eliminating the estate tax, dropping the top rates on long-term capital gains to 15 percent, and cutting the corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to 25 percent. This is a huge boon to the wealthy: only the wealthiest 0.2 percent of estates pay any estate tax and the wealthiest benefit overwhelmingly from corporate and capital gain tax cuts, which far outweigh his small boost to the Earned Income Tax Credit. These effects come as no surprise since, as Governor of Ohio, Kasich pushed a tax agenda that gave tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of working and middle-class households.
- Slash health care benefits for low-income families. Kasich’s plan calls forconverting Medicaid into a block grant, an idea long supported by the GOP-led Congress and by Mitt Romney during his unsuccessful 2012 presidential bid. Block granting Medicaid would cripple a vital program that in 2014 provided health coverage to 80 million Americans. Funding for block grants increases at a much slower rate than the growth in health care costs, so Kasich’s block grant proposal effectively increasingly squeezes Medicaid with each passing year. The Kaiser Family Foundation projects that block granting Medicaid could throw 14 to 20 million people off of Medicaid.BOTTOM LINE: Kasich’s economic plan is the clearest proof yet that calling Kasich the Republican presidential field’s “moderate” is misleading: his plan completely adopts conservative Republican policies and attempts to pass these ideas off as mainstream. The budget, tax, and health care ideas in the Kasich plan are nothing more than another attempt to give the wealthy yet another boost at the expense of working and middle-class families.
6. Hillary, Bernie, and the Banks
Democrats, Republicans and Wall Street Tycoons
by Paul Krugman, nytimes.com, October 16, 2015
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders had an argument about financial regulation during Tuesday’s debate — but it wasn’t about whether to crack down on banks. Instead, it was about whose plan was tougher. The contrast with Republicans like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, who have pledged to reverse even the moderate financial reforms enacted in 2010, couldn’t be stronger.
For what it’s worth, Mrs. Clinton had the better case. Mr. Sanders has been focused on restoring Glass-Steagall, the rule that separated deposit-taking banks from riskier wheeling and dealing. And repealing Glass-Steagall was indeed a mistake. But it’s not what caused the financial crisis, which arose instead from “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers, which don’t take deposits but can nonetheless wreak havoc when they fail. Mrs. Clinton has laid out a plan to rein in shadow banks; so far, Mr. Sanders hasn’t.
But is Mrs. Clinton’s promise to take a tough line on the financial industry credible? Or would she, once in the White House, return to the finance-friendly, deregulatory policies of the 1990s?
Well, if Wall Street’s attitude and its political giving are any indication, financiers themselves believe that any Democrat, Mrs. Clinton very much included, would be serious about policing their industry’s excesses. And that’s why they’re doing all they can to elect a Republican.
To understand the politics of financial reform and regulation, we have to start by acknowledging that there was a time when Wall Street and Democrats got on just fine. Robert Rubin of Goldman Sachs became Bill Clinton’s most influential economic official; big banks had plenty of political access; and the industry by and large got what it wanted, including repeal of Glass-Steagall.
This cozy relationship was reflected in campaign contributions, with the securities industry splitting its donations more or less evenly between the parties, and hedge funds actually leaning Democratic.
But then came the financial crisis of 2008, and everything changed.
Many liberals feel that the Obama administration was far too lenient on the financial industry in the aftermath of the crisis. After all, runaway banks brought the economy to its knees, causing millions to lose their jobs, their homes, or both. What’s more, banks themselves were bailed out, at potentially large expense to taxpayers (although in the end the costs weren’t very large). Yet nobody went to jail, and the big banks weren’t broken up.
But the financiers didn’t feel grateful for getting off so lightly. On the contrary, they were and remain consumed with “Obama rage.”
Partly this reflects hurt feelings. By any normal standard, President Obama has been remarkably restrained in his criticisms of Wall Street. But with great wealth comes great pettiness: These are men accustomed to obsequious deference, and they took even mild comments about bad behavior by some of their number as an unforgivable insult.
Furthermore, while the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill enacted in 2010 was much weaker than many reformers had wanted, it was far from toothless. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has proved highly effective, and the “too big to fail” subsidy appears to have mostly gone away. That is, big financial institutions that would probably be bailed out in a future crisis no longer seem to be able to raise funds more cheaply than smaller players, perhaps because “systemically important” institutions are now subject to extra regulations, including the requirement that they set aside more capital.
While this is good news for taxpayers and the economy, financiers bitterly resent any constraints on their ability to gamble with other people’s money, and they are voting with their checkbooks. Financial tycoons loom large among the tiny group of wealthy families that is dominating campaign finance this election cycle — a group that overwhelmingly supports Republicans. Hedge funds used to give the majority of their contributions to Democrats, but since 2010 they have flipped almost totally to the G.O.P.
As I said, this lopsided giving is an indication that Wall Street insiders take Democratic pledges to crack down on bankers’ excesses seriously. And it also means that a victorious Democrat wouldn’t owe much to the financial industry.
If a Democrat does win, does it matter much which one it is? Probably not. Any Democrat is likely to retain the financial reforms of 2010, and seek to stiffen them where possible. But major new reforms will be blocked until and unless Democrats regain control of both houses of Congress, which isn’t likely to happen for a long time.
In other words, while there are some differences in financial policy between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders, as a practical matter they’re trivial compared with the yawning gulf with Republicans.
7. Common Core Advancing Nationwide
How Common Core quietly won the war
The standards that naysayers love to call 'Obamacore' have become the reality on the ground for roughly 40 million students.
by Kimberly Hefling, politico.com, October 12, 2015
Note to 2016 GOP contenders: The Common Core has won the war.
Republican presidential candidates are still bashing the divisive K-12 standards. Donald Trump recently called the Common Core a “complete disaster,” and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz proclaimed they should be abolished — along with the Education Department.
But it’s too late. Ask most any third grader: Just as Common Core and rigorous standards cheerleader-in-chief, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, prepares to step down, the standards that naysayers love to call “Obamacore” have become the reality on the ground for roughly 40 million students — or about four out of every five public school kids.
The math and English standards designed to develop critical thinking have been guiding classrooms for years now, even as the political fight wages on in statehouses and on the campaign trail: Many of today’s textbooks, workbooks, software and tests are designed to teach the oft-bashed academic standards and measure whether students are meeting them. The federal Education Department gave them a big boost, but never required them, nor can it.
In more than half of all states, millions of students took new standardized tests last spring based on the standards, and the expected uproar over these test scores hasn't materialized. The conspiracy theories about how Common Core would require monitoring kids via iris scans, force teachers to use porn to help students learn to read or ban teaching cursive have largely quieted.
After years of hand-wringing, very few of the 45 states that fully adopted the standards have attempted a clean break — and those that did found it wasn’t easy to do. In Indiana, where Republican Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill last year to ditch the standards, even Common Core haters have said the new ones are just the same standards by a different name.
“The few states that have rolled it back, when you look at what they’ve actually done, the standards they are using are 95 percent the Core standards. It’s what we know needs to be taught,” Melinda Gates said last week. She’s the wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose foundation has been heavily involved in promoting and implementing the standards.
As Common Core becomes more commonplace in public schools (and in many Catholic schools), some prominent Republicans concede they've lost their battle. Take former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona. As governor, she signed an executive order banning the use of the words Common Core by state agencies, though the standards themselves were still firmly in place. She wrote in a recent column on the Fox News website that implementation of the standards is “succeeding.”
Outspoken Common Core critic Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute agrees that the standards are likely here to stay — though that won’t stop his ongoing assault on the Obama administration using billions in incentives to nudge states to adopt the standards. What might change, he said, is how much states are held accountable for students' mastery of the standards, but “my sense is that most states are going to officially stay with Common Core or something like it.”
Karen Nussle, director of the Collaborative for Student Success, a group that helps lead the public relations charge in support of the standards, said the big fight over the standards is “a bit in the rearview mirror” as the conflict shifts to lesser skirmishes.
Standards have come under reconsideration in many states, yet some reevaluations have had a surprise conclusion — ringing support for the Common Core. That was the case for a public review in the deep red state of Mississippi. Kentucky also found wide support for the standards during a similar review.
In New York, where the uproar has been intense, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently declared the implementation of the standards had failed. But even as he ordered a review and promised reform, he didn’t throw out Common Core.
More than 40 states are sticking with Common Core though several have ditched the tests based on the standards developed for groups of states with the help of $360 million in federal dollars. The new tests adopted in Ohio, Arkansas, Wisconsin and elsewhere, however, are still designed to measure learning under Common Core. Many states are taking more subtle steps, slipping off the now-toxic Common Core name and giving the standards names like Missouri Learning Standards and, in North Carolina, Standard Course of Study.
Parents in some pockets of the country are joining the so-called opt-out movement: Large numbers of students in New York and Washington skipped exams based on the Common Core this spring. Oregon passed a law expanding parents’ right to keep their kids from taking tests without penalty.
Some states are also tussling over how to set student scores. Ohio spurned the general benchmarks for the PARCC exam being used in about a dozen states, giving students who are “nearing expectations” according to PARCC guidelines a boost and calling them “proficient” instead. In Florida, Common Core supporters are running online ads calling on state officials to set a high bar in interpreting scores — even though that means more students would be labeled as failing this year.
But Louisiana state Superintendent John White, a standards supporter, said progress has been made on the Common Core even if states like his choose new tests, making it more complicated to compare how students in different states are doing. “States have adopted higher standards, states have tests that measure those standards and they are comparable,” White said in August.
Though they are embedded in the classroom, that doesn’t mean the Common Core standards are popular, as recent polling shows. One dad had a viral hit on Facebook when he wrote a fake check, full of inscrutable X’s and O’s and little boxes, to mock Common Core math lessons.
So many politicians continue trying to capitalize on that sentiment. Several GOP governors in the 2016 pack have flipped their positions on Common Core, including Chris Christie of New Jersey, Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. Jindal has been fighting the federal government over the standards in court. He recently lost a second lawsuit when a judge issued an order that says the standards don’t represent a federally imposed curriculum. Jindal said he will appeal.
Only Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush haven’t entirely renounced their previous embrace of Common Core. Kasich declared at an education forum in New Hampshire in August that, “I’m not going to change my position because there’s four people in the front row yelling at me.” Bush has grown increasingly tepid, saying he doesn’t believe the federal government should be involved. “If people don’t like Common Core, that’s fine,” Bush said at the same event. “Just make sure your standards are higher than they were before.”
Greg Fischer, the Democratic mayor of Louisville, Ky., said the war of words over standards has been a distraction.
“You’ve got a few political people talking about it but most people just want their kids going to a good school,” Fischer said at a recent POLITICO forum.
And the Common Core fits the bill for many principals and teachers. They find big advantages in having shared standards. One popular aspect is the ability to more easily exchange lessons and ideas on sites like ShareMyLesson.com and Pinterest, where tens of thousands of teachers have looked for lesson plans.
Jayne Ellspermann, the principal at West Port High School in Ocala, Fla., said teachers in her school are already seeing an improvement in the writing and analysis abilities of students who have been learning under the standards for about five years. Her own grandson benefited as a first grader, she said, when he wrote a Thanksgiving report about why he wouldn’t want to sail on the Mayflower. He built his argument on stories the class read that described rotten food and abysmal sanitary facilities. Before Common Core, she said, he likely would have just memorized the date the ship sailed and made a hat.
Principal Alan Tenreiro at Cumberland High School in Rhode Island said he explains to parents that the goal of Common Core is for their kids to read like detectives and write like investigative reporters. Math, he says, is no longer about just plugging in numbers.
“I find the standards to just be more focused,” Tenreiro said. “They are going into greater depth for students.”
8. Democratic Socialism
Bernie's Definition of Democratic Socialism Is What Most Americans Yearn For
He flubbed it in the debate. But look at what he's said.
by Steven Rosenfeld, alternet.org, October 14, 2015
In Tuesday night’s debate of Democrats seeking presidency, Sen. Bernie Sanders didn’t do the best job saying what it meant to be a democratic socialist when pressed by CNN moderator Anderson Cooper.
“Senator Sanders, a Gallup poll says half the country would not put a socialist in the White House," Cooper began. "You call yourself a democratic socialist. How can any kind of socialist win a general election?”
“Well, we’re gonna win because first, we’re gonna explain what democratic socialism is,” Sanders tartly replied. “And what democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent – almost – own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent." Moreover, every other "major country" considers health care a right, and offers paid family and medical leave, he said. And Americans should learn from "countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway."
Though the audience applauded, this was not Bernie’s best answer.
Not only did it give Hillary Clinton an opening to say that while she agreed with his economic critique, that the U.S. was not Denmark but a greater country—belittling him. But his reply delved into details instead of more clearly stating his core principles.
But in 1988, when Bernie was first running for the U.S. House, he made a cassette recording where one side featured folk songs that he "sang" and the B side was filled with personal reflections, beginning with a revealing explanation of what socialism means to him. It starts with a vision for a much better world, living and participating in a real democracy, and controling one's economic destiny.
Bernie didn’t use any of these lines in Tuesday’s debate, but perhaps going forward he will—as his core philosophy has not wavered. Here, in its entirety, is what he said:
What Does Socialism Mean?
“What does it mean to be a socialist?” Bernie starts. “It means a lot of things. I think first thought, and most important, it means that you have a vision that’s very different from what the status quo politicians have, and essentially, what it means is that you have a feeling that this world can be radically, radically different from what it is right now, and that what's going on in front of your eyes is crazy, it’s not real, it’s a phase of history that needn't exist and that someday will pass.
“You really can almost take it seriously that you live in a world where it is considered normal that people go around killing each other. You turn on the television, there they are shooting each other. You turn on the television, there you have people who are living out on the streets or in some places on this planet starving to death, while at the same time you have other people who have billions and billions of dollars. More wealth that they’re going to be able to use in a million lifetimes.
“The basic insanity of that, the immorality of that to me is so abhorrent that my feeling is that somebody, hopefully, in years to come people look back on this era and say, ‘How could it be? How could people allow other people to be hungry, starve to death, they having nothing when other people had tremendous wealth?”
“Also what socialism means for me is very similar to what it meant for Eugene Debs, and it really means nothing more than democracy. It basically means that human beings are entitled to have the inalienable right to control their own lives, and that means that when you go to work you're not working for somebody else who could fire you tomorrow because they don't like the way you comb your hair or you don’t come to work on Sunday or, for any reason, whether they can move the factory that you’ve worked in for 30 years out of your town because they can make more money going to Mexico.
“It means democracy, which means much more than just having the right to vote once every four years. People think, ‘Well, we live in a democratic society.’ In some degree, we do. We have some democratic rights, but having the freedom to vote for [presidential candidates] Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale once every four years isn’t what democracy is about
“It essentially means that to as great a degree as possible, human beings can control their lives, their workplace, their environment, and the truth is that in a nation of 230 million people in a complex society, no one quite knows how that's going to work. I mean, that’s not easy.
“I think we know that there aren’t necessarily simplistic type of solutions, but when I look at the world today and you find that half the people don’t even vote anymore. They’ve given up on the political system. The overwhelming majority of poor people don't participate. That people feel themselves impotent, they feel themselves powerless.
“They vote for the Reagans or the Mondales because of 30-second commercials; that the politicians in our country today are bought and sold as commodities. They’re sold on the TV as somebody who has run for office that you know that most of what people do in a campaign is figure out how they can raise money from wealthy people in order to pay for these 30 seconds. That’s not democracy.
“It’s not democracy when the media in this country is owned by gigantic corporations who define and shape the issues for you, and politicians are puppets sitting around thinking, “God, how do I get my message on 27 seconds that they’re going to give me on the television screen, maybe if I’m lucky?”
“The truth is you can’t explain complex issues in 27 seconds, but the people who own the TV stations could care less because their function and their desire is not to see people communicate with each other, not to see really real discussion of the issues of the day, but to make money.
“That’s basically what socialism means to me. Democracy, participation, the right of people to own the world in which they live in rather than be slaves of other people.”
The next 2016 Democratic Party presidential debate will be Saturday, November 14, in Des Moines, Iowa. The other four debates will be in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Florida.
FINALLY
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