The Shame Of Underfunding Education To Make Fat Cats Even Fatter

A new cartoon by Suzanna Lasker, Maine artist and activist, depicts a woman watching a wealthy weapons manufacturer running away with a big sack full of public tax dollars. The man looks smug while the woman and the child clinging to her look sad and anxious.

As well they should be. 

The legislature in our state is poised to consider a bill to make sure that General Dynamics' Bath Iron Work shipyard can continue feasting at the public trough. (Not the workers, though. They just accepted a contract freezing their wages for the next four years.) Plenty of Democrats intend to vote for a bill to excuse GD/BIW from $55 million of their state taxes over the next 20 years.

Meanwhile the legislature has never honored its own commitment plus a subsequent referendum instructing them to fund public education at the 55% level, with the remainder made up by local property taxes in the towns where the schools are. Currently the state's level of support is 47%.

They have also infamously not honored a citizen referendum passed last year to put funds directly into K-12 education raised by a 3% surtax on Mainers in the top 2% income bracket.

In my tiny, very poor school district our annual budget is roughly $11 million. The superintendent let the board know recently that, due to a shortfall in the contribution from the state for school year '18-19, we need to cut the budget by around $750,000 in order to keep local taxes from going through the roof.

My district has precious little for a tax base besides residential. A few of our towns have a couple of businesses that employ people full time like a wooden flooring mill and a concrete supplier; the town my little preK-5 school is in has a store, a laundromat, two diners, a nail salon and...that's about it.

Outsourcing manufacturing to nations where wages are low and worker protection laws are even lower has shuttered all the mills that used to make cloth, paper and shoes. And with them went the taxes they once paid.

The town in my district with the most wealth is located around beautiful Embden Pond, and the properties there -- mostly waterfront -- are taxed at a rate that has driven several efforts to secede from the district, as yet unsuccessful.

Banner: ARRT!

Last week two teachers came to the principal in tears. A Kindergarten student had announced that she would be unable to come to school the following day because her dad had to work to get money to buy the family some food. Her classroom teacher had told me back in the fall that she thought the child's family suffered from food insecurity. We can address this problem for preK-12 because our district is poor enough to qualify for federal aid that feeds everyone who wants it breakfast and lunch every day.

We also have a food pantry coordinated by our overworked school social workers (we have two serving four buildings), and a grant supplies all elementary classrooms with a fresh fruit or vegetable at snack time 3 days a week. It used to be 5 days a week but food prices rose and the grant funding did not.

But what about snow days, when children cannot come and eat at school?

And how cold are they in households with a choice between heating and eating? One little boy who moved frequently told his 1st grade teacher that they were about to move again because his family had been sleeping in an unheated camper in November, and it was getting too cold to stay.

Another 1st grader has been living all winter in a trailer with a roof that leaks. Her mom has told the teacher the children will be leaving our school soon as they have a chance to move in with an uncle who has a place to live in another town.

Poverty and a low level of education are closely correlated, by the way.

These are examples of the 20,000 children growing up in deep poverty as a subset of the 43,000 in families with incomes below the federal poverty line (which is very low to begin with). These statistics stemming from U.S. Census data are frequently ignored or disputed by Maine's corporate "news" sources.

Right wing hate mongers will blame the adults for their poverty. Many, many adults in my area suffer what have been called the diseases of despair: depression, anxiety, addiction and suicide. I know five and six year olds that have already lost one or both parents to a drug overdose. Many are being raised by their grandparents.

General Dynamics, on the other hand, pays its CEO $21 million a year. It has spent $9 billion buying back its own stocks to build value in the shares its top executives receive fat bonuses for increasing. And things are about to get even better: CEO Novakovich recently told shareholders in a conference call that she regarded the federal tax bonanza for wealthy corporations as "a happy event."


It is shameful to underfund public education for children in poverty while handing out tax bonuses to wealthy corporations.


It is not what the people want, but their representatives are already bought and sold by lobbyists for those same corporations.

The corporate media are in on the deal, too. They have made sure to run lots of coverage of proposed tax giveaway in a favorable light. It's about jobs, you see, because GD/BIW threatens to close the shipyard and throw 5,000 or so people out of work if they don't get what they are demanding.

A friend who's on an extended hunger strike against this bill has described Maine as a corporate colony. This excellent piece by investigative reporter Alex Nunes elaborates on how that works: "Bruce Gagnon Is Right; Maine Has Been Outsourced To Bath Iron Works."

My husband Mark will be back in the halls of the legislature with Bruce and other dedicated souls next week, hoping to shame self-described progressive Democrats and maybe some Independents into voting no on LD 1781 corporate welfare for GD/BIW. Republicans are probably a lost cause because they have watched too much Fox News claiming that trickle down economics works, but my friends will lobby them anyway. 

Here's the message I sent my rep and state senator yesterday. I didn't bother telling them about child poverty in Maine as they are both GOP right wingers who blame the victims of capitalism's exploitation.

Graphic: Andrew Watkins

Dear Rep. Farrin and Sen. Whittemore, 

I hope you can find the time to read the article below about General Dynamics, parent company of Bath Iron Works. 

It seems to me that a corporation that has over $3 billion in profits per year and can afford over $9 billion in stock buybacks is in great financial shape.
I urge you to vote against this unnecessary corporate hand out. General Dynamics/BIW does not need $55 million from the taxpayers of Maine. Use the money to fix our roads and bridges instead! 

Please write back and tell me how you intend to vote on LD 1781. 

Thanks,Lisa Savage 

Defense firms spend big on lucrative stock buybacks (Providence Journal, 11/3/17)

The Maine People's Alliance, a lobbying group for Democrats in Maine, has declined to come out against the bill even though they supposedly stand for funding social needs. Their former executive Ryan Tipping now co-chairs the taxation committee, and he voted ought to pass last week after describing how squeamish he was at doing so. They all get their campaign funds from the same corporations, laundered through PACs that make the origin of the cash difficult to trace.

The shame of underfunding education while using public funds to make fat cats even fatter should deter legislators from voting for LD 1781.

Unfortunately, most of them have put themselves into a self-serving bubble that is beyond shame. But as Stormy Daniels famously said, "Karma will always bite you in the ass."

War Profiteers Winning In Afghanistan, School Kids Losing In USA

The announcement that more resources would pour into the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan confirms that, no matter who is in the White House, war profiteers are in the driver's seat of U.S. government. Photo: TheNewsDoctors.com

It's no surprise that the swamp got the demagogue with bad hair to embrace imperial overreach and come out as a supporter of ramping up the 16 year war in Afghanistan.

War profiteers like Erik Prince of Blackwater -- which made a bundle on the U.S. war in Iraq -- are insiders in a regime that has incorporated ever more military personnel into supposedly civilian posts like Chief of Staff. War profiteers like Lockheed meanwhile pour millions of dollars a month into lobbying members of Congress who are alleged to represent the people.

How to fund these long, expensive, designed not to be winnable wars?

A recent action alert from my union, the National Education Association, gives a hint:

The FY 2018 education funding bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee recently is a frightening read in its disregard for the welfare of the millions of students who attend public schools, and the educators who teach in them. 

The House spending bill:

• Cuts education spending by $2.4 billion.

• Completely eliminates Title II (within ESSA), which funds class-size reduction, professional development, and more.

• Slashes 21st Century Community Learning Centers that provide afterschool services to students most in need.

• Fails to increase funding for Title I, despite record numbers of low-income students in need of the services it provides.

Third grade teacher Teresa Danks made international news this summer by literally begging for the $2,000 or so she spends annually in her classroom. She's been a teacher in for decades and her annual salary in Oklahoma is around $35,000. She says: “I want the proper tools to do my job well. I wouldn’t ask somebody to build my house with a spoon.”

I've objected to U.S. imperial wars on the basis that they're morally wrong, that they're racist, that they churn out tons of carbon pollution, that they harm or kill soldiers and their families, and that we can't afford to pay for them.

"Drug War? American Troops Are Protecting Afghan Opium. U.S. Occupation Leads to All-Time High Heroin Production" Globalresearch.ca

I could also add that the occupation of Afghanistan specifically is fueling the U.S. heroin crisis by making the byproduct of opium poppies cheap and readily available (ka-ching goes the CIA cash register). 

All these pleas have fallen on deaf ears. There is no reason to believe that the militaristic cabal brought the demagogue with bad hair to heel will listen to the voice of the people.

My government no longer represents me. But it hasn't succeeded in silencing me yet, and so as another school year begins -- when hungry children who need sneakers and backpacks and a safe place out of the weather come trundling back to school -- I say:

BRING OUR WAR $$ HOME!

School Funding Crisis Pits Local Taxpayers Against Neighbors

Last week I attended the second public meeting on the budget for my small, rural school district. The previous public meeting had produced a budget to send to referendum by the slim margin of four votes, and it failed to pass at the polls by three votes. So, we were back for round two.

My school board had labored mightily to juggle the effects of sharp reductions in the state subsidy for K-12 education, but not so mightily that they were willing to take a hard look at what they spend on sports -- about $800,000 out of $10 million by my reckoning.

The budget they sent to voters had hefty increases for the one affluent town in our district that centers on a scenic pond, and moderate increases for the rest of us. My husband figured our property tax bill will rise by about $100 if the current budget makes it.

The revised budget being presented at the meeting had been reduced by a mere $25,000 due to health insurance costs a little below projections thanks to the collective bargaining power of the teachers union versus Anthem.

Photo credit: Town of Chebeaugue (an island in Maine with similar participatory democracy in place).

Our three town selectmen -- really, all women -- were at the public meeting to try and reduce the impact of the school budget on town finances. We sat with them in a row of folding chairs as two of them are old friends of ours. One of their husbands used to be our school board chair during the years when their kids were still in school. He’s the only chair who’s ever had the cojones to propose cutting the sports budget to make ends meet for education.

He was angrily shouted down as most people run for school board for one of two reasons: making sure their children’s sports team receive adequate attention, or trying to keep taxes down. The former group tends to endorse the budget while the latter group always feels it is too high. Two of the current board members actually voted no on their own budget, a protest vote meant to send a message to local taxpayers in their town: don’t blame me.

Getting the little people fighting one another for crumbs from the rich people’s table has been a brilliantly successful strategy in the austerity era of 21^st century USA.

And there’s no relief on the horizon. The demagogue with bad hair appointed a billionaire Amway heiress with a record of destroying public education in a couple of big states as secretary of edu, and his proposed budget slashes public funding while funneling much of what is left to vouchers and other privatization schemes. Education for profit is about as big an oxymoron as for profit health care and will be a similar large scale disaster. Of course public education in our day is often more about free public babysitting -- the one public service that capitalism consistently provides for workers -- than about actual education.

Blackwater is the mercenary firm founded by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' brother Erik Prince.
The corporation made billions off the Pentagon before changing its name.

The budget that failed at the polls had already achieved savings by cutting a literacy coach position and an ed tech position. Loss of the latter means the end of a program known as study skills at our high school which has been a highly supervised study hall for at risk students, a terrible cut in a district with high poverty and special needs.

As for the former cut, few people really understand what an instructional coach does: oversee professional development that helps teachers and ed techs be more effective at supporting student learning. Research shows that tailored professional development for instructors has a big effect on student learning, but bussing the golf team four hours round trip is seen as a priority in my district. Educators in Finland, France, Germany or Japan would be amazed that running sports programs is part of what our schools consider their mission. Also, strong national support for public education means their teachers spend about half the day with the students and half the day on professional work like collaboration, preparing lessons and evaluating student work. In the U.S., teachers are expected to do that on their own time.

So my husband and I had the odd experience of watching our town’s selectmen trying to cut the education budget via amendments from the floor, and voting no on each and every line of the proposed budget. A few board members glared at them. Our two old friends were apologetic, almost tearful, afterwards. They are the ones who meet with property taxpayers in default and in despair at the prospect of losing their homes because they cannot keep up with local tax increases. (Besides schools, road maintenance is the only other major expense in our town budgets.)

There have been no jobs and continue to be no jobs in our area as one mill after another closes down. And the lack of public transportation means those too poor to keep a car on the road cannot get to other towns where there are jobs.

After voting to pass various parts of the budget by raising the yellow cards that are distributed to registered voters in attendance, we sent the budget to a public meeting secret ballot. Clerks for each town were on hand to gather our slips of blue paper marked yes or no into wooden ballot boxes, and we waited while they counted them. My town’s voters were mostly for sending the budget on to referendum, but there were exactly three votes against. Once your numbers get small enough, there really aren’t many secrets.

Maine’s legislature voted decades ago to fund public education at the 55% level; they have yet to reach even 50%.

A state referendum last fall passed Question 2 which imposed a surtax on the top 3% income bracket and dedicated the funds to shoring up public education. According to the state teacher’s union, more people voted yes on Question 2 than voted for any candidate for president. But the legislature has thus far refused to implement the will of the voters, and if they do the governor has promised to veto the bill.

Will grandma still be able to eat next year while staying in her home? Will reductions in Social Security and Medicare force her to default on her property taxes in order to afford heating the family homestead? These are the tragedies unfolding in my neck of the woods. Stay tuned.