A new study, Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans, by Professors Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright and Larry M. Bartels sought to gauge the political and policy priorities of the wealthy, and how these concerns contrast with the concerns of the rest of us. Amazingly, the priorities of the 1% match up with the priorities of our political class, while the priorities and needs of the vast majorities of us are ignored.
The study questioned people with wealth that placed them in the top 1%. They were asked what they felt were the “very important problems” facing the country. The most common response was the budget deficit, with 87 percent believing this to me the most important problem. This contrasts with the rest of the population, with only 7% saying this is the country’s most pressing problem. Of course jobs and the miserable state of the economy for people what are not in that 1% were cited by regular people as the most important problem.
The 1%’ers want “entitlement programs” like Social Security and healthcare cut while the American Majority want (and need) them expanded.
The 1%’ers opposed raising the minimum wage, government help for the unemployed, government spending to ensure that all children have access to good-quality public schools, expanding government programs to ensure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so, and investing more in worker retraining and education. The American Majority supports all of these programs.
The 1%’ers also opposed more regulation of large corporations, raising the Social Security “cap,” using corporate taxes to raise revenue and taxing the rich to address inequality. The public supports these.
Also mentioned is this Denos report, Stacked Deck.
If there is one idea that nearly all Americans can agree on, it is that everyone should have a chance to improve themselves and do better in life. At the same time, Americans strongly believe in political equality—the view that civic life should be a level playing field and everyone should have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives.
What is less understood, though, is the interplay between these two problems—the way that a tilting of political life toward business and the wealthy has served to undermine economic mobility.
Newly released data on corporate profitability for 2012 show the continuation of historic levels of profitability despite excessive unemployment and stagnant wages for most workers. Specifically, the share of capital income (such as profits and interest, which are hereafter referred to as ‘profits’) in the corporate sector increased to 25.6 percent in 2012, the highest in any year since 1950-1951 and far higher than the 19.9 percent share prevailing over 1969-2007, the five business cycles preceding the financial crisis.
This all just goes right along with what Lawrence Lessig says, “money buys results & erodes trust“. That the policies of our government are largely in-step with richest Americans, and out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans, is likely why there’s little trust, respect, and approval or our current elected representatives.
Like I said, I’m still thinking about all this. To say the least, it’s a big and complicated subject, and I don’t claim any particular expertise. I am certain that there will be differences with the Senate bill, and there will be much horse-trading in conference committee. Reducing the number of exams, and aligning them with college admissions makes sense to me. Providing viable alternate paths to high school graduation that prepare kids for a professional career and aren’t viewed as lesser achievements is a good idea, too. I feel confident that whatever we do this session, we’ll be revisiting it next session, and likely again after that.
From Burka it seems to be that this is a fight between two (monied) factions.
There are two competing visions of the future of public education in Texas at stake in the debate over HB 5, which begins this morning on the House floor. One side is a group of industries calling themselves Jobs for Texas. Foremost among this group is the Texas Association of Manufacturers. The other side is Pearson, the testing company, and the Texas Association of Business and Chambers of Commerce, led by Bill Hammond.
I couldn’t help but think back to my own experience in Texas public schools many years ago (to be exact, I graduated from San Jacinto High School in 1956). To the best of my knowledge, the Legislature set minimum requirements and left the details to educators.
These days, legislators in Congress and the states seem to think they must decide everything in education and tell educators what to do. When I was in North Carolina last week, the dean of the UNC education school told me that the legislature passed laws requiring that students learn cursive writing and memorize the multiplication tables.
It is a good thing the legislators are not telling doctors how to make their diagnoses and conduct surgical procedures.
Budget cuts impacting Medicare and Medicaid will leave Texas nursing home providers no choice but to scale back on staffing among other changes, the communities say.
Nursing homes in Texas say state and federal funding cuts to are presenting a “dangerous strain” on their ability to care for older, more medically complex patients.
In a survey of 100 nursing homes representing 10% of the state’s nursing home population, the Texas Health Care Association found more than 65% have made staff changes, more than 72% have reduced staff hours, wages and benefits, and 60% have canceled or postponed facility improvements already in response to Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
“The so-called ‘Medicaid expansion’ discussion in Austin is coming at the expense of a closer legislative look at how Texas nursing home patients are increasingly put at risk by the state’s own lack of Medicaid funding adequacy,” said Tim Graves, THCA president. “So far, the Texas Legislature has not come close to adequately addressing seniors’ state Medicaid funding requirements, and far more focus is warranted. Local seniors are at risk, and the Legislature needs to act.”
The cuts are putting increasing pressure on senior care within the state, the survey finds, with the majority of providers anticipating measures such as freezing wages, deferring facility improvements, and reducing staff benefits to accommodate the change.
More than 30% say they are considering staff layoffs in 2013.
The specific question states: “The Texas Health and Human Services Commission recently estimated that Texas nursing homes need nearly one billion dollars in new Medicaid funding just to keep up with the cost of caring for elderly and disabled Texans over the next two years. Do you favor or oppose the legislature fully funding Medicaid for low income seniors in nursing homes at the levels the state itself says is needed to meet the cost of providing this care?”
78% favor full funding at the levels the state itself says is needed, while 14% oppose, and 8% are unsure. The polling crosstabs further show that 72% of Republicans, 82% of Independents and 83% of Democrats favor full funding at the level the state says is needed.
Hopefully our elected leaders can get their act together and do the right thing.
The privately operated section of the Texas 130 tollway south of Mustang Ridge is attracting about half the predicted traffic, according to Moody’s Investor Service, prompting it to investigate downgrading credit ratings for more than $1.1 billion in debt attached to the toll road.
[...]
The SH 130 Concession Co., a partnership of Spanish tollway company Cintra and San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Corp., over the past several years built the $1.3 billion, 41-mile road with its own equity and debt — including $430 million borrowed from the federal government — and is operating it under a 50-year contract with the Texas Department of Transportation. Neither the company nor TxDOT has released traffic or revenue figures for the road, which opened Oct. 24 and began charging tolls on Nov. 11.
But Moody’s apparently has gleaned at least a rough idea of traffic volume and toll revenue on those four lanes in southern Travis, Caldwell and Guadalupe counties, and wasn’t impressed with the early results.
“While the operating history is very limited,” Moody’s analysts said in a five-page, March 21 credit opinion, “the magnitude of the shortfall from original projections warrants a review of the rating category.”
The report said that because of weak revenue, the concession company could exhaust one “liquidity” account by June, but has least an additional $30 million to draw from. Cintra’s parent is Ferrovial S.A., a Spanish corporation with toll roads worldwide that could potentially serve as a financial backstop for poor performance of this road.
Moody’s spokesman Eduardo Barker said the credit review would be complete in no more than 90 days.
Releasing notice of the review, Barker said, “indicates some concerns, and we’re taking a look to see if our concerns are real.”
TxDOT’s contract with the concession company lays out complex procedures to determine how much TxDOT would pay the concession company to take over the road in the event of a default or for any other reason. The Moody’s report doesn’t mention the possibility of default.
Chris Lippincott, a spokesman for the concession company, said it is meeting “contractual obligations to operate and maintain a world-class highway. We remain confident that the recently opened SH 130 … will benefit our investors and the people of Texas.”
Isn’t that beautiful if the corporation that built the tool road defaults, then TxDOT, aka the Texas taxpayer, will then have to pay the corporation for the road. Isn’t the free market wonderful?! Maybe Rep. Paul Workman’s idea isn’t all that bad after all.
As McBlogger points out transportation is getting short shrift this session. Not only is it stuck behind education and Medicaid as an issue but also water. Not that any of those are not important, but what is shows is that our GOP state elected leaders have been neglecting several really important issues for far too long.
But the other thing McBlogger points out is that now that they’ve created a bad situation, some of the supposed “fixes” are only likely to make things worse, Transportation… pissing into the wind.
While there’s so much going on with regard to education funding and Medicaid, transportation is receiving very little attention from the outside.
All three are extremely important… all three effect the economy is very real ways and those effects, for good or ill, will be felt now and in the decades to come. That being said, someone has to say something about transportation and two bills that’ll have pretty deleterious effects need to be defeated.
1) HB 3391 – This bill gives TXDOT and the RMA’s the ability to enter into PPPs from now until 2017. The impact of this could be massive as it would shift ever increasing numbers of roads to the same old failed PPP model. We have PPP roads in this state that have been open for 7 years that are still not producing a profit and may never. This is risky finance that leaves Texas taxpayers exposed to investment banks which, let’s be honest, don’t have a stellar track record at controlling risk. If you’d like to take action against this, please email the entire transportation committee here.
2) SB 1110 – This rather odious piece of legislation allows local property taxes to be diverted to toll road schemes. As if Texas property taxes aren’t already too high, this bit of responsibility dodging on the part of the Lege would put the burden on local officials and local taxpayers for toll roads that fail to live up to the irrational revenue expectations set for them. Democrats who voted for this bill include our own Senator Watson who, inexplicably, continues his practice of just voting for anything that will, ostensibly, get roads built regardless of the cost to his constituents.
These two pieces of legislation aim to achieve a goal of providing for roads and improvements the state desperately needs. However, they do so in a way that will cost Texas taxpayers far too much and leave them exposed to risk that is simply too much to bear. While TURF and others are fighting desperately to stop the diversions of transportation taxes, it’s become increasingly obvious that those diversions can’t be stopped because they provide funding to a number of needed programs.
McBlogger goes on to point out that while it’s not perfect there is a solution.
So, what’s the solution? Easy… Sen. Eltife’s bill to index the gas tax. While I’m not thrilled with the desire to rapidly pay off the bonds we’ve sold (since paying off that money reduces that which is available to build and grow the economy which would, in turn, increase tax revenue and allow the bonds to be paid off sooner anyway), if that’s the compromise that has to be made to get this done, then that’s the damn compromise.
What all of this makes clear is that other then Sen. Eltife the GOP is not really interested in fixing our transportation funding issue. For all the talk of leadership and courage when it comes to taxes, almost all of the GOP doesn’t have any. They would rather throw bad ideas at the wall to see what’ll stick. They’re looking for politically safe positions that are won’t do near enough to fix our transportation funding problem.
The Senate has approved a two-year, $195.5 billion state budget that would replenish college financial aid programs, fund a new mental health initiative, do more for returning veterans and try to stop an exodus of medical school graduates.
The budget, though, would undo just some, not all, of last session’s cuts to public schools. Also, a veteran Democratic senator who reluctantly supported the spending plan questioned whether it would keep up with population growth and inflation.
Senators passed their budget, 29-2. The only no votes were cast by Sens. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, and Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, who complained senators should have put more money into public schools.
The bill now goes to the House, where the House budget committee has fashioned a very similar, if slightly leaner, spending plan. Overall, the Senate measure amounts to a 7.7 percent rise over current state spending. If federal money, fees and investment earnings are considered, the proposed spending increase is 2.9 percent.
Sen. Tommy Williams, the Senate’s chief budget writer, said the chamber’s plan would forge progress in many areas.
“We’ve come a long way, baby, since last session,” he said in jest, after nearly three and a half hours of floor debate.
Williams acknowledged the Senate’s budget wouldn’t bring school funding back to levels that existed before lawmakers whacked $5.3 billion from basic aid and grants in 2011. But Williams, R-The Woodlands, said senators put back nearly $1.4 billion. He predicted higher property values and economic growth would allow lawmakers to fill more of the hole before the session ends in late May.
“While we still have a ways to go, we can make more progress as this whole process moves forward,” said Williams, who heads the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee.
Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, though, gently chided Williams for worrying more about staying within a constitutional spending limit and preserving state savings than about educating children. The state is expected to have nearly $12 billion in a rainy day fund by August 2015. GOP leaders currently plan to spend about $4 billion of it to create two infrastructure improvement revolving-loan funds.
“If there are the votes to go into the rainy day fund for water or for transportation, I will be one advocating we also use the rainy day fund to help those children,” said Ellis, who ran the budget panel in the 2001 session.
Ellis said the budget falls about 3 percent short of funding current services enough to cover population growth and inflation.
Davis, who launched a filibuster against the budget passed in 2011, warned the chamber’s 19 Republicans that many parents in GOP-tilting districts are upset by crowded classrooms and teacher layoffs caused by the school cuts.
She also criticized GOP leaders’ decision to move slowly on undoing the reductions until the Texas Supreme Court rules in a school-finance lawsuit.
“Public education in Texas is sorely underfunded today,” Davis said, noting it ranks near the bottom in per-pupil spending. “I don’t know why we need to wait for a court to tell us that when we already know it.”
I think many Democratic senators didn’t vote against this because they want to seem reasonable, of now, so they can try and have an influence on the conference committee. It seems unlikely that Democrats will be able to influence the conference committee. Kuff and Stace have more on last weeks vote, including statements from several senators and groups around the state.
This is a step in the process of getting the budget passed through The Lege. The positioning thus far seems to be that the Democrats are trying to get as much put back as they can that was removed in 2011. And the GOP is trying to put as little back as they can and call that an increase, when in reality it’s still a cut. As the only way it could be an increase would be to put everything back that was stolen cut last session, and then put in more.
A mundane piece of Washington bureaucratic paperwork may have a great deal of influence in future US-Cuba relations, as PDiddie at Brains and Eggs observes.
Neil at Texas Liberal took a picture of a mining pit as he was flying from Los Angeles back to Houston. Neil has not been so active at Texas Liberal of late, but will be offering up a new website within the next few weeks. This website will be called NeilAquino.com.
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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.
Salud Today praises the city of San Antonio’s pre-kindergarten initiative.
Texans for Public Justice reveals who the biggest recipients of campaign contributions from the payday lending industry are.
Offcite describes a project by Rice University students and staff that seeks to reinvent libraries and increase access to knowledge in the developing world.
Better Texas Blog says that more funding is needed for retired teachers to be self-sufficient.
Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon says that if current conditions continue, Texas will experience its second-worst drought ever and worst since the 1950s.
Texpatriate reports on the term limits bill that passed out of the Senate.
The commissioners court appointed nine committee members to propose and November bond election, County appoints bond-study committee.
Casting an eye toward growth, and the infrastructure challenges it brings, the Williamson County Commissioners Court on Tuesday appointed a nine-member bond study committee.
The committee, to be led by Round Rock bank executive Landy Warren, is charged with making big-ticket spending recommendations, especially those relating to roads and parks countywide.
The committee is to host a series of meetings, in all four county precincts, gleaning information from private citizens as well as elected officials and city managers. Commissioners anticipate receiving recommendations in late summer and then calling a November bond election.
[...]
Each of the four commissioners made two appointments to the committee and Gattis appointed Warren – an R Bank executive – as its chairman.
“It’s well known people are moving here from throughout Texas, people are moving here from throughout the United States, people are moving here from throughout the world,” Warren told commissioners. “We couldn’t stop it if we wanted to. A responsible bond package is needed from time to time.”
Other bond committee members are as follows:
• Will Peckham of Round Rock, chief executive officer for Round Rock Travel and Tours
• Donna Parker of Round Rock, certified financial planner
• Cobby Caputo of Cedar Park, attorney
• Steve Berry of Leander, owner of two Christian Brothers Automotive locations
• Dr. Robert Glandt of Georgetown, retired dentist
• Hugh Brown of Georgetown, chief executive officer for St. David’s Georgetown Hospital
• Mario Perez of Hutto, owner of Mario’s Mexican Restaurant
• Keith Hagler of Taylor, owner of several businesses in Taylor
Most are extremely reliable GOP voters and members of the “bidness” community in Williamson County. It would surely be nice to have a few regular ‘ol folk on the committee. A few common sense people would certainly be nice. You can read more about them here, bios submitted to the commissioners.
Also the commissioners appointed a new Constable for Precinct 3 to replace the recently retired Bobby Gutierrez.
In other business Tuesday, commissioners welcomed Kevin Stofle as the new Pct. 3 constable. Stofle was formerly Georgetown’s assistant police chief. He replaces Bobby Gutierrez, who had served since 1998.
Gutierrez’ retirement became official Monday and Stofle was sworn in at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.
“I can’t tell you how happy I am to be back in public service and to serve the citizens of Williamson County,” Stofle told commissioners.
Much of the discussion about the budget will focus on education and health care. But those are just symptoms of the overriding problem – poverty. And poverty will likely not be discussed. And to fix health care and education we must fix poverty first. The poverty numbers are truly shocking.
“Today, 22 percent of our children live in poverty. The U.S has the second worst infant mortality rate among industrialized nations,” details America’s Report Card 2012, a report supported by First Focus and Save the Children to highlight the condition of children in the U.S.
It would take a radical, yet simple, approach to abolish poverty.
One alternative approach has been ignored, however. In 1967, Dr. King offered an imperative, “Final Words of Advice,” that could serve education reform well in terms of shifting commitments away from school-based policies and toward social reform:
“In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs [addressing poverty] of the past all have another common failing — they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.
“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income….
“We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.”
[...]
Inequity in schools must be addressed through reform, but food insecurity, healthcare and job security policies must also be implemented as direct action against poverty that will then provide the context within which education reform can succeed – as Dr. King declared nearly five decades ago.
Watching Michelle Rhee once again on Real Time with Bill Maher, it becomes clear what the reformy argument all boils down to:
There is a shameful “gap” in performance between affluent white students and poor minority students.
But even our affluent white students suck compared to the rest of the world.
The problem, then, must be in our schools.
While there may be other factors involved, we really can’t wait to fix those; we need immediate action, and we can take that by “reforming” schools.
These “reforms” will create innovation and accountability, which is what has been missing from the public school “blob.”
These reforms – charter expansion, test-based teacher evaluation, vouchers, de-unionization, gutting tenure, merit pay, ending seniority – will raise student achievement.
The answer to these, in turn, is:
No one argues that the lower performance of poor minority students is shameful and must be fixed. But in every country in the world, the poor have worse educational outcomes than the rich. Doesn’t that tell you something?
Affluent white students in America actually perform well in international comparisons. The few “studies” that claim otherwise do not take into account the curvilinearity of America’s correlation between test scores and socio-economic status; in other words,poor and middle class students pay a greater price for not being rich than in other countries.
We will never equalize educational outcomes until we provide a basic standard of living for every citizen of this country. We could rapidly implement plans to provide universal health care, create jobs, rebuild our infrastructure, make taxes truly progressive, and get monied interests out of politics and our media. So why don’t we?It is not a coincidence that the wealthiest people in this country are behind the corporate “reform” movement: they are happy to lay America’s problems at the feet of our public schools system so that we, the people, are distracted from having a serious discussion about inequity, chronic poverty, and racism.