More than a dozen state legislatures are considering plans to help parents use tax funds to pay alternatives to public schools, including private school, home-schooling or hybrid models. In Utah, a proposal would allow roughly 5,000 students to apply for $8,000 scholarships, the Associated Press reported (1/27).
With memories fresh from pandemic-era school closures and curriculum battles — particularly over how matters of gender and race are taught — legions of parents are trekking to state capitols to fight to create education savings accounts, also known as ESAs. Though they vary, these voucher-style proposals have been introduced in states, including Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia, Libby Stanford reported at Education Week (1/27).
No state has more legislation pending than Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin won his race for governor in 2021 in the liberal-leaning state after making education grievances a key tenet of his campaign.
Additionally, GOP governors in Oklahoma and Nevada have suggested plans to push for voucher-style policies and politicians in Arkansas and Florida have said they plan to expand pre-existing programs that are currently limited to certain student populations.
“School vouchers and education savings accounts were kind of in retreat for a while. They were sort of in vogue in the ‘90s and then charter schools kind of supplanted them,” said Rob Shand, an education policy professor at American University.
Now, he added, “school choice advocates are trying to capitalize on discontent with the public school system. They see a sort of a moment to try to push for some more choice-friendly or alternative policies.”
If enacted, education savings accounts could transform the nature of state government’s relationship with K-12 schools and deepen contrasts between how education looks in red versus blue states.
Funneling public funds toward private schools is a decades-old idea that first gained traction in the 1990s. Today, “school choice” policies in effect in conservative states include vouchers, scholarships, education savings accounts and tax credits.
Tax credits allow families to deduct amounts from their overall tax burden to be used toward alternatives to public school. Vouchers traditionally allow parents to take the funds that would otherwise be used to educate their children in public schools and put them toward tuition for accredited private or religious schools. Education savings accounts and scholarship programs are more expansive, giving parents additional latitude on how they can spend the funds, including on home-schooling.
ESAs have steadily grown in popularity over traditional vouchers due to legal challenges in states with constitutional limits on sending public money directly to religious organizations.
Statewide ESA programs now exist in Arizona and West Virginia. And in Tennessee, where a court ruled last year that a voucher program in the Nashville and Memphis area is constitutional, efforts are underway to expand them to the Chattanooga area.
In Utah, where the proposal passed the House and Senate in January, lawmakers coupled the proposal with teacher raises. Though one school choice lobbyist said she wanted to “destroy public education” with the proposal, supportive lawmakers hesitate to call their idea “vouchers” and emphasize that no more than $42 million could be used for the scholarships. In Iowa, students with vouchers would receive $7,600 — the amount sent to schools as part of the state’s per-pupil formula — and $1,200 additional dollars would be sent to public schools in their district. In South Carolina, only kids from Medicaid-eligible families could apply.
Proponents say the pandemic made the limits of a “one size fits all” approach crystal clear and hope expanding options will spur competition and make all schools better. They’re notching victories, even in states where the proposals previously failed to gain traction.
Opponents like Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, argue the dollars would be better spent bolstering chronically underfunded public schools. They see the programs as a stepping stone toward dismantling traditional public schools and further privatizing K-12 education.
Hobbs wants to roll back an expansion of a school voucher program championed last year by her GOP predecessor. Her office said in January that it would cost $1.5 billion dollars over the next decade.
The proposals also have kindled fury and resistance from teachers unions and their Democratic Party allies, who note the lump sum isn’t enough to cover most private schools. As a result, they argue, the programs will cater to wealthy and middle-class students, further entrench educational inequities and lead to worse outcomes on a statewide basis.
“This is the crack in the wall,” said John Arthur, the 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year. “After it’s cracked, the splinters will come. Once people wrap their head around the idea of public money going to private schools and become more comfortable with it, then the amount of money taken will grow.”
Both sides have noticed the number of proposals under consideration this year exceeds prior years.
“It’s happening across the nation, where parents — some are waking up and some are getting the courage to speaking out about their child’s educational journey,” Wade Moore, a bishop at a non-denominational Christian Faith Center said at a rally in Topeka. “We have new parents, millennial parents. They were born in choice. They’ve always had a choice in everything, except education.”
JOB GROWTH SOARS IN JANUARY, AS UNEMPLOYMENT HITS NEW HALF-CENTURY LOW. The January jobs report was far stronger than had been predicted, with the economy adding 517,000 jobs, economist Dean Baker noted (2/3). There was also a big increase in the length of the average workweek from 34.4 hours to 34.7 hours, which led to an extraordinary 1.2% rise in the index of aggregate hours. The average hourly wage increased by 10 cents, bringing the annual increase over the last three months to 4.6%. The overall unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.
The jump in the length of the average workweek may have been affected by seasonal factors. The unadjusted workweek ordinarily drops in January, but it actually rose by 0.2 hours this year. That could be partly attributable to better than normal weather for the reference week. Also, the reported declines of 0.1 hour in each of the prior two months may have overstated the true drop.
Almost all sectors reported job gains in January. Construction and manufacturing, which are usually the sectors most sensitive to interest rate hikes, added 25,000 and 19,000 jobs, respectively. Even residential construction added 5,500 jobs. Employment in construction is up 3.6% from pre-pandemic levels, while manufacturing is up 1.7%.
Restaurants and health care were the two biggest job gainers, adding 98,600 jobs and 58,200 jobs, respectively. Employment in health care is now 1.1% above its pre-pandemic level, while restaurant jobs are still down by 1.3%. Hotels added 14,800 jobs, but employment in the sector is still down by 11.9% from February of 2020. Retail added 30,100 jobs, putting employment 0.2% below the pre-pandemic level.
JOB GROWTH IN 2022 REFLECTS STRONG BUT UNEVEN ECONOMIC RECOVERY. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the US economy added 4.6 million jobs in 2022, the second-strongest year for job growth in the past 40 years (after 7.1 million jobs were added in 2021), Nina Mast and Daniel Perez of the Economic Policy Institute (1/25) called the job gains a testament to the success of pandemic relief and recovery measures. Although the private sector has recovered quickly, public-sector employment—particularly in state and local government—remains weak. With billions of dollars in relief funds for state and local recovery yet to be spent, this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine and rebuild the public sector. State and local lawmakers should seize it.
UNIONIZATION INCREASED BY 200,000 IN 2022. More than 16 million US workers were represented by a union in 2022, an increase of 200,000 from 2021, the Economic Policy Institute reported (1/29) citing Bureau of Labor Statistics statistics. Although more jobs were unionized, the share of workers represented by a union declined from 11.6% to 11.3% because nonunion jobs were added at a faster rate. As a result of decades of relentless attacks on the right to organize, the current unionization rate is well under half what it was roughly 40 years ago.
Other key data points show:
• The entire increase in unionization in 2022 was among workers of color—workers of color saw an increase of 231,000, while White workers saw a decrease of 31,000. Of all major racial and ethnic groups, Black workers continue to have the highest unionization rates, at 12.8%. This compares with 11.2% for White workers, 10% for Latino workers, and 9.2% for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) workers.
• The gender gap in unionization is small—0.6 percentage points—and held steady in 2022. The unionization rate for men is 11.6% and the unionization rate for women is 11%.
• States with the largest increases in unionization in 2022 were Alabama (40,000), Maryland (40,000), Ohio (52,000), Texas (72,000), and California (99,000).
• Industries with the largest increases in unionization in 2022 were transportation and warehousing (+46,000), arts, entertainment, and recreation (+62,000), durable goods manufacturing (+76,000), and state government (+99,000).
There is further evidence that many more workers would like to form a union but face barriers to doing so. Between October 2021 and September 2022, the National Labor Relations Board saw a 53% increase in union elections petitions, the highest single-year increase since fiscal year 2016.
Further, the share of nonunion workers who would like to have a union at their workplace is far higher than the share who actually have union representation. Survey data show that nearly half of nonunion workers (48%) would vote to unionize their workplace if they could. That means that more than 60 million workers wanted to join a union, but couldn’t. The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act provide crucial reforms that would strengthen workers’ rights to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.
“The fact that tens of millions of workers want to join a union and can’t is a glaring testament to how broken US labor law is. It is urgent that Congress pass policies that make it easier for workers to form a union, including the PRO Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act. State legislatures must also take available measures to boost unionization and collective bargaining,” said EPI President Heidi Shierholz.
Previous EPI research has shown why it’s not surprising that workers want to unionize. Unionized workers have higher pay and better benefits, on average, than nonunionized workers. Unions help close racial/ethnic wage gaps and also improve the health and safety of workplaces. This all points to the fact that dismantling existing barriers to union organizing and collective bargaining is crucial to generating a more prosperous, equitable economy.
FLORIDA FEMALE STUDENT ATHLETES ASK WHY THEY SHOULD REPORT MENSTRUAL CYCLES. For years, the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) has handed out a form to student-athletes with “optional” questions about their menstrual cycles.
Now, as reported by Jezebel, the FHSAA wants to make those and other questions for the athletes mandatory—and part of the process of determining whether student-athletes can play in female sports, Rebekah Sager noted at DailyKos (2/6).
Dr. Michael Haller, a pediatric endocrinologist, told Jacksonville.com, “I don’t see why (school districts) need that access to that type of information … It sure as hell will give me pause to fill it out with my kid.”
The form, created by the American Academy of Pediatrics, would force the students to answer specific questions, and instead of staying in the possession of their pediatrician, the form would be held by the school.
The Associated Press reports the revised form would include “four mandatory questions about menstruation, including if the student has ever had a period, the age they had their first period, the date of their most recent period and how many periods they’ve had in the past year.”
According to national guidelines for student-athletes, questions regarding menstrual cycles are “essential discussion for female athletes” because period abnormalities could be a sign of “low energy availability, pregnancy, or other gynecologic or medical conditions.”
“I think it is kind of disturbing and an invasion of privacy,” Ruby Robbins, a 16-year-old Miami Beach High volleyball player, told the Miami Herald.
The FHSAA vote on the form comes at the end of February, and many are wondering about the timing, particularly given Gov. Ron DeSantis’ war on the LGBTQ community with his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, “Stop W.O.K.E.” Act, and efforts to eradicate reproductive rights in the state.
DeSantis has not been opaque in his views on trans female athletes. After a win by a trans woman athlete in the NCAA 500-yard freestyle championship last year, the authoritarian governor declared the runner-up the “rightful winner,” as the athlete was assigned female at birth. He accused the NCAA of attempting to “destroy” women’s sports.
As the Miami Herald reports, FHSAA board members are not appointed by DeSantis. The organization is a private nonprofit. However, DeSantis’ education commissioner, Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., is involved in choosing who those board members are.
The board is made up of 16 people—14 men and two women.
“Nobody should know if I’m on my period unless I tell them,” Mallory McDonald, a Miami Beach High softball player, told the Miami Herald.
SEETHING RICK SCOTT VOWS NOT TO ‘BACK DOWN’ AFTER McCONNELL EJECTS HIM FROM KEY SENATE COMMITTEE. Percolating behind the scenes of the spectacular House Republican train wreck is a Senate Republican battle royal over leadership of the conference that promises to drag out over the next couple of years, Kerry Eleveld noted at DailyKos (2/6).
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who already lost one bid last November to unseat Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), plans to continue nipping at the longtime leader’s heels despite only garnering 10 votes to McConnell’s 37 last fall.
Echoing Donald Trump’s perennial criticism of McConnell, Scott told The Hill he’s “tired of caving” on raising the debt limit and plans to lobby against McConnell making a deal with Democrats to avert a GOP-manufactured economic meltdown.
“I’m not going to back down,” Scott told The Hill.
Scott’s declaration comes in the wake of news that McConnell ousted him and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah from their powerful positions on the Senate Commerce Committee, where they have sought to block agreement on fundamental congressional business—such as keeping the government’s lights on. Specifically, Scott took aim at the $1.7 trillion year-end spending package that funds the federal government through September and ultimately passed with 18 votes from Senate Republicans.
Lee tried to torpedo the $1.7 trillion bill by offering an anti-migrant poison pill amendment aimed at reinstating Title 42. Trump also jumped into the fray, releasing a video urging “every single Republican” to vote against the spending package.
McConnell eventually hailed the passage of the bill as a win for Republicans because it increased defense spending above the rate of inflation while nondefense, non-veteran spending increased below that rate of inflation.
Scott and Lee are both part of a pro-Trump Senate GOP group that is promising to dog McConnell throughout the coming cycle. Ejecting them from the Commerce Committee sends a clear signal to other Senate MAGA enthusiasts—Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Braun of Indiana, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina—that kicking up too much dust will come with consequences.
On the other hand, Scott and Lee have very little to lose now by becoming perpetual thorns in McConnell’s side—which, frankly, they would have been anyway.
In April 2021, Scott pushed a policy through the Senate Republican Conference stating their opposition to any debt-ceiling increases unless they were accompanied by “cuts in federal spending of an equal or greater amount” or otherwise “meaningful structural reform.”
In January, Scott and Lee spearheaded a letter to President Biden signed by a total of 24 Senate Republicans who pledged to stick by that Senate GOP policy.
While boosting his fundraising network as chief of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott also released a plan promising to raise taxes on tens of millions while sunsetting Social Security and Medicare. It was a polling disaster, and McConnell devoted a lot of energy to shooting the plan down so it wouldn’t kneecap Senate Republicans’ effort to retake the upper chamber.
Now it’s clear that the McConnell-Scott skirmish is anything but settled in what will continue to be the biggest challenge to McConnell’s leadership position since he assumed the post in 2007.
CALLS FOR WINDFALL TAX GROW AS EXXONMOBIL SMASHES BIG OIL PROFIT RECORD WITH $56 BILLION HAUL. As ExxonMobil (1/31) joined other US oil companies in reporting record 2022 earnings amid rising gas prices, consumer and climate advocates renewed calls for a Big Oil windfall profits tax, Brett Wilkins noted at CommonDreams (1/31).
Texas-based ExxonMobil posted a $55.7 billion profit last year, breaking not only its own previous company record—$45 billion in 2008—but setting a historic high for the Western oil industry, according to Reuters. The company’s profit is a 144% increase from 2021 and, as Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn noted, “enough money to send every person in the US $178 to help offset the costs of high fossil fuel costs and gas bills.”
Marathon Petroleum—the top US refiner—said (1/31) that it raked in $16.4 billion last year while approving a $5 billion stock buyback, and Phillips 66 reported $8.9 billion in adjusted 2022 profit, a 253% increase from 2021.
The earnings reports came just days after Chevron announced $35.5 billion 2022 profit, also a company record, and days before Shell, BP, and Total were all expected to follow suit on the strength of profits related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the European energy crisis.
Meanwhile, the average US price of a gallon of gasoline crept up to over $3.50 (1/31), with average prices by state ranging from $3.40 in Nebraska to $4.93 in Hawaii, according to the American Automobile Association.
Last year, “families across Pennsylvania paid $5 a gallon for gas while Exxon made profits that ‘smashed earnings records’ and Chevron posted ‘record earnings,” said US Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), responding to recent Big Oil profit reports. “This price gouging is simply disgusting, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”
Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for Stop the Oil Profiteering, lamented that “while we’re getting robbed at the pump, Big Oil’s obscene profits are out of control and billionaire fossil fuel CEOs are getting richer and richer.”
Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that “Big Oil has imposed a private tax on the American people—to the tune of more than $90 billion from just two companies alone.”
“It’s past time for the American people to take that money back,” he added. “A windfall profits tax would tax Big Oil on its inflated revenues—due only to the rising global price of oil and having nothing to do with Big Oil’s costs or investments—and return the money to American consumers.”
Last March, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced a bill to tax excess oil company profits and use the proceeds to pay American households a quarterly refund. That same month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which would tax windfall profits of major corporations at a rate of 95%.
While President Joe Biden has threatened to support a windfall profits tax on oil companies if they don’t ramp up production, he has not yet done so.
Responding to the increasing calls for taxing excess Big Oil earnings, ExxonMobil chief financial officer Kathryn Mikells told Reuters that windfall profits taxes are “unlawful and bad policy,” and would have “the opposite effect of what you are trying to achieve.”
In a Reuters opinion piece published (1/31), Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome and project lead for Earth4All initiative, wrote that “oil and gas companies are perhaps the most flagrant example of our upside-down world.”
“Despite being responsible for the majority of the emissions that cause climate change, they continue to make higher and higher profits,” she explained. “At the same time, vulnerable people in the lowest-income countries, who have done the least to cause climate change and are most impacted by the extreme weather events caused by a warming world, are getting poorer.”
“There is absolutely no reason not to tax windfall profits in all sectors, in particular when they have been made during periods of scarcity and speculation when the rest of the world is worse off,” Dixson-Declève added. “Ending tax incentives and subsidies for fossil fuels is simply a no-brainer in a world where climate change is already costing untold financial and human losses every year.”
COURT: WIFE-BEATING WAS LEGAL WHEN THE CONSTITUTION WAS WRITTEN, SO WIFE BEATERS CAN OWN GUNS. A man beating his wife was legal across the US until 1871, when Alabama and Massachusetts banned it. That fact has new relevance in today’s gun laws, thanks to the Supreme Court.
Following the logic of Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2022 opinion in *New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen*, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a federal law banning the sale of guns to people subject to restraining orders in domestic violence cases. In striking down a New York law requiring proper cause for concealed handgun permits, Thomas explained that the law was illegitimate because it was not “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” In other words, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (2/3), if there was no such law in 1791, it’s unconstitutional now.
Which brings us back to how a man beating his wife was fully legal back then, so there were no laws saying that men who beat their wives (or kids) couldn’t have guns. And therefore, the Fifth Circuit ruled, following Thomas, there can’t be such laws now.
Yes, really.
The case in question involved Zackey Rahimi, a man who was subject to a February 2020 protective order preventing him from stalking or harassing his ex-girlfriend—who he had assaulted—and their child, and from owning a firearm. In December 2020 and January 2021, Rahimi went on to be involved in five shootings. He sold narcotics to someone, then fired into their residence. He got into a car accident, shot at the other driver, fled, returned to the scene, and shot at the other driver’s car. He shot at a constable’s vehicle. He fired into the air after his friend’s credit card was declined at a restaurant.
Rahimi was indicted based on his violation of the protective order’s ban on him owning a firearm. But then Thomas fired up his computer for the *Bruen* decision, and now Rahimi is off the hook because the courts say that it’s not acceptable to ban men who beat their wives and girlfriends and children from having guns, because that’s not part of the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The government, in defending the law in question, did identify several laws dating back to colonial times that stripped some groups of people of the right to have guns, but the conservative Fifth Circuit mysteriously finds that those laws don’t apply here.
The law blocking people like Rahimi from having guns “embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society,” according to the Fifth Circuit, but that’s not allowed under *Bruen*, which “forecloses any such analysis in favor of a historical analogical inquiry into the scope of the allowable burden on the Second Amendment right. Through that lens, we conclude that [the law’s] ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier’ that our ancestors would never have accepted.”
Because our ancestors believed women were the property of their husbands. That’s it. That’s the logic here, according to one conservative appeals court scrupulously following the logic of the Supreme Court. Justice Stephen Breyer anticipated this moment in his dissent on *Bruen*, noting that a “study found that a woman is five times more likely to be killed by an abusive partner if that partner has access to a gun.” But Thomas says if the founders couldn’t contemplate it, it can’t be in the law now. At least when it comes to guns. Other things, not so much.
The Justice Department is likely to appeal. *Bruen* was decided 6 to 3, so the question now, Chris Geidner notes, is whether John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, who concurred, will go all the way along for the ride if or when the issue comes back to them.
From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2023
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