All eyes are trained on Wisconsin, but corporate-backed politicians are clearly gunning for working people in every state across the country.
In a brazen new low, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is on track to sign a new law under the guise of fiscal responsibility that will allow him to appoint emergency fiscal managers with powers so expansive they could "fire local elected officials, break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services - and even eliminate whole cities or school districts without any public input," according to CBS.
Over the past week, Republican governors and legislators in state after state have taken aim at their own constituents with increasingly blatant attacks on education, public services, and working people's voices.
• In Maine, Governor Paul LePage has exempted himself from a budget bill that requires teachers and other state employees to increase their pension contributions from 7.65 percent of their salary to 9.65 percent. Laws curtailing the rights and compensation of public service employees or calling for privatization of public services have been introduced in Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin;
• On Thursday, the Florida House passed a bill, HB 7005, which would slash unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to a sliding scale of 12 to 20 weeks, and force unemployed workers to accept a minimum wage job after receiving 19 weeks of benefits;
• In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Corbett's budget would cut over 1500 jobs and slash funding for public universities in half. Public school teachers and employees face assaults in the form of thinly veiled attacks on public schools and teachers in Alabama, Florida, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania among others;
• So-called right-to-work bills have been introduced in over a dozen states, including Maine, Missouri, Michigan, Pennsylvania,
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Preventing the exorbitant cost of student mobility
The societal cost of a high school dropout has been calculated into actual dollars and cents and circulated for public awareness. What is less known, though, is the exorbitant cost to a child’s potential achievement caused by switching schools for reasons other than grade level progression – an ...
Legislating an end to racial profiling
No one denies – at least openly – that racial profiling is bad practice. The question at hand, and one raised during a Senate Committee hearing on civil and human rights last week, is how to end it.
On Tuesday, April 17, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights ...
Community honors beloved poet, humanitarian
Praise, good memories and unconditional love were abundant this week as friends and family gathered to remember humanitarian and poet Abelardo “Lalo” Delgado at the 5th Annual Lalo Delgado Poetry Festival held at the St. Cajetan’s Center on the Auraria Campus, sponsored by the MSCD President’s ...
Young mothers share literary inspirations
The roots of Día de los Niños (April 30th) began in Latin América as a holiday honoring children and has been adopted by the United States with a variety of festivities that highlight the beauty of children Through The Weekly Issue/El Semanario’s Student Writing Project, we highlight the ...
No one denies – at least openly – that racial profiling is bad practice. The question at hand, and one raised during a Senate Committee hearing on civil and human rights last week, is how to end it.
On Tuesday, April 17, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights ...
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