Washington Liberals

Recently the State Senate

Early Learning and Education Committee brought their listening tour about K-12 education to Everett. This listening tour has come about as the Legislature has been found in contempt by our state Supreme Court of failing to meet “the paramount constitutional duty … to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within (our) borders.” The Supreme Court is fining the Legislature $100,000 a day. So instead of actually doing something about this, they decided to go on a (listening) tour.

Read that constitutional language carefully, “…ample provision for the education of all children…” It doesn’t say only children who are five years and older. It doesn’t define education as starting in kindergarten. It says, simply, “ample provision for the education of all children.”

We all know that education and learning begin a long time before kindergarten, in fact, immediately beginning at birth. That is what all the early brain research demonstrates. That is what parental love and caring has shown for all of human history, even in the absence of 21st century brain research. But this is not something that is officially embraced by our state.

Most of us are left on our own when it comes to the education of our children before kindergarten. At the same time, most parents go to work in the morning and come home in the evening, dropping off their young children in day care centers and family homes. So we depend on the teachers and caregivers in these centers and homes to love, care for, and teach our children.

So is the state making any effort at providing voluntary universal early learning for the young children of our state? Not really. Child care and early learning are seen as the responsibility of the parent. Public support and public dollars are not part of the equation for most kids and most parents. And yet we worry that kids are not “prepared” for kindergarten and they are not ready for school when they enter our public schools.

Our current system of early learning isn’t working very well. The average annual cost of child care in a child care center in 2014 in Washington was $13,488. That was a 9 percent increase, more than $1,145 from just two years before. It is more than tuition and fees put together at UW.

So how does this translate on the other side? The median wage of child care assistants was $20,796 and of teachers was $24,492 in 2014. It is a downward slope for these workers. Child care assistants actually made 40 cents per hour more in 2004, while supervisors, now earning $14.65, made 80 cents more per hour a decade ago. What do you get with lousy pay and few benefits? High turnover, no incentive to gain further relevant education, and low morale. These are not the ingredients which we need for high quality early learning.

Why is it so expensive? A major driver of cost are mandated ratios: one teacher for four infants, one teacher for seven toddlers, and one teacher for 10 pre-schoolers. If you have ever taken care of a group of very young children, you know that these ratios make a lot of sense.

The increasing cost, decreasing availability, and decreasing compensation are canaries in the coal mine for early learning. Our “system” of child care is largely dependent on parents paying tuition, while most of these parents have seen their wages and salaries stagnate, their health care costs increase, and the costs of having children pile up. So we starve the people we expect to care for, teach, and love our kids. The bottom has fallen out of the paramount duty for the education of all children when it comes to our youngest children. The Legislature is in complete disregard of its responsibilities and duties.

So when our state senators conclude their listening tour, they need to sit down and come up with the money, not just for K-12, but also for early learning. It is a tall order, about a $5 billion annual amount for education that we have been avoiding for decades. We know where that money is. Now we have to stop listening and go get it, for the future of our children and our state.

Original: Everett Herald »

Join Radical Women at a public meeting of the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee

For decades, Washington legislators have refused to provide adequate funding for public schools. The state Supreme Court finally lost patience and is imposing a penalty of $100,000 a day until the legislature comes through with the funds. The only real solution is to change the state’s tax structure to tax wealthy individuals and corporations. It’s not enough to close a few paltry tax loopholes or further penalize workers and the poor through higher property taxes and sales taxes. Members of the Senate education committee are holding a “listening tour” in different regions around the state. Come speak out for funding schools through taxing the rich and wealthy corporations. This meeting at the Renton headquarters of the Puget Sound Educational Service District will be the opportunity for people in 35 school districts of King and Pierce counties to say their piece.

800 Oakesdale Ave. SW, Renton
Monday, October 19, 5-7pm

For more information, 206-722-6057 (Radical Women), RWseattle@mindspring.com. Facebook: Renton Area McCleary Senate Listening Tour

(Aside from liking the image of Bernie as Jesus, my underlying aim was to question whether Bernie’s strategy of not going negative is naive and will backfire. Can someone suggest a better caption?)

There’s some confusion about whether Bernie Sanders supports capitalism.

During the first Democratic debate, correspondent Anderson Cooper asked Sanders, “You don’t consider yourself a capitalist, though?”  Sanders replied, “Do I consider myself part of the casino capitalist process by which so few have so much and so many have so little by which Wall Street’s greed and recklessness wrecked this economy? No, I don’t.”

That didn’t bother me, because my reading was that Sanders wasn’t saying he opposes all capitalism. It’s just casino capitalism that he opposes.

But there is evidence that Sanders doesn’t consider himself to be a capitalist at all.  According to Bernie Sanders Isn’t Socialist Enough for Many Socialists, which appeared on bloomberg.com:

On Meet the Press on Sunday, the Democratic presidential candidate was asked by host Chuck Todd whether he was a capitalist.

“No,” Sanders responded. “I’m a democratic socialist.”

But then the article goes on to record the laments of socialists such as Stephen Durham, of the Freedom Socialist Party, who said, “He isn’t an anti-capitalist! He is for reforming capitalism, not changing capitalism.”  That’s what I thought Sanders wanted, and I’d approve of that: reforming capitalism.

Kathleen Parker of  the Washington Post also refers to Sanders’ declaration on Meet the Press that he is not a capitalist.  She says in The Sanders-Trump magical mystery tour,

That Sanders is a socialist [sic — he’s a democratic socialist] is no secret. He has said so often enough, and his proposed policies aimed at worker- and consumer-owned economic institutions confirm as much.

His answer was shocking, nevertheless, because surely no one hoping to become president would dare admit wanting to fundamentally change the nation’s economic system. A few regulations here and there, sure. But wholesale socialism, albeit alongside a political democracy, however that works?

This isn’t quite right either. Sanders isn’t a “wholesale socialist.” He’s a democratic socialist. But Parker’s point about “a few regulations here and there” — or a lot of regulations — is what I was expecting.

In short, I wish Sanders had said during the debate and on Meet the Press, “I believe in capitalism, provided it’s well regulated and fairly taxed. Unconstrained capitalism is brutal.”

After all, democratic socialist countries like those in Scandinavia have corporations, private wealth, and a market economy.  Nokia is Finnish.  Volvo is Swedish. But in Scandinavia the corporations are well regulated, and corporations are highly taxed. That’s precisely what we need for a humane, fair, and innovative society.

For I am a progressive Democrat, not a Socialist. I believe corporations should be regulated and taxed, not destroyed. Corporations are often efficient at innovating and at producing quality products.

What is democratic socialism? According to the wikipedia article, “Democratic socialism is a political ideology advocating a democratic political system alongside a socialist economic system, involving a combination of political democracy (usually multi-party democracy) with social ownership of the means of production.”

The Democratic Socialists of America website says,

Democratic socialists do not want to create an all-powerful government bureaucracy. But we do not want big corporate bureaucracies to control our society either. Rather, we believe that social and economic decisions should be made by those whom they most affect.

…

Social ownership could take many forms, such as worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Democratic socialists favor as much decentralization as possible. While the large concentrations of capital in industries such as energy and steel may necessitate some form of state ownership, many consumer-goods industries might be best run as cooperatives.

Sigh. I’m starting to wonder if Elizabeth Warren would have been a better candidate to challenge Hillary.  Either that or Sanders should clarify what his economic ideology amounts to.

So I’m confused.  What exactly does Sanders believe?

The Washington Post reports, in What is a democratic socialist? Bernie Sanders tries to redefine the name, that Sanders said during a recent speech in New Hampshire, “What democratic socialism means to me, is having a government which represents all people, rather than just the wealthiest people, which is most often the case right now in this country.”

That meaning of democratic socialism is pretty general and inclusive. It would be compatible with regulated capitalism.

The article continues:

In this campaign, in fact, some observers believe that Sanders is even wrong to call himself a “democratic socialist.”

That’s because there are official Democratic Socialists — both in other countries and in the United States — and they generally want something more aggressive than he does. The Democratic Socialists in the United States want a system where workers or the government own factories and other means of production. (This is different from a communist system, in which the government owns everything in the people’s name.)

Sanders doesn’t want that. Instead, what he wants is to take existing federal programs — many established by Democrats like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson — and super-size them.

For example. Sanders wants Medicare for all.

“He’s not a democratic socialist,” said William Galston, an expert on domestic politics at the Brookings Institution. “He’s a social democrat. Seriously.”

Social Democrats, a separate entity in the field guide to leftists, are generally more moderate. By those definitions, then, Sanders is actually making his own life harder, by mislabeling himself.

This seems right to me. I wish Sanders would be clearer — and more strategic — about his choice of words.

I went door-knocking in Federal Way yesterday for Carol Gregory’s campaign in the 30th LD.  Currently, the Democrats have a 51 to 47 seat majority in the Washington State House.   If Gregory loses, the ratio will become 50 to 48, meaning that if another seat is lost, the ratio would be 49 to 49 and the Dems would lose the majority.

In 2012, the Republicans took over control of the Washington State Senate by forming the Majority Coalition.

The shift to Republican control of state legislatures is a nationwide phenomenon. In 1990, Democrats controlled both houses in 30 out of the 50 state legislatures; by 2015, Republicans controlled both houses in 31 out of 50 states. (source) Similarly, in 1990 28 states had Democratic governors, with 20 Republicans and 2 independents. In 2015, 31 states had Republican governors, with 18 Democrats and 1 independent.

The precinct I walked in the 30th LD was in a nice, upper-middle class section of Federal Way, with large, well-maintained homes and quiet streets. People definitely depend a lot on their cars there.

The walk sheets the campaign gave us were supposed to target just strong Dems, but there were some independents and even Republican-leaning (“LR”) citizens included.

Among the people who were home, over half didn’t express their political preferences. About one out of four said they’d vote for Gregory. Maybe one out of five said they’d support Hickel. Nobody was rude, but few people were happy to see me. Most people don’t want to be bothered.

At one of the houses, I found a soggy, abandoned brochure from the campaign of Gregory’s Republican opponent, Teri Hickel. On the back there was a list comparing Hickel and Gregory on issues and endorsements. Here are three of the entries:

Issue	Teri Hickel	Carol Gregory
Supports $1.5 billion in new spending to [sic] even though there are over$3 [sic] billion in new tax collections with an improving economy (HB 1106, 2015)	No	Yes
Heavily supported by California billionaire who has an extreme agenda for Washington State	No	Yes
Votes over 90% of the time with Democrats from downtown Seattle who won’t compromise on key issues (2015 Washington Legislative Session)	No	Yes

Such negative, anti-tax, anti-Seattle campaigning works.  And it’s no wonder.

People are sick of paying high, regressive taxes.   They’re sick of politicians giving tax breaks to rich corporations. They’re suspicious of politicians and of government.  People love their cars and the independence and mobility that cars give them, and so they’re suspicious of environmental regulations that limit car use.

People are correct to be angry at paying high taxes: our regressive tax system unfairly burdens the poor and the middle class, while favoring rich corporations and individuals by granting them loopholes, write-offs, and lax enforcement of rules against tax evasion. The unfairness is especially severe in Washington State, which relies on the regressive sales tax to fund most of state government. Even the Business and Occupation (B & O) Tax is regressive, since it taxes revenue, not profits, and so favors rich corporations like Microsoft. Furthermore, Boeing and Microsoft are given billions of dollars in tax breaks — and not just by Republicans.

So, it’s no wonder the voters are angry.

But when given the chance, in 2010, to pass a more progressive income tax, with initiative I-1098, almost two out of three voters rejected it.

This is, plainly, irrational. But, as has been widely suggested, the problem is that the voters don’t trust the politicians when they say that the taxes will target only the rich. The voters know they’re getting shafted, but they figure that the safest bet is to keep taxes low. That way, they’ll be less likely to be ripped off.

Another factor is that the sales tax is automatically deducted at the cash register, so people are “nickeled and dimed” –  and that’s largely invisible. But an income tax requires additional paperwork and a large lump payment when paying the tax bill or when paying estimated state income taxes.

A fundamental problem is that the national GOP made sure that government works poorly for the middle class. Republicans mismanaged and corrupted government, wasted trillions of dollars on disastrous wars, and cut taxes for the rich.  So the voters are correct to mistrust government.

But until and unless Democrats loudly explain to the voters how our regressive tax system is harming them, and  until and unless the Democrats stop serving the interests of Boeing and Microsoft, Democrats will continue to lose seats, and government will continue to be dysfunctional.

So, I say: Tim Eyman is half correct. The sales tax is too high (though I will certainly vote against I-1366, which even the Seattle Times opposes).   We should lower the sales tax by several percent and institute a progressive income tax that fixes our broken, unfair, upside-down tax system.  Progressive taxes would help the middle class, the poor, and the Democratic Party.

But for the most part, the Democratic Party runs away from the issue and allows the Republicans to control the messaging on taxation. Until the Dems face up to the issue, they’ll continue losing.

On October 7 2015, Bill Gates gave a speech at a US Education Learning Forum in Bellevue Washington. Considering that Bill is the richest man in the world, his numerous mis-statement of the facts during this speech was truly frightening. In this article, we will examine only a few of the most glaring distortions of the truth. Here is a link to his speech as posted on the Gates Foundation website for those who want to read the whole thing. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Speeches/2015/10/Remarks-at-USP-Education-Learning-Forum

Fact #1: How many states are still using Bill’s poorly written and age inappropriate Common Core standards – paid for by Bill and written by a couple of Wall Street consultants?
Here is Bill Gates: “Today 42 states and the District of Columbia are using the Common Core State Standards.”

Here is reality: States were blackmailed to adopt the Common Core standards before they were even finalized by Arne Duncan. Almost half of these states abandoned the Common Core standards as quickly as they could. Currently only about 20 states still use the Common Core standards. Can it be that Bill Gates really does not know this???

For more information on the states that withdrew from Common Core and their current status, see the following web page:
http://weaponsofmassdeception.org/2-common-core-fake-standards/2-4-support-for-common-core-plunges

Bill’s copyrighted standards were so poorly written that hundreds of child development experts from across the nation submitted a statement opposing them as being “developmentally inappropriate.” More than 500 early childhood professionals signed a statement opposing Common Core. The Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative was signed by educators, pediatricians, developmental psychologists, and researchers, including many of the most prominent members of those fields. Their statement reads in part: “We have grave concerns about the core standards for young children…. The proposed standards conflict with compelling new research in cognitive science, neuroscience, child development, and early childhood education about how young children learn, what they need to learn, and how best to teach them in kindergarten and the early grades….”
http://weaponsofmassdeception.org/2-common-core-fake-standards/2-2-common-core-standards-are-not-age-appropriate

Bill’s rigid Common Core standards which try to place every student in the nation in the same box, as if our kids were robots, is so opposed by parents and teachers that even in Bill’s home state of Washington, both the Republican and Democratic parties overwhelmingly passed resolutions opposing Common Core and Common Core tests. When both political parties agree that something is bad, it is only a matter of time until it is gone.
http://weaponsofmassdeception.org/8-options-for-real-education-reform/8-3-how-to-get-your-state-party-to-oppose-common-core

Fact #2: The Myth of the Super Teacher versus Smaller Class Sizes. Years of research has shown that lower class sizes are how teachers are best able to help struggling students. But throughout his speech, not once did Bill Gates mention the role of smaller class sizes. Instead, nearly his entire speech was based on the Myth of the Super Teacher.

Here is a quote from Bill Gates: “Here’s the problem: Too often, teachers have to move up on their own. They don’t get the feedback or tools they need to improve their practice. So they move up slowly. That’s not only a loss for their students; it’s frustrating for the teachers. The work we are doing with all of you is intended to help every teacher move up the learning line, faster and in concert with their colleagues, so that no one gets stuck trying to fight their way up alone.”

Here is reality: Nearly every one of Bill’s pet projects, from Charter Schools to Teacher for America has been an attack on teachers. How charter schools increase their profits is by gutting teacher pay. Charter schools pay their teachers about half of what public schools pay their teachers. As for the fake teacher training program called Teach for America, does Bill Gates or anyone on the planet truly believe that the best way to have high quality teachers is to give them only 5 weeks of training before throwing them into a classroom of students???

Fact #3: There is no single measure of a great teacher because teachers like students are diverse.
Bill would like us to believe that we can assign a number to every teacher and every student to tell the good ones from the bad ones. Humans however are much more complex than any computer program.

Here is Bill Gates: “A growing body of evidence told us that teacher effectiveness is the single most important in-school factor in student achievement. If you take two classrooms from the same school, both starting out at the 50th percentile, and assign one to a teacher in the top quartile and another to a teacher in the bottom quartile, there will be a 10 percentile difference in achievement at the end of the year.”

Here is reality: Student test scores are not a measure of either student learning or teacher effectiveness. Numerous studies have shown that a teacher who is in the top quartile one year is likely to be in the middle of even bottom quartile the next year.

More than 80 studies have been done on using the VAM method to evaluate teachers. They all found that VAM is not a consistent or reliable way to measure teacher performance. Here is a link to a list of these studies. http://vamboozled.com/recommended-reading/value-added-models/

For example, in 2013, Edward Haertel, a Stanford University researcher, published a detailed report on the lack of reliability of using student test scores to evaluate teachers. http://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/PICANG14.pdf

He concluded that VAM scores were worse than bad. Here is a quote from page 23 of his study: “My first conclusion should come as no surprise: Teacher VAM scores should emphatically not be included as a substantial factor with a fixed weight in consequential teacher personnel decisions. The information they provide is simply not good enough to use in that way. It is not just that the information is noisy. Much more serious is the fact that the scores may be systematically biased for some teachers and against others…High-stakes uses of teacher VAM scores could easily have additional negative consequences for children’s education. These include increased pressure to teach to the test, more competition and less cooperation among the teachers within a school, and resentment or avoidance of students who do not score well. In the most successful schools, teachers work together effectively. If teachers are placed in competition with one another for bonuses or even future employment, their collaborative arrangements for the benefit of individual students as well as the supportive peer and mentoring relationships that help beginning teachers learn to teach better may suffer.”

The claim by Bill Gates that a great teacher can magically improve student scores by 10% is about as accurate as his claim that 42 states are still using the Common Core standards. What studies have shown is that lower class sizes so teachers can help struggling students is the best way to raise student achievement. But lowering class sizes would require Bill Gates to start paying his fair share of state taxes so instead Bill prefers to focus on “magic bullet solutions like finding the perfect teacher.

Fact #4: Green Dot charter schools do not excel at supporting teachers and are not a good model for public schools.
Green Dot charter schools make a massive profit for their corporate masters. But they condemn both teachers and students to hell on earth.

Here is a quote from Bill Gates: “In Los Angeles, the Green Dot charter schools have college readiness rates that are almost four times higher than district-run schools with similar students…So we studied what they all have in common. It turns out that they excel at supporting teachers.”

Here is the reality of the Green Dot charter schools: A high percentage of the schools close after just a few years. Pressure on teachers is so intense that over half of the teachers quit within two years. Most teachers at Green Dot are TFA teachers with only 5 weeks of training. Most students either quit or are driven out of Green Dot for low performance. Out of a cohort of 90 6^th Graders, there may be less than 20 left by the 11^th grade. Of these 20, a high percent do graduate and some even go on to college. But of the entire cohort of 90 students, Green Dot schools perform far worse than comparable public schools. Here is a link to the horrors of Green Dot schools written by a former Green Dot teacher in 2013.
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/05/the-inside-story-of-the-green-dot-charter-schools/

Here is a quote from this article: “I began to question the effectiveness of the Green Dot model after the first year, when over 30% of the teachers resigned. By my second year of teaching for Green Dot, both of the administrators whom hired me had to resign, as had the dean of the school. At the end of the first semester of my second year, another 30% of the teachers had left. There is little to no encouragement, nothing done to help a teacher’s self-esteem, only the constant chorus of “you can improve. It’s both troubling and distressing to see so many aspiring, young teachers cast away their hopes of making a difference by being evaluated as ineffective, or even as clueless, and then led on the path of termination. To me, this is the most significant failure of the Green Dot model, its inability to retain and train teachers to become effective in the classroom.”

Even former TFA teachers know that TFA is a scam. So why hasn’t Bill Gates learned this lesson?

Given the massive attrition rate of Green Dot teachers and students, for Bill Gates to claim that Green Dot is successful because it supports teachers is simply absurd.

Fact #5: The US is not ranked in 14^th place on international reading tests.
It is common for people who have not done the slightest research to repeat the false claim that US students do poorly on international tests. In fact, adjusted for poverty, US students are among the highest performing students in the world.

Here is a misinformed quote from Bill Gates: “Consider where the U.S. ranks internationally on reading proficiency: We’re in fourteenth place. “

Here is reality: Students from high income families do better on international tests than students from low income families. Many nations “rig” their international tests but only having high income students take the tests. Other nations that do well on international tests (like Finland) do not have many low income students. The US has all of their students take international tests. The US also has one of the highest poverty rates in the world. Two of the three major international tests—the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study—break down student scores according to the poverty rate in each school. The tests are given every five years. The most recent results (2006) showed that students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in the world in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. 
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-poor-international-student.html

In 2013, Martin Carnoy with the Stanford Graduate School of Education and Richard Rothstein with the Economic Policy Institute produced a highly detailed study breaking down how different income levels of students would perform in the United States on various international tests. Here is the citation and link to this important 99 page study: Carnoy, Martin & Rothstein, Richard (January 2013) What Do International Tests Really Show About U.S. Student Performance? Economic Policy Institute, Washington DC. http://s2.epi.org/files/2013/EPI-What-do-international-tests-really-show-about-US-student-performance.pdf

The authors provided extensive data confirming that “If U.S. adolescents had a social class distribution that was similar to the distribution in countries to which the United States is frequently compared, average reading scores in the United States would be higher than average reading scores in the similar post-industrial countries we examined (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom).

The reason US students as a whole score poorly is because of the high rate of poverty in the US. The high rate of poverty is caused by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few billionaires in the United States. Sadly, despite being the richest man in the world, Bill Gates refuses to pay his fair share of state and federal taxes. If we could get Bill to take some responsibility and pay some taxes, we could hire tens of thousands of teachers who could give struggling low income students the help they need to succeed. Bill Gates literally is the cause of the problem he is now complaining about.

Fact #6: Forcing all students into the Common Core mold does not respect the diverse ways that students learn.
We have known for a long time that students learn at different rates and have different learning styles, and different interests. A serious flaw of Common Core is that it expects all students to learn the same skills at the same time and in the same way. It ignores the research about child differences.

Here is a quote from Bill Gates: “All students deserve the opportunity to learn in a way that is tailored to their needs, skills, and interests.”

Here is the reality of the Common Core Straight Jacket Approach to Education: The focus of Common Core is on teaching to the test and very convergent learning styles promoting low level learning which is little more than repeating back what the student was told. No diversity is allowed. No room for differences in learning styles or differences of opinion. It is more like a military boot camp or brain washing approach to education rather than training to be an active participant in our democracy.

Fact #7: What we have here is a failure to do research on child development.
Bill Gates clearly is clueless about either teaching or child development or public schools.

Here is a final quote from Bill Gates: “What we have is a failure to communicate… We need to figure out how to get the practices that are gaining success in one school, district, or state to be adopted in many others… If you’re a governor or state chief, I urge you to take a hard look at whether your system is giving teachers the support they need.

Here is reality: The reason we have a failure to communicate is because Bill Gates refuses to listen and refuses to do any research on child development. Instead he surrounds himself with “Yes” men, charlatans, hucksters and con artists – all of whom take advantage of Bill’s deep ignorance and huge ego.

Here is a quote from a real education leader, Carol Burris, the executive director of the Network for Public Education: “The Gates reforms of Common Core plus testing plus teacher evaluation based on test scores has been a disaster in New York… There’s a reason that over 220,000 students opted out of the common-core exams in New York. If you talk to parents in the opt-out movement … what they say universally is they do not want their teachers evaluated by test scores because they understand that when they are, there’s a hyper-focus on teaching to the test.”

If Common Core and the Common Core SBAC test are so wonderful, then why hasn’t Bill put his own kids in a Common Core school? Bill spends a huge amount of money to send his kids to the best private school in Seattle, a school called Lakeside. Lakeside has no Common Core book or tests, it has no TFA teachers, it has none of the things Bill is trying to push on all of the other schools in the nation. If highly paid teachers and small class sizes are good enough for Bill Gates kids, then our kids should have this same opportunity for small class sizes and highly paid experienced teachers.

In the meantime, we need to end the Bill Gates led Common Core nonsense as soon as possible. The harm it is inflicting on our students must be stopped. Please share this article with any other parents or teachers you know who are concerned about the future of our kids and our schools. As always, we look forward to your questions and comments.

As you may have heard, the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy announced yesterday that they intend to file a ballot measure next year. (The single best article on the topic is Jim Brunner’s “Second group plans state initiative on climate change” in the Seattle Times.) Although this conflict has been simmering since our joint statement with the Alliance back in May, the combination of our signature-gathering success and the Alliance’s announcement has raised a whole lot of questions, the principal one being “What the heck is going on?” (Or, as the subject line suggests, “WA the heck is going on?”)

The purpose of this email is to try to describe the current landscape as best we can. We may know more after a meeting with the Alliance that is scheduled for later this afternoon, and we will have even more to say in a few days, but for now here are some Frequently Asked Questions and their answers to the best of our abilities (and note that we sent a draft of these FAQs to Alliance director Lisa MacLean and three other Alliance leaders to ask for any factual edits; we will post any updates here and as needed in future email blasts, again with the goal of describing the current landscape as best we can):

Q1: What the heck is going on? As we described a year ago, there are two potential paths to climate action. One is a revenue-neutral bipartisan approach like Carbon Washington’s. The other is a revenue-positive approach like the Alliance’s. Carbon Washington has been pushing forward on our approach, and the Alliance has been pushing forward on theirs, and now the continental plates are inching towards each other.

Q2: What is the Alliance’s policy? The Alliance’s press release notes that they are “working closely to establish the final details of the policy during the remaining months of 2015”, but what comes across in the press release is that (1) it’s going to involve a price on carbon and (2) it’s going to be revenue-positive, with funds “invested in accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and addressing the impacts of carbon pollution on our air, land and people”. That could mean a carbon tax, or it could mean cap-and-trade, or it could even mean cap-without-trade (the so-called “cap-and-jail” option). We will have to wait for additional details from the Alliance, and we promise to share them with you when we have them (including whatever information we learn at today’s meeting that we are allowed to make public).

Q3: Isn’t it too late for the Alliance to begin collecting signatures for a ballot measure? No. There are two initiative paths to the November 2016 ballot. Carbon Washington is pursuing an Initiative to the Legislature: we have been gathering signatures this year for I-732, and those signatures are due by the end of the year. Once we qualify, I-732 will go to the state legislature in January 2016 and then (if they don’t pass it) to the voters in November 2016. In contrast, the Alliance intends to file an Initiative to the People, which involves filing in early 2016 and then collecting signatures until early July in order to put their measure on the ballot in November 2016.

Q4: So there might be two measures on the ballot in November 2016? Yes. To add an additional wrinkle, Carbon Washington must turn in signatures for our Initiative to the Legislature (I-732) before the end of the year, and the Alliance cannot file their Initiative to the People measure until after the new year begins.

Q5: What happens if both measures are on the ballot? It depends on the yet-to-be-announced details of the Alliance’s policy, and it depends on how the voting public views the issue. The fear is that confusion and conflict between the two measures will doom them both, which is why Carbon Washington and the Alliance issued a joint statement in May saying that we “we are committed to avoiding two competing carbon pollution-pricing measures on the ballot in November 2016”. But if there are two competing measures on the ballot then it’s also possible that both measures will pass, and if that happens then the odds are that they will be able to legally co-exist: I-732 would put a price on carbon and reduce existing taxes, and the Alliance’s measure would put an additional price on carbon, with funds invested in mitigation and adaption through the details they are currently working out.

Q6: What happens next? Carbon Washington and the Alliance will meet later today and we will report as much as we can as soon as we can. Until then we will say what we have said many times before: If you support the Alliance then God bless you and go support them. (You can even pledge to collect signatures in 2016!) And if you support Carbon Washington then keep your eye on the ball: to a surprising degree the situation today is essentially the same as it was six months ago, with CarbonWA pushing a detailed policy proposal and the Alliance making noises about climate action but not providing much in the way of detail. So if you’ve been collecting signatures for CarbonWA then we hope you will continue to collect signatures, and if you have been donating to CarbonWA then we hope you will continue to donate, knowing that we’re all on the same team and hence that we all have an incentive to move forward in a way that advances the cause of climate action.

Q7: Anything else? Yes, here’s a message from campaign co-director Kyle Murphy: “Our campaign belongs to everyone who has donated money, joined a chapter, gathered signatures for us, and helped to take I-732 to the cusp of making the ballot, which is where we find ourselves today. So let us know what you think about this announcement from the Alliance and provide any feedback you have for those of us at CarbonWA HQ as we carry on.” If you want to take Kyle up on his request you can email him directly at kyle [at] carbonwa.org. You can of course also email me, and you should also be able to post comments on the blog.

Tim Eyman is half correct: let’s lower the sales tax by 1%.  The sales tax is regressive and is too too high.

But in addition, let’s establish a progressive income tax, capital gains tax, and/or Wall Street transaction tax, to restore fairness to our regressive tax system.

After all, the Republicans raised taxes on the poor and the middle class when they raised the regressive gas tax. But they protected the unfairly low taxes that the rich enjoy. We have too much Socialism in America: Socialism for the rich.

In short, the Republican mantra about wanting to keep taxes low is a hypocritical lie. We progressives would lower taxes for most people and restore fairness to our tax system.