jneurohr's blog

Republicans made a late push to pass voucher legislation before the end of 2011, but were unable to garner the needed support from either side of the aisle:

"On Wednesday night, the House, following a lengthy debate, voted 105-90 to reject a scaled-back education-reform plan that would expand the state's Education Improvement Tax Credit program and overhaul the state's charter school law.

House Republican leaders tried to keep their word on vouchers in the afternoon during an angst-filled caucus discussion. They offered several iterations of voucher plans of a smaller scale than the one that the Senate passed this fall.

"The votes are not there on either side of the aisle," said Steve Miskin, news secretary to House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny County, as he announced that the House leaders would shift their focus to the more limited school-reform package.

Members said opposition to even a limited pilot program - which would still be a major shift in public education - came from those opposed to diverting public dollars to private schools.

Others felt they did not want to talk about vouchers in an environment in which state aid to public schools is declining. Still others more clearly didn't want to risk the wrath of public school teachers - and their unions - and the parents of children in their hometown schools."

Neither students nor universities are simply accepting the new restrictions that would disenfranchise a large number of young people. University of Wisconsin students are either receiving new ID cards that comply with state law, or they can request a supplemental ID to bring to the polls. Students in Pennsylvania are using baked goods to protest a house bill that would instate similar restrictions. The University of Pennsylvania College Democrats recently gave out free baked goods to only those students who could present a valid ID. Those who could not were instead given a box of raisins plastered with a sticker protesting HB 934.

Not all college students are treated fairly, either. In Wisconsin, 400,000 students attend technical colleges, and the student IDs issued by these schools are not acceptable as voting ID. These students make up 10% of the state's voting age population. State officials have oscillated between policies allowing the use of technical IDs, and those disallowing the same cards. A final decision should be reached by mid-December.

Unfortunately college students are not the only population facing disenfranchisement. About 25% of African American voters and 18% of elderly voters may lack appropriate ID. One 84 year-old woman provides a particularly compelling case against the hardships that this new law may cause. When Ruthelle Frank was born in Wisconsin in 1927 she was not issued a birth certificate. She is a citizen, has a social security card, and has voted regularly since 1948, but she lacks a proper ID card. To further complicate matters, while her local register of deeds has an official record of her birth; her name is misspelled on the record. She now faces a lengthy battle and a potential cost of $200 to correct this clerical error and receive a valid ID so that she may vote.

Ruthelle is one of many. 177,399 Wisconsinites, or 23% of those over age 65, do not have proper ID and now need to jump through bureaucratic hoops in order to vote. Minorities, of any age, are also disproportionately more likely to lack proper ID.

Whether a newly minted 18 year old attending college, or an 80 year old who has been voting for years, everyone deserves the right to vote. However new laws requiring strict adherence to showing a photo ID prior to voting, put this right in jeopardy.

The bill received sharp criticism from Democrats who claimed that Republicans were trying to make the recall process harder by implementing the new district which are considered safer for Republican incumbents. Lazich decided to cancel the committee meeting after some Republicans announced that they would not support the bill, and the Assembly announced that they also did not have enough votes to pass the bill. With this lack of support Lazich determined that the bill would not leave committee and therefore will not appear on the senate floor until at least early next year.

Many also questioned the legality of adopting the new Senate districts now while keeping the current Assembly districts until November 2012. Others also cautioned that Wisconsin's redistricting plan still faces two court challenges that are not expected to go to trial until March 2012.

This potential was realized by some of our greatest inventors and artists who were raised in poverty, were educated in public schools and went on to accomplish great things in the sciences and arts despite their humble roots.

In 1914, a son was born to two Russian immigrants -- neither had much formal education, but both valued the opportunities that America gave them. They lived in communities with other Russian immigrants in East Harlem, the Bronx and Queens. This young man was able to attend an extraordinary public high school with a rigorous three-year curriculum. This public high school produced great leaders, boasting alumnae like songwriter Ira Gershwin, U.S. senator Robert Wagner and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Excelling at this public high school and completing his coursework at the age of 15 helped the young man get into the City College of New York, a highly competitive but tuition-free college. In the 1930's and 40's, CCNY produced eight Nobel Prize winners and the second highest number of PHDs in the country. This tuition-free public college was a place where many of these first-generation Americans were able to fulfill their great potential.

This particular young man pursued medicine. After graduation from CCNY, he applied and was accepted into NYU medical school. He continued to excel as a student and researcher.

It was a solid public education, along with investments in research for the common good that propelled the man who would end the scourge of polio. This man's name was Dr. Jonas Salk.

Dr. Salk refused the NYC tickertape parade just as he had refused to patent his vaccine. He also refused to patent the vaccine, which would have been a lucrative decision. Clearly he was not concerned about the accumulation of personal wealth; all he wanted to do was make the nation and the world a better place. He knew that he had benefited from a society that valued investing in those less fortunate, and he wanted to pay it forward. The public investment in Jonas Salk was paid back tenfold to future generations of children who would never know life in leg braces, a wheelchair or an iron lung.

So when we talk about budget cuts as a solution to our economic woes, let's remember who will get left behind -- the next Jonas Salk, the next child who might someday cure cancer, the next great mind to solve our energy needs or feed the world. History has shown us that greatness is not exclusive to Fifth Avenue or Beverly Hills -- it is not exclusive to expensive private prep schools or the well-connected. There is potential greatness in rural farms in the Midwest, in inter-city Los Angeles and Detroit, in small, run-down Southern towns, and in the poor neighborhoods in East Harlem, the Bronx and Queens that Jonas Salk once called home.

If we follow the directives of the right wing and we do not push back, we will become a nation that ignores and wastes our human potential -- potential that blossoms with opportunities for learning and development. The Occupy Wall Street protesters are not just unhappy about corporate greed, they are unhappy that these same wealthy Americans are now benefiting from tax cuts at the expense of important programs at the state and federal levels. Cuts to education at all levels, including cuts that spike the cost of our community colleges and public universities are a recipe for a bleak future for this nation.

We need to think of the sacrifices of those who have come before us who gave so much when they had so little. They believed that the legacy of strong communities and opportunity was more compelling than the accumulation of personal wealth. And if you were lucky enough to be prosperous, they believed that personal wealth carried with it a responsibility to others.

Think of your parents or your grandparents. Think of what they sacrificed not just for their families but what they collectively took from their individual wealth and used for the common good -- for strangers and for generations to come

In the words of FDR: "In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else we all go down as one people."

It is time we reevaluate our priorities as a nation.

From the Columbus Dispatch story:

"With more than two weeks to Election Day, 65,046 Franklin County voters have requested absentee
ballots, and 2,057 have voted early in person, according to the board.

Those numbers already surpass early voting in the last two off-year elections. In 2009, more
than 47,000 people voted early, either in person or by absentee ballot, and nearly 29,000 did in
2007.

In last year’s gubernatorial election, nearly 170,000 voted early.

“This is more like a gubernatorial election,” said William A. Anthony Jr. director of the Board
of Elections

“It’s clearly the issues. They’ve created a lot of excitement.”

Anthony said many Downtown workers have come to vote during their lunch hours. On Friday, 192
voted, slightly more than the same day in last year’s gubernatorial election and more than three
times as many as in the last off-year election in 2009.

“I tell people if they want to avoid lines, vote early,” Anthony said."