School Board Okays LGBT lessons on 3-2 vote

[shikoneko]

Alameda Unified’s school board has approved lessons dealing with anti-gay harassment and bullying on a 3-2 vote. “It’s been a long journey in regards to building an inclusive community. Apparently, we need to continue having this dialogue. But I feel we need to begin somewhere,” Trustee Nielsen Tam said in supporting the lessons.
Trustee Tracy Jensen, in a statement offered after her yes vote, said this has been the most divisive issue she has faced in her seven years on the school board.
Ron Mooney cast the third affirmative vote.
Trustee Patricia Spencer, who voted against the lessons, said she thinks the lessons don’t go far enough to address bullying of children due to their race, religion or other reason. And she said she thought the lessons could increase harassment and bullying of children who don’t agree.
“I look at that, and I can’t help but think that that goes against the spirit of the law,” Spencer said.
School board President Mike McMahon said he would only support the proposal if it contained an opt-out for parents for the coming school year, so that the curriculum could be evaluated for effectiveness.
Superintendent Kirsten Vital said the discussion around the lessons showed that more work needs to be done to protect children of different races and religions from harassment and bullying.
“What’s come out of this conversation is, we need to do more for all groups,” Vital said. She said the district intends to put together a supplemental guide to support the district’s existing anti-bullying curriculum to cover race, religion and other classes legally protected from bullying and that district leaders will evaluate the curriculum to make sure it meets students’ needs.
Opponents of the lessons handed the board a petition with 468 signatures on it (but withdrew it, they said, out of fear of retribution if the names were made public). They asked the board to set up a task force to come up with lessons that more people can agree on.
They said the lessons would lead to costly lawsuits and recall petitions, and that they aren’t inclusive enough.
Proponents said the lessons are needed to address anti-gay bullying that happens as early as elementary schools, and that the lessons have been effective in other schools where they have been taught. They said other groups, like people of different races and religions, are reflected in the current curriculum and that gays are invisible.
They said a lack of a curriculum could expose the district to more lawsuits, with bigger costs. And they said notifying parents when the lessons are to be taught would amount to an opt-out provision, as parents would take their children out to avoid them.
The decision came on the same day the California Supreme Court upheld the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. The court also said 18,000 marriages that already took place can remain legally valid.

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Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look

[shikoneko]

Levy Viewed as Way to Reduce Deficits, Fund Health Reform

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.
Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax -- called a value-added tax, or VAT -- has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.
At a White House conference earlier this year on the government's budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.
"There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform," Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. "I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table."
A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American -- a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.
Liberals dispute that notion. "You could pay for it regressively and have people at the bottom come out better off -- maybe. Or you could pay for it progressively and they'd come out a lot better off," said Bob McIntyre, director of the nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a health financing plan that targets corporations and the rich.
A White House official said a VAT is "unlikely to be in the mix" as a means to pay for health-care reform. "While we do not want to rule any credible idea in or out as we discuss the way forward with Congress, the VAT tax, in particular, is popular with academics but highly controversial with policymakers," said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for White House Budget Director Peter Orszag.
Still, Orszag has hired a prominent VAT advocate to advise him on health care: Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and author of the 2008 book "Health Care, Guaranteed." Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, chairman of a task force Obama assigned to study the tax system, has expressed at least tentative support for a VAT.
"Everybody who understands our long-term budget problems understands we're going to need a new source of revenue, and a VAT is an obvious candidate," said Leonard Burman, co-director of the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, who testified on Capitol Hill this month about his own VAT plan. "It's common to the rest of the world, and we don't have it."

Seeking New Revenue

The surge of interest in a VAT is testament to the extraordinary depth of the nation's money troubles. While some conservatives have long argued that a consumption tax would provide a simpler and more efficient alternative to the byzantine U.S. income tax code, this time it's all about the money.
The federal budget deficit is projected to approach $1.3 trillion next year, the highest ever except for this year, when the deficit is forecast to exceed $1.8 trillion. The Treasury is borrowing 46 cents of every dollar it spends, largely from China and other foreign creditors, who are growing increasingly uneasy about the security of their investments. Unless Congress comes up with some serious cash, expanding the nation's health-care system will only add to the problem.
Obama wants to raise income taxes for high earners and impose new levies on business, but those moves would not generate enough cash to cover the cost of health care, much less balance the budget, and they have not been fully embraced by Congress. Obama's plan to tax greenhouse-gas emissions could raise trillions of dollars, but again, Congress is balking.
Key lawmakers are considering other ways to pay for health reform, including new taxes on sugary soda, alcohol and employer-provided health insurance. The last proposal could raise a lot of money -- nearly $1 trillion over the next five years, according to White House budget documents. But options on the table would raise a fraction of that sum. And while it might pay for health care, it would barely dent deficits projected to total nearly $4 trillion over the next five years and to grow rapidly in the future, as baby boomers draw on Social Security and Medicare.
Enter the VAT, one of the world's most popular taxes, in use in more than 130 countries. Among industrialized nations, rates range from 5 percent in Japan to 25 percent in Hungary and in parts of Scandinavia. A 21 percent VAT has permitted Ireland to attract investment by lowering its corporate tax rate.
The VAT has advantages: Because producers, wholesalers and retailers are each required to record their transactions and pay a portion of the VAT, the tax is hard to dodge. It punishes spending rather than savings, which the administration hopes to encourage. And the threat of a VAT could pull the country out of recession, some economists argue, by hurrying consumers to the mall before the tax hits.

A VAT's Bottom Line

What would it cost? Emanuel argues in his book that a 10 percent VAT would pay for every American not entitled to Medicare or Medicaid to enroll in a health plan with no deductibles and minimal copayments. In his 2008 book, "100 Million Unnecessary Returns," Yale law professor Michael J. Graetz estimates that a VAT of 10 to 14 percent would raise enough money to exempt families earning less than $100,000 -- about 90 percent of households -- from the income tax and would lower rates for everyone else.
And in a paper published last month in the Virginia Tax Review, Burman suggests that a 25 percent VAT could do it all: Pay for health-care reform, balance the federal budget and exempt millions of families from the income tax while slashing the top rate to 25 percent. A gallon of milk would jump from $3.69 to $4.61, and a $5,000 bathroom renovation would suddenly cost $6,250, but the nation's debt would stabilize and everybody could see a doctor.

Sales Tax Gains Momentum

Burman, who helped House Democrats craft an unsuccessful 2007 plan to repeal the alternative minimum tax, said he's received a number of phone calls from lawmakers interested in his idea, though "they can't quite imagine how to make it happen politically." Burman said the 25 percent rate has caused some sticker shock, and he's trying to figure out how to bring it down.
Graetz's proposal drew an endorsement from Volcker, who last year called it "a sensible plan for reform." (Volcker did not respond to a request for comment.) It also has piqued the interest of Conrad, the Senate Budget Committee chairman who argues that it could be modified to accommodate Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on families who make less than $200,000 a year.
"I think interest is quietly picking up," Graetz said. "People are beginning to recognize that the mathematics of the current system are just unsustainable. You have to do something. And a VAT has got to be on the table if you want to do something big and serious."
Still, the Senate Finance Committee declined to include a VAT among the options it is considering to pay for health reform. And even VAT supporters doubt the tax will find a place among the tax-reform proposals the Volcker panel has been asked to produce by Dec. 4.
Though the nation's fiscal outlook is grim, Burman said "the situation will have to get more desperate" before lawmakers are likely to consider a new levy aimed directly at the pocketbooks of every one of their constituents.
Most lawmakers are still looking for "a painless source of revenue" to overhaul the health-care system and dig the nation out of debt, Burman said. "Who knows?" he added. "Maybe the tooth fairy will bring that to them."


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Governor General eats raw seal heart to support hunters

[shikoneko]

Canada’s Governor General began her Arctic tour by gutting a freshly slaughtered seal, pulling out its heart and eating it raw, according to media reports.
Michaelle Jean, the Queen’s representative to the country, did it as a gesture of solidarity with the country’s beleaguered seal hunters, the reports said,
adding that Jean expressed dismay that people would call the traditional hunting practices inhumane.
After eating the heart during a stop in Nunavut’s Rankin Inlet, Jean wiped her blood-soaked fingers with a tissue.
On Tuesday, Jean arrives in Kugluktuk, Nunavut.

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Ok, then.. o.O;;

Democracy wins in California gay marriage dispute

[shikoneko]

Tuesday May 26, 2009

Whatever you think of Prop 8, I don't see how you can disagree with the decision of the California Supreme Court to uphold it. For a court to have nullified a constitutional amendment ratified by a popular vote, and to have done so on a legal technicality, would have been a terrible thing for the democratic process, and the system's legitimacy. Note well that the same court that ruled same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage ruled 6 to 1 that they no longer do -- which, of course, they don't, the constitution having been amended by Prop 8. I'm surprised by how many people don't realize that the amendment process is how our system provides a check-and-balance to the courts.
In our system, either the people have the right to amend their own constitution, or they don't. If we do not, then we live under judicial tyranny, full stop. The right to amend the constitution doesn't mean we will always do so wisely. But it's dangerous to believe that fundamental right should be taken away from a sovereign people because you don't like the decision the people have made.
Keep in mind that today's decision was not about the ultimate justice of same-sex marriage. It was about how California's constitution works. The justices have made clear that they believed under the previous California constitution, there was an inherent right to same-sex marriage. The voters of California changed the constitution when they voted Prop 8. Perhaps they made a mistake. But it was a constitutionally permissible mistake, the High Court now says. Note too that the plaintiffs were arguing for Prop 8 to be overturned on a legal technicality. There is simply no basis in constitutional law for having a constitutional amendment overturned because it conflicts with a previous understanding of the constitution by the court.
Now the pro-SSM folks will work hard to get a pro-SSM amendment on a future California ballot. And if the people pass that one, overturning Prop 8, fine. I think they're wrong, but the people will have spoken, and done so in the most serious possible way: via a constitutional amendment. That's how it works in our system. You've got a better one in mind?
UPDATE: For those who think Supreme Courts always defend the rights of minorities over the mob's rule, remember SCOTUS's Dred Scott ruling, which upheld the right to slavery and denied that Africans could ever be US citizens. That ruling was overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments. You might not like the ruling of the California court, but it was correct (as even Andrew Sullivan recognizes) from a constitutional viewpoint. Tyranny is a lot less messy than our form of democracy. But it's still tyranny.

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