Restoring the American Dream

by Peter Mathews, Professor of Political Science, Cypress College

In the present “recovery” of the last three years, the top 1% has captured 93% of the total growth in income, according to UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. That left only 7% of the new income to be shared by the 99% of Americans. This was the result of tax cuts on the super rich, tax loopholes and subsidies for big corporations, such as big oil companies, and cuts in public education that would have created opportunity for working Middle Class Americans.

A recent study indicated that 47% of Americans were either struggling to make ends meet or living in poverty. Most of these are Americans who are the Working Poor. At the same time, the top 400 income earners in this nation each received an average of $214,000,000 last year. The average American’s individual income was $26,000 last year. Since the beginning of 2008, 4.6 million plus jobs were lost. All of this and more were the direct result of former President Bush’s and Congress’ wrong headed policies of eight years: “Trickle Down Economics” with huge tax cuts for the super rich; An unjustified, costly and debt generating war in Iraq; Unregulated, Free Trade (not Fair Trade), job exporting, trade deficit generating, anti-worker policies; Further deregulation of banks and finance, allowing Wall Street to go wild.

The best way out of this mess, and to restore the shattered American Dream, is to learn from the spirit and substance of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. While faced with the worst economic Depression in history, FDR inspired us to believe that government should be made a positive instrument that helps provide full-fledged opportunity for all Americans to achieve the American Dream (at the very least, entry to the Middle Class).  ♦

Rich Parent, Poor Parent: Inequality in American Education

by Peter Mathews

[A brief version of this article was published in Amass Magazine, Issue 47, February-March 2013]

An American child’s chance of acquiring a quality education depends more on the parents’ income than on almost anything else, including ethnicity.

A few months ago, I was walking my infant daughter in her stroller in our Long Beach Belmont Heights neighborhood. As I turned the corner, I saw a lemonade stand run by a mother, her children, and their friends. I thought mom was teaching the kids how to become successful entrepreneurs!

Then I read the sign that said, “Lemonade for Fremont Elementary. Please support our fabulous science and computer labs!!” Another sign said, “Thank you Mrs. Phelps for your donations of lemons!!” I wanted to help in a small way, so I bought a couple of glasses of lemonade.

As I sipped the delicious fresh lemonade, the mother at the stand told me that for the last several years, the parents in the Fremont Elementary neighborhood had raised approximately $100,000 annually to help keep the labs open. They had been threatened with closure because of state-wide budget cuts. I wondered how many lemons it takes to raise $100,000 to keep two labs open? Not enough; and that’s why the parents from this affluent neighborhood had to raise and donate their own money; parents such as Keith and Karen Vescial, whose son Evan attends Fremont Elementary. Keith called this “a hybrid form of private/public education.”  Keith went on to tell me “in communities that can’t or won’t raise or donate private money, the kids suffer”. Keith corroborated the lemonade mom’s story and said that he got the details at a PTA meeting.

This got me thinking, how many parents in the low-income neighborhoods in the U.S., can raise or donate $100,000 annually to save their school’s science lab, if they even have one? With the median household income in most of these areas lower than the national median of $50,054 per year, I would venture to say, not many of those parents, if any, can. As I walked my sleeping 9 month old daughter back home, it occurred to me, that something had to be done about the lack of resources in low-income neighborhoods.

The differences between low-income neighborhoods and high-income neighborhoods are clear when we compare two Long Beach High Schools, and two Long Beach Elementary Schools. Because Long Beach’s Jordan High School and Wilson High School are both in the LBUSD, they both receive similar levels of per pupil funding. Yet, the majority of Wilson students’ academic achievement levels were much higher than Jordan’s. In this case, the students’ academic achievement rates were correlated with their parents’ income levels. Generally, the higher income levels of Wilson parents produce the social environment which enables their children to do better in school.

Inequality in parental income is a major factor in students' achievement because more affluent parents can provide all the support outside of school such as parental help with extra academic support including homework, outside tutoring, extra curricular arts and science activities, "academic camps" and well funded PTAs that can spend money as well. Also, higher income families enjoy the benefits of economically secure and physically safe environments, for example, with less crime and gang activity. Most low income parents can not afford these things.  Many low income parents, for no fault of their own, do not have resources or time to provide their children with the same rich, supportive learning environment. Many low income parents are forced to work overtime, or hold down two jobs to make ends meet. Until these parents’ incomes are increased, public spending must be increased to make our schools into after hours youth centers to provide their children with a similar, supportive outside-the-classroom learning environment as the children of the wealthy.

Jordan High School is located in a low to moderate income area of North Long Beach. Five percent of parents in the area make over $125,000, annually, and 75 percent of students are classified as socio-economically disadvantaged. Wilson High School is located in the middle to high income area of southern Long Beach, 15 percent of parents in this area make over $125,000 annually, and 48 percent of students are classified as socio-economically disadvantaged. This is why, despite the similar per pupil funding level, test scores at Wilson High school far surpass those at Jordan high school. (lbschools.net). Measuring academic performance for 2010-2011 by the percent of students who are proficient or advanced on standardized tests, Jordan’s scores are less than half of Wilson’s: 22% in English/Language Arts, 9% in Math, 23% in Science, and 23% in History/Social Science. In comparison, Wilson’s numbers are 50% in English/Language Arts, 22% in Math, 56% in Science and 49% in History/Social Science. (lbschools.net)

Jordan's numbers are much lower than Wilson’s in other ways: For every 100 students in 9th grade enrolled in Jordan, 48 go on to graduate four years later, and only 13 pass the courses required to enter the CSU and UC systems.  In contrast, for every 100 students in 9^th grade enrolled in Wilson, 67 go on to graduate, and 36 pass the courses required. (California Education Opportunity Report, 2011, idea.gseis.ucla.edu/educational-opportunity-report)

The same differences that exist at the high school level also exist at the elementary school level. Fremont Elementary and King Elementary are both in the Long Beach Unified School District and receive similar per pupil funding. Fremont Elementary, which is in the same affluent Belmont Heights area of Long Beach as Wilson High School, produces excellent academic achievement results. Fremont, the school with its own Science and Computer labs now kept open by generous donations from affluent parents, jog-a-thons, and lemonade stands, produces high academic achievement results: in English, Math, and Science, 84 percent, 88 percent, and 88 percent of students scored in the proficient or advanced category, respectively. In contrast, King Elementary, in the same lower-income area of North Long Beach as Jordan High School, produces much lower academic achievement results than Fremont Elementary. King’s achievement results were: in English, Math, and Science, 48 percent, 65 percent, and 41 percent of students score in the proficient or advanced category, respectively. (lbschools.net)

Why are these differences so great? Some would argue that the fault lies with the parents, others would blame the failing economy. The simple fact of the matter is that greater family income and wealth are correlated with greater student academic achievement. That fact has been proven in study upon study.

               In a 1966 report to the U.S. Congress, sociologist James S. Coleman found that, regardless of ethnicity or race, students from low income families didn't perform as well academically as students who's parents were higher income. Coleman's findings have been confirmed over and over since then. In 2006, Douglas Harris, a University of Wisconsin economist found that in schools where more than half of the students were low-income, only 1.1 percent of those schools performed at a high level. In schools that were majority middle class, 24.2 percent of those schools met the “high” level standard. That’s a huge difference.

The inequality in parental income and student educational achievement is also great when we compare a wealthy California school district with a less affluent one. Palo Alto Unified School District is one of the most affluent school districts in California. Annually, 48 percent of parents of students in this district make over $125,000, ranking it high on the Neighborhood Affluence Rate, and per pupil funding is approximately $13,376. Compare that to Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD), where parents earn significantly less and the per pupil spending is $8,719. The test scores mirror what is happening in dollars. The average API score in Palo Alto is 925, ranking it in the highest 25 percent of California students. The average API score in Long Beach is 759, ranking it in the next to lowest 25 percent, much lower than Palo Alto. (June 2, 2011, Californiawatch.org)

The numbers are even more staggering at Palo Alto High School. For every 100 students enrolled as 9th graders, 92 graduated, and 92 passed the courses required for admission to CSU and UC. At Gunn High School in Palo Alto the numbers were even higher. For every 100 students enrolled as 9th graders, 96 graduated, and 96 passed the courses required for admission to CSU and UC. (California Education Opportunity Report, 2011)

California generally has very unequal funding among school districts. The State does not equalize this funding difference, which is primarily due to wealthier districts raising more school funding through property taxes.

Low income parents in districts with lower property values have much less school funding than the high property value districts. For example, total per pupil spending is $13,376 in the Palo Alto Unified District, a part of wealthy Silicon Valley. Total per pupil funding is $8,719 in the Unified School District, where the property values of homes and businesses are generally lower than Palo Alto   Federal funding is the least of the three sources of revenue, and is only three percent of the federal budget. After a $7 billion K-12 funding cut, between 2008 and 2011, California now ranks 49th out of the 50 states in per pupil funding at $8,852, while New York ranks near the top, spending $15,012 per pupil. (edweek.org)

The Great Recession has reduced public spending at many levels of government,including for education. However, the deterioration of our economy didn't happen in a tunnel and neither did the dismantling of California’s great public education system. The following were the key culprits in this outrageous and pathetic tragedy:

First, the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which removed billions of dollars from the public education system, was the start of the slippery downward slope that we are on. Ironically, two thirds of Prop 13 tax cuts have gone to big commercial property owners such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Bank of America, while only one third of the tax cuts have gone to home owners. Homeowners need Prop 13 tax cuts and should keep them. Big commercial property owners do not need the tax cuts, and their tax loophole should be closed. This will send billions of badly needed dollars to public education in California.

Second, drastic reduction in federal tax rates on the upper incomes of the super rich: under Republican President Eisenhower the rate was 91%; under Republican President Reagan, 28%; and under Democratic President Obama, 39.6%.  This brought severe reductions in federal funding for effective social and educational programs such as CETA, Pell Grants, Americorp, Head Start, and after-school academic arts and sports programs that helped keep kids on the path of educational and life success. These cuts have made an already dire situation worse.

Third, since the Reagan right wing agenda of cutting taxes on the rich, immensely increasing defense spending, and severely cutting social programs such as public education, a cultural/ ideological shift has taken place. Because of this shift, and the outsourcing of middle class jobs through Free Trade (instead of Fair Trade), the gap between the rich and poor has grown substantially in the past 30 years. Rich corporate executives are making 400 times the income of the average American worker. In the last three years alone the top 1 percent of Americans captured 93 percent of the total growth in income, according to UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saenz. That left only 7 percent of the new income for 99 percent of Americans to share.

Much of Corporate America sees no problem with the increasing gap between rich and poor.  Moreover, these Big Businesses feel that the growth in this gap is the natural outcome of their CEO’s hard work, innovation, ingenuity, and the laziness of the rest of America. Their ideology of extreme rugged individualism says that we should each pull ourselves up by our own boot straps! Most of them would argue that they deserve huge tax cuts and corporate subsidies because they, the 1%, are creating jobs for us, the 99%, and we should be grateful to them.

With success in education increasingly determining success in income, we face a dire future as Californians and Americans: the well educated, well heeled upper class will leave in the dust the less educated, deteriorating and desperate, working middle class and working poor. Universal public education, promoted by American educational reformers such as Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, Susan B. Anthony, and John Dewey, has served as a force to overcome class barriers. Instead it now appears to be increasing class barriers!

What becomes clearly apparent from the jumble of statistics is that most students from higher-income neighborhoods do far, far better in school than most students from lower-income neighborhoods, as long as the per pupil funding is adequate or high. This sets most of them on the trajectory of high academic achievement in high school, college, university, and strongly positions them for high economic achievement in American society. On the other hand, most students from lower-income neighborhoods tend to have greater obstacles to overcome in their climb up the academic and socio-economic ladder in the United States. It does not and should not have to be this way.

We pride ourselves as being an exemplary democracy, for the rest of the world to follow, a country which provides equal opportunity for all of its children to achieve their full human potential by studying and working hard. In order to live up to this ideal, we must undertake major socio-economic and political reforms. The reforms must include reducing the gap between rich and poor, and rebuilding the middle class by implementing a strongly progressive income tax such as we had from the 1930s until the 1970s; closing unfair corporate tax loopholes and ending corporate welfare; increasing the wages of working Americans by strengthening unions and the right to organize; promoting Fair Trade, not Free Trade policies. By doing the above, as well as eliminating waste in the bloated military defense budget, we will have the revenue to invest in the economy and create jobs, public and private. Also, we can make it a priority to invest in equal educational opportunity for all Americans, preschool through technical, trade school, college, and university.

None of the above will happen in any significant way until the majority of American elected officials are financed through a voluntary, publicly funded campaign system, not through the huge amounts of money donated to them by wealthy special interest lobbyists, and millionaires and billionaires. Clean Money Elections at the Federal level, following the example of states such as Maine, need to be adopted through Federal legislation or a Constitutional Amendment. Then only will we be able to implement a system of educational and social justice, and move from a Dollar Democracy, with liberty and justice for some, to a True Democracy with liberty and justice and equal educational opportunity for all!     ♦

To find out who is funding the campaigns of members of Congress and other elected officials, visit www.opensecrets.org

The above Op-Ed is based on a book that Peter Mathews is writing on money, politics, and the American Dream, "Dollar Democracy: with Liberty and Justice for Some; How to Reclaim the American Dream for All !"

Peter Mathews is Professor of Political Science at Cypress College and a radio and TV political analyst. He co-founded Rescue Education California. Contact him at 562-234-3319 or visit him at www.epetermathews.com

Dollar Democracy: with Liberty and Justice for Some - Reclaiming the American Dream for All!

by Peter Mathews

The naked truth has been exposed, and the emperor has no clothes: American Democracy has become Dollar Democracy, where policies made by elected leaders are bought and paid for by campaign contributions from wealthy special interest lobbyists and super rich individuals. In the 2012 federal elections alone, Congressional and Presidential candidates and their supporters raised and spent over $6.2 billion dollars. The bulk of this money came from wealthy individuals and groups: the top one- half of one percent of the U.S. population. As Will Rogers said, “We have the best Congress money can buy.” Rich individuals and corporations hire lobbyists to walk into the offices of Congresspersons to whom they donated, and ask them to vote in favor of their corporate interests against the public interest. As a result, the U.S. Congress and other elected leaders have made decisions that benefit wealthy corporations and super rich individuals, to the detriment of regular Americans such as Breanna Lane, Manny Arroyo, and Frank Greenthaler.

In a form of “legalized bribery”, many politicians vote for tax cuts, tax loopholes, and corporate subsidies for their wealthy donors. This forces spending cuts in programs that help working Americans and the economy prosper and grow; for example, cuts in funding for small business, infrastructure, health care, teachers, firefighters, police officers, government employees, and research and development of new technologies. Congresspersons are choosing their rich donors over suffering working Americans. Here are some shocking examples:

Breanna Lane, a 22 year old Utah woman loses part of her skull in a tragic auto accident. This is shocking enough. Worse still, the uninsured waitress is kept waiting for four months, with her scalp temporarily sown over the missing part of her skull, because the hospital and Medicaid can not agree on who should pay the bill! After a painful and horrifying four months, she finally receives her surgery to reattach the missing part of her skull.

Manny Arroyo, a 62 year old Nevada man, who worked decades for a large U.S. corporation, and has “full health care coverage”, loses his wife to cancer and is stuck with approximately $10,000 in “co-payments.” This crushing debt is a heavy enough burden on his life. Even more heartbreaking for him is his belief that his wife’s death may have been unnecessary! He believes that if their healthcare providers had not delayed specialized diagnosis and treatment, her brain cancer may have been found and treated before it killed her.

Frank Greenthaler, an uninsured 29 year old California college student and full time worker starts bleeding internally from his intestine. He rushes to the nearest hospital. He waits for three hours before the treatment preparation begins. Barely able to stand, he makes it clear that he does not wish to drown in medical bills. He is kept at the hospital for 5 days and is “temporarily stabilized” by the doctors and nurses. Stabilized but still in serious condition, he is told that he needs to find his way to a Los Angeles county hospital, so that his surgery will be paid for by the county instead of the private hospital! After major surgery and several days at the county hospital, Frank is discharged and is stricken with a $20,000 medical bill from the private hospital. As a working student who can barely make ends meet, he cannot pay the $20,000. This goes on his credit record. The young Californian makes a rapid recovery and is two semesters away from graduating with an engineering degree. Because of his mounting debt, he applies to become a police officer and passes all the tests except the financial credit test. His inability to pay the $20,000 medical bill shatters his dream of becoming a police officer and eventually a forensic psychologist.

As a professor of political science at Cypress College in Southern California, I’ve seen hundreds of students who have had to drop out of college in the last several years because they could not afford the skyrocketing tuition and textbook costs. One of my students in particular discovered his strong interest in the study of politics in my introductory American Government class. His enthusiasm for this subject was sparked by a discovery that politics does not have to be about money and power games, but should be about making a positive difference in the world. His goal became to finish his community college credits, earn his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in Political Science, become a university professor, and inspire young people to change the world for the better.

The tragedy is that this academically promising young man became side tracked from this meaningful goal. After a semester or two, because of unaffordable education costs, he had to drop out of school and go to work full time to pay for the rising cost of living in Southern California.

In addition, Dollar Democracy has cost us millions of well paying middle class jobs. In a pleasant middle class neighborhood in Long Beach, in which Long Beach City College and a Boeing plant are located, signs of outsourcing are apparent. In recent years, many homes have been put up for sale. Boeing, which, a few years ago, employed 55,000 people, homeowners who earned a solid middle class living, has exported most of it’s jobs and manufacturing to low wage states and low wage countries such as China. Only several thousand jobs are now left here. Policies of Free Trade, not Fair Trade, were imposed by many American political leaders who were influenced by corporate donors, lobbyists, and wealthy investors who benefited from cheap labor found in low wage states and countries.

The above tragic scenarios could have been avoided if American political leaders did not have to rely on the private financing of their campaigns, and private lobbying by wealthy corporate and individual donors. American campaigns and elections must reject this Dollar Democracy and replace it with True Democracy based on Clean Money publicly financed elections as practiced in Maine and several other states. In doing so, our elected leaders will be free to make decisions that benefit the public interest and promote the “General Welfare” as mandated in the preamble of our Constitution. They can then pursue policies of Fair Trade, creating high paying jobs, rebuilding the middle class, a universal health care system that covers every American, and a tuition free public education system from preschool through technical school, trade school, college and university.  ♦

To find out who is funding the campaigns of members of Congress and other elected officials, visit www.opensecrets.org

The above Op-Ed is based on a book that Peter Mathews is writing on money, politics, and the American Dream, "Dollar Democracy: with Liberty and Justice for Some; How to Reclaim the American Dream for All !"

Peter Mathews is Professor of Political Science at Cypress College and a radio and TV political analyst. He co-founded Rescue Education California. Contact him at 562-234-3319 or visit him at www.epetermathews.com.