Massive Fraud In PA Charter Schools Under Corbett's Leadership
Crooks and Liars - October 2, 2014, by Karoli - What could $30 million lost dollars mean to students in Pennsylvania?...
Crooks and Liars - October 2, 2014, by Karoli - What could $30 million lost dollars mean to students in Pennsylvania? Maybe more teachers, more textbooks, better classrooms? Well, forget about it, because at least that much is in the pockets of corrupt charter school operators.
The waste and fraud in Pennsylvania charter schools is even worse than I thought. It was bad enough when Nicholas Trombetta created a nice pyramid to skim off millions in public education money to fund his own fun, but it seems he was more the rule than the exception.
Philly.com:
The instances of fraud cited in the new report include cases where charter officials were indicted or pleaded guilty and instances uncovered in state audits.
Examples include Nicholas Trombetta, founder and former CEO of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School in Midland, who is awaiting federal trial in Pittsburgh on charges that he diverted $8 million in school funds for personal use.
The tally also includes $6.3 million that federal prosecutors allege Dorothy June Brown defrauded from the four Philadelphia-area charters she founded.
But the authors give special attention to another recent case involving a city charter: New Media Technology Charter School in the city's Stenton section. The former CEO and founding board president went to federal prison in 2012 after admitting they stole $522,000 in taxpayer money to prop up a restaurant, a health-food store, and a private school they controlled, and for defrauding a bank.
From 2005 to 2009, when the crimes were occurring, third-party auditors hired by New Media failed to spot the fraudulent payments.
"Fraud detection in Pennsylvania charter schools should not be dependent upon parent complaints, media exposés, and whistle-blowers," the authors wrote. Rather, they urged, the system should be proactive and use forensic accounting methods.
But that would mean Tom Corbett couldn't make his sweet deals with the charter operators! Perish the thought.
What we have here is the sale of our public schools by Republicans to for-profit concerns who are perfectly content to take taxpayers' money to pad their own bottom lines while making sure our children 'isn't learning.'
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Rally calling for immigration reform include scores of undocumented immigrants
Penn Live – August 5, 2013, by Ivy DeJesus - Close to 100 protesters rallied on Monday within ear shot of a political...
Penn Live – August 5, 2013, by Ivy DeJesus - Close to 100 protesters rallied on Monday within ear shot of a political event in Harrisburg headlined by House Speaker John Boehner and Rep. Scott Perry (PA-4) to demand immigration reform.
Chanting in English and Spanish, protesters made their way from the City Island parking lot up to the path leading to Metro Bank Park where the Republican lawmakers held a fundraiser.
Protesters carried placards and shouted in unison a string of chants, including: “Serve the needy, not the greedy,” and “Move Boehner, get out of the way. You’re not welcome in Pa.”
The rally was organized by a coalition of advocacy groups, among them Keystone Progress, Pennsylvanians United for Immigration Reform, Center for Popular Democracy and Central PA Area Labor Federation. The majority of participants drove in from other parts of the state or were bused in.
As House members return to their districts for August recess, representatives of the coalition said they intended to take their messages to lawmakers’ local offices.
Perry’s 4th congressional district encompasses York County and parts of Dauphin County.
Hiro Nishikawa, one of the protesters, said that the long-simmering debate is finally getting widespread public attention.
Nishikawa said immigration policy continues to be dictated by outdated laws, including the 1996 law that mandates detention and apprehension of undocumented immigrants who have any prior police records. The law has led to approximately 400,000 undocumented immigrants being detained under the Obama Administration.
“People recognize things are messed up,” Nishikawa said. “The huge concern is the fairness of the law. It needs to be changed.”
Amid widespread calls for an immigration policy overhaul, a deeply divided Congress has been unable to advance any comprehensive reform. President Obama has used his executive power to push some laws that provide pathways to citizenship, including an amnesty program for qualified young people. In spite of a bipartisan Senate bill approved in June, Washington insiders are largely in agreement that the House is not likely to agree on a major bill this year.“We are entrenched in the culture that is America..we are part of the people that are here.” – Jorge Salazar
Rally participants represented a diverse group of people, including church and labor groups, immigrants from a number of countries, and even undocumented immigrants.
Carmen Guerrero, a community organizer from outside Philadelphia, said lawmakers have not given the immigration issue the urgency it deserves.
“The law is broken,” Guerrero said in Spanish. She came from Mexico 13 years ago. “This is a country of immigrants. It’s a country where immigration has to keep moving forward with its law. It’s been too long without reform. It has been reformed but only to attack the immigrant community, to suppress the community.”
Guerrero said that U.S. immigration policy is so cumbersome, many immigrants prefer to sidestep the system and enter the country illegally. She said most countries face daunting obstacles for legal entry, including excessively long waiting periods.
“The opportunity to come here legally is too small,” she said. “At the end of the day, we rather break the law. There is no realization to be able to come legally and be part of society, as we should.”
Guerrero, a single mother of three who has worked two full-time jobs back to back as a hotel housekeeper and restaurant dishwasher, says she pays taxes and is in no way taking jobs away from citizens.
“We are the landscapers, the service, the dishwashsers at the restaurants and hotels,” she said. “I don’t think a professional would want those jobs.” -Jorge Salazar
Another undocumented immigrant, Jorge Salazar acknowledged that it would be difficult to process 11 million undocumented immigrants through the immigration system, but that in the end, it would not burden taxpayers.
“It’s not going to be costly,” he said. “We are going to pay for it. Immigration is one of the few government programs funded by the applicants.”
Salazar’s family arrived from Bolivia 23 years ago, but due to a series of legal mistakes, his family found itself staying put once their visa expired.
Salazar said he considers himself a part of the American society; he said he works and goes to school and is an active member of his community. He traveled to Harrisburg from his Philadelphia suburb home.
He said he and his family were concerned that they were risking deportation by being vocally and actively involved in calling for immigration reform.
“The reality is we have to do this,” he said. “People need to know that we are your neighbors, we are next to you in school, we are next to you in church. All my friends are American citizens. We are entrenched in the culture that is America..we are part of the people that are here.”
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Why U.S. Cities Are Fighting to Attract Immigrants
Why U.S. Cities Are Fighting to Attract Immigrants
Backyard barbecues. Fireworks. A day off work. Among these traditions we look forward to on the Fourth of July, there...
Backyard barbecues. Fireworks. A day off work. Among these traditions we look forward to on the Fourth of July, there is an even more patriotic rite of passage: the oath immigrants take to become American citizens.
Read the full article here.
Más alta la factura de luz y otras implicaciones de los acuerdos de la junta
Más alta la factura de luz y otras implicaciones de los acuerdos de la junta
Encubrimiento de violaciones de ley, conflicto de intereses, ganancias desmedidas de especuladores financieros y...
Encubrimiento de violaciones de ley, conflicto de intereses, ganancias desmedidas de especuladores financieros y mayores cargas económicas para el pueblo son algunas de las implicaciones de los acuerdos que la Junta de Supervisión Fiscal está negociando con los acreedores del gobierno, según el Frente Ciudadano por la Auditoría de la Deuda.
Read the full article here.
Panelists talk immigration policy at CNN documentary screening
Panelists talk immigration policy at CNN documentary screening
Ana María Archila, the co-executive director for the Center of Popular Democracy, said immigrants are frightened and...
Ana María Archila, the co-executive director for the Center of Popular Democracy, said immigrants are frightened and anxious just living their lives and going about their daily routines.
Read the full article here.
Diversas organizaciones en el área triestatal se preparan para manifestaciones en apoyo al trabajador inmigrante
Diversas organizaciones en el área triestatal se preparan para manifestaciones en apoyo al trabajador inmigrante
Este lunes, Día internacional del trabajo, se escucharán las voces de miles de inmigrantes indocumentados y sus aliados...
Este lunes, Día internacional del trabajo, se escucharán las voces de miles de inmigrantes indocumentados y sus aliados, que ha 100 días del mandato de Donald Trump, dicen sentirse cansados por el acoso del gobierno. Durante el 1 de mayo también se verán huelgas comerciales, paros laborales y manifestaciones estudiantiles.
Lea el artículo completo aquí.
Amazon Not Happy with Seattle’s New Compromise Head Tax
Amazon Not Happy with Seattle’s New Compromise Head Tax
An open letter May 14 to the city of Seattle from about 55 elected leaders—some from cities on Amazon’s short list for...
An open letter May 14 to the city of Seattle from about 55 elected leaders—some from cities on Amazon’s short list for HQ2—rebuked Amazon for its tactics and its opposition to the tax proposal. “We urge you to remain steadfast in your commitment to this effort to reduce homelessness and the persistent inequities faced by all of our cities,” the leaders wrote to their Seattle colleagues.
Read the full article here.
When Bosses Schedule Hours That Just Don't Work
Gap follows Abercrombie & Fitch, Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret in promising to end on-call scheduling. It took ...
Gap follows Abercrombie & Fitch, Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret in promising to end on-call scheduling. It took strong public and regulatory pressure to get the companies to change, but change they have.
Unfortunately, unpredictable scheduling is still widespread.According to federal data, 66 percent of food service workers, 52 percent of retail workers and 40 percent of janitors and house cleaners have at most a week’s notice of their schedules.
On-call scheduling is but one of many dubious pay and scheduling practices. Workers who show up for a scheduled shift may be sent home without pay if business is slow. Schedules can fluctuate from week to week, making it hard to manage family life or calculate a budget.
Victoria’s Secret engages in still another questionable practice. Salespeople are offered a bonus based on a formula that takes into account sales per hour. But the calculation includes hours when the store is closed — hours spent tidying up, for instance, when there is obviously no chance to make sales. By reducing the sales-per-hour number, this formula can put a bonus out of reach. Victoria’s Secret would not comment on its bonus policy.
The fundamental problem is that as scheduling has become a tool for higher profits, it has also generated unfair practices. Software lets employers calibrate maximum profit at minimum labor cost. Managers are often compensated on the efficiency of their staff. A retail manager’s best employee would not necessarily be the top seller, but rather the one who sells the most at the lowest pay.
Then, too, there is abuse of overtime, in which a company shifts work from hourly workers eligible for time-and-a-half pay to salaried workers who are ineligible for overtime pay. A former salaried executive assistant manager at Walgreens, Caleb Sneeringer, said his hours ballooned to up to 70 a week when the chain stopped scheduling most hourly workers for overtime around 2010. Walgreens says it does not have a no-overtime policy and tries to manage “overtime hours efficiently while providing a high level of customer service.”
A rule recently proposed by the Labor Department would be both fair and efficient. It would make salaried employees eligible for overtime if they make less than $50,440 a year. (The current threshold, which has barely budged since 1975, is $23,660.) Retailers and other low-wage employers strongly oppose the proposal. Meanwhile, bills in Congress and some stateswould curb some of the most disruptive scheduling practices, including on-call shifts or sending workers home early without pay. Approving these bills will require lawmakers to put the interests of workers ahead of their corporate contributors.
Source: New York Times
BREAKING: Maryland Legislature Restores Voting Rights To 40,000 Ex-Offenders
Source: ...
Source: ThinkProgress
Maryland’s legislature voted on Tuesday to override Gov. Larry Hogan (R)’s veto of a bill to give more than 40,000 ex-offenders in the state the right to vote while still on parole or probation.
Maryland joins 13 other states and the District of Columbia where citizens are permitted to vote immediately after serving their sentences. Hogan vetoed the legislation in May of last year after the legislature passed it with large majorities.
In response to the override, Hogan’s office issued a statement saying that he was disappointed with the decision and that “our citizens deserve better.”
“Today, twenty-nine people in the Maryland Senate decided to ignore reason and common sense and support an action that the vast majority of Marylanders vehemently oppose,” a spokesperson for the governor said. “For too long, voters have been completely ignored by their elected representatives in Annapolis.”
But there’s no evidence that a “vast majority” of Maryland voters opposed the bill, and national polls show that strong majorities of Amercians support restoring voting rights to non-violent offenders who have served their sentences. Emma Greenman, director of voting rights and democracy at the Center for Popular Democracy, told ThinkProgress that the legislature’s override is crucial for ensuring full political participation in Maryland.
“A lot of those voters are in Baltimore,” she said. “When we talk about political participation, it’s really important. This is a disenfranchised by law community. It’s so important to restore the rights for these 40,000 folks who are paying taxes, raising families, and want to have a political voice in the decisions that are affecting their lives.”
Ex-offenders and their allies unsuccessfully demonstrated in favor of the legislation in Baltimore last year to pressure the governor to sign the bill. Those in favor of the bill also wrote letters and phone banked to emphasize the importance of voting in helping people reintegrate into society after jail or prison.
The bill’s author, freshman Delegate Cory McCray (D-Baltimore), told ThinkProgress last May that it was crucial that people demonstrated to keep elected officials like Hogan accountable.
“When you can’t vote, you don’t have a seat at the table,” said McCray, whose Baltimore district has one of the highest ex-offender populations in the state. “Obviously, they’ve made mistakes, but these are our family members, our friends, our neighbors. These folks pay taxes. You can’t leave 40,000 people out of the conversation on subject matters that directly and indirectly impact them, like criminal justice reform, housing, access to fresh foods, employment, and transportation.”
Greenman, who was involved in the campaign to introduce the legislation, also said its passage will make it much easier to administer elections in the state because anyone not serving time in prison at the time of an election will be given the right to vote.
“It’s incredibly pragmatic for election administration,” she said. “It’s easy for folks on the ground, easy for folks coming out of prison to understand, and easy for election administration officials. Its a clear line.”
Greenman said she hopes the move creates momentum across the country to restore voting rights for ex-offenders. Currently, Minnesota lawmakers are considering a similar change. And more pressure is being put on Florida and the few states that permanently disenfranchise their former felons.
This Small City Has a Plan to Fight the Silicon Valley Housing Crisis
This Small City Has a Plan to Fight the Silicon Valley Housing Crisis
For more than three months, Gabriela Mercado has crisscrossed Richmond, California, a working-class and immigrant city...
For more than three months, Gabriela Mercado has crisscrossed Richmond, California, a working-class and immigrant city that sits on the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay. She hits the streets, talks to strangers, and knocks on doors in support of an old-school solution to towering rents across the region. She is part of a coalition of workers, tenants, and progressive politicians pushing an initiative on the November 8 ballot that would create the first new rent-control law in California in nearly 30 years. Mercado says her commitment to the cause comes from personal crisis.
This article was produced in partnership with Local Progress, a network of progressive local elected officials, to highlight some of the bold efforts unfolding in cities across the country.
In early 2015, the owner of Mercado’s apartment complex increased tenants’ rent by as much as $200. It was frightening, she says. Many of the resident families made only minimum wage and couldn’t absorb the new costs. After an organizing drive and a partial rent strike, the increase was rolled back, but not completely. Mercado, who has worked at Chuck E. Cheese’s and as an office janitor, says she was forced to find additional income. Doing so meant she spent less time with her daughter.
“I am involved because of what we went through,” she says. “Because it is unjust what they did to us.” She wants rent control so her family “won’t have to worry about the rent suddenly going up again.”
At a time when the real-estate market is aflame with speculation, Richmond residents like Mercado are revitalizing tenants’-rights activism in the Bay Area. And they are no anomaly. On November 8, the small cities of Alameda, Mountain View, Burlingame, and San Mateo will also vote on ballot initiatives that could establish rent and eviction controls of varying stringency. Landlords, led by the powerful California Apartment Association (CAA), are determined to snuff out these efforts, and they have spent serious money on a counter-campaign. The initiatives, after all, could be the beginning of something significant. The state’s once-vibrant tenants’ movement, dormant for decades, finally seems ready to return to California politics and put its power on display.
Richmond’s rent-control drive comes in the midst of one of the most crushing affordable-housing crises in Bay Area history—a disaster comprised of cratering post-recession home-ownership rates and rocket-fueled rent increases, suspicious arsons and mass evictions, breakneck gentrification, and sprawling tent encampments huddled under highway overpasses. It started in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, where the tech boom first exploded, and soon seeped into surrounding cities like Oakland, Alameda, and others.
The dry data too suggest major social disruption. Since 2010, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, the average asking price of Bay Area rental units has increased by 66 percent, or approximately $1,000, to more than $2,500. San Francisco and San Jose are the two most expensive rental markets in the country, according to Zillow. Rent in Oakland, meanwhile, has spiked 71 percent in little more than three years.
People in Richmond also see the housing crisis coming their way, says Gayle McLaughlin, city councilwoman, former mayor, and Local Progress member. And they are determined to do something about it.
“Our residents are largely working-class, and our community cannot thrive and maintain itself with these kinds of rent increases,” says McLaughlin. “What I have seen happen and what will happen further is that people will be forced out—forced out of our city. They will be homeless, their kids will have to be taken out of schools, families will have to double up.”
McLaughlin’s political party, the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), is well-known in the Bay for its bold policies and unlikely victories. It has waged high-profile electoral battles against Chevron, which owns a massive refinery in the city and is deeply involved in local politics. It has pushed for minimum-wage hikes and taxes on sugary drinks. It has vociferously resisted oil-by-rail shipments to regional ports. Now, as part of a broader community coalition, the RPA is fighting for rent control.
The RPA first pressed—and passed—a rent- and eviction-control ordinance in Richmond’s City Council in 2015, but it didn’t live long. The California Apartment Association torpedoed the law after rallying its troops, gathering signatures and using a petitioning procedure to block the ordinance’s implementation. RPA, and its partners, countered: They collected their own batch of signatures and got a rent-control initiative on this year’s ballot.
Because of state law, the initiative is constrained in scope. It will peg annual rent increases on units built before 1995 to the percentage increase of the Consumer Price Index, thus linking rent hikes to inflation. Any units built after that year will not be affected. The initiative also seeks to protect tenants from unjust eviction. If it passes, landlords will no longer be able to give tenants an eviction notice without cause. A rent board will be established to oversee enforcement.
Powerful people are opposed to the proposal, of course. Richmond Mayor Tom Butt has come out against it, calling it “poorly drafted.” The California Apartment Association meanwhile, is vigorously resisting the regional initiatives. According to Joshua Howard, a CAA senior vice president, the organization has spent at least $1 million on TV spots, radio ads, and the like to block rent control in the Bay Area.
“We want the voters to understand that we do face a crisis in Northern California and we do need to protect the diversity and character of our communities,” he says. “But these ballot measures do not address the underlying problem.” To truly fix the problem, he adds, more affordable housing must be built.
Gayle McLaughlin agrees with that last sentiment. New housing for “low-income and very low-income people” is desperately needed, she says. In the meantime, she argues that rent control will help clot the hemorrhaging of working-class residents. She also notes that rent regulation would be much more effective if California officials repealed the Costa-Hawkins Act of 1995, a landlord-backed state law that severely limits municipal authority over rent policy. The law bans rent control on buildings built after 1995, and also prohibits vacancy-control measures across the state, among other provisions.
In other words, if activists really want to make change it will have to take place at the state level. That, says Peter Dreier, an urban- and environmental-policy professor at Occidental College, will require a powerful tenants’-rights movement, like the one that thrived across the state in the 1970s.
“There’s a lot of anger and outrage about rising rents all over the state at the grassroots level, and there are a growing number of local groups trying to organize around it,” he says. “I would say the tenants’ movement is the sleeping giant of California politics.”
Thanks to relentless organizing in small cities like Richmond, the giant is starting to stir.
By Jimmy Tobias
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6 days ago
6 days ago