Time for Dialogue: Superintendent Pick Will Meet With Community Groups In May Visit

New Britain Superintendent-in-waiting Kelt Cooper will visit New Britain next month to meet with school officials and others, including members of the Latino and African American communities.

Leaders of those groups said a dialogue with Cooper is being planned for next month at last week's meeting of the Democratic Town Committee.  The May visit comes  in the aftermath of a favorable report from four Board of Education members after their site visit to Del Rio, Texas where Cooper is the Superintendent of Schools.  The new Superintendent's appointment is set to begin on July 1. Cooper, one of three finalists who met with the public on February 28th, was appointed on a 6 to 4 vote on February 29th, breaking a five to five deadlock at an afternoon meeting of the Board of Education.

News of a community dialogue ahead of Cooper's official arrival is welcome news after controversy erupted at the end of the search. The imbroglio featured an  inflammatory letter to Mayor O'Brien from BOE member and former Republican Town Chair Paul Carver alleging the Mayor's office tried to interfere with a closed-door BOE meeting.  O'Brien had made a request to the BOE to discuss the status of the superintendent search.

Unexpected concern over Cooper's candidacy arose at the end of the search process when reports surfaced about his 2009 enforcement of a residency law in Del Rio that resulted in the inappropriate expulsion of 180 children -- children whose families subsequently proved their right to attend school in the Texas border town.

A consultant's report failed to mention the residency enforcement issue, leaving some school board members and many people involved in the search process unaware of an issue that drew national headlines when it occurred and drew the involvement of legal aid attorneys in the Del Rio area.  The consultant told the New Britain Herald in early March that the enforcement action was irrelevant to New Britain's search and was only shared verbally  in mid-February as the process entered the home stretch.

Cooper, 51, rose to the top of the finalist list with two others based on accomplishments with English Language Learners and extensive experience in diverse districts in Arizona and Texas.  In addition to leading the San Felipe Del Rio District of 10,400 students, he previously was superintendent of the Nogales, Arizona Schools with 6,400 students. Cooper holds a B.A. in anthropology, a Master of Art degree in educational administration and an ABD/PhD without a dissertation, all from New Mexico State University.

Lowering Municipal Health Insurance Premiums: New Britain Should Adopt Partnership Plan, Join State Pool

Energy in all its forms and health insurance are two of the most rapidly rising costs in most household budgets.  Municipal government is no different.  Lowering these two items in local government would be a tax stabilizer and would free up public dollars for schools, public safety and other essentials.

 In 2012 there is an option on the table to knock down the city of New Britain costs for health insurance without diminishing coverage. It will allow cities and towns to participate in the pooling of coverage offered to the state's workforce.  State Comptroller Kevin Lembo last week announced that his office has analyzed implementation in 50 cities and towns, including New Britain, and has concluded  30% of towns would have savings of 5% or more in premiums

For cash-strapped cities such as New Britain the new Health Care Partnership law enacted last year offers the administration of Mayor Tim O'Brien an opportunity to save upwards of $900,000 or more on premiums for health insurance coverage of municipal employees.  Used in states as near as blue Massachusetts and far away as red Utah,  insurance pooling takes advantage of a larger pool of employees -- spreading the risk -- to maintain similar or even improved coverage on individual and family plans.

“The CT Partnership Plan is officially open for business to all non-state government employees, including Connecticut towns, cities and boards of education,” Lembo said. “The goal is to provide towns and cities with lower health care costs and long-term price stability, while also offering quality health care to employees. Our initial analysis of more than 50 municipal employers revealed significant savings of five to eight percent in some cases – real money for municipalities seeking local property tax relief.”

New Britain and other local governments will be able to join the partnership July 1, the start of the fiscal year.

"Free" Trade and Job Loss: The Beat Goes On

From other words: 

By William A. Collins

My good job
Has flown away;
Lost it to N-
A-F-T-A.

After years of debate and delay, Congress finally passed those free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama.

There go 159,000 more jobs that we're likely to lose to Seoul after the Korean deal goes into effect on March 15, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). And 55,000 to Bogotá, after the Colombian pact becomes operative too.

Our workers won't get so many pink slips because of Panama, because that country doesn't export much.

But big agribusiness corporations hope, NAFTA-style, to flood Panama with a deluge of subsidized, duty-free grain. The USDA expects farm exports to soar by $2.3 billion, which may sound nice to us. But this flood of food could put Panamanian farmers out of business. And U.S. banks wanted to enhance Panama's traditional role as the Western Hemisphere's money-laundering citadel, so they pushed for the trade deal.

(Public Citizen / Flickr)

Naturally, grain will flow unimpeded to Colombia and South Korea too, although Korean markets may prefer rice to our wheat or corn. But South Korea's industrial moguls will get a special benefit. Of the manufactured goods they'll now send duty-free to the United States, a portion can be made in North Korean sweatshops.

Still, all this new outsourcing is peanuts compared to China's admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001. That move cost the United States about 2.8 million jobs, EPI found. American manufacturers have been thrilled ever since to buy their component parts so cheaply. But ironically, those rock-bottom prices are derived not only from China's serf-like wages, but also from our own federal deficit.

America's refusal to tax itself sufficiently means we have to borrow huge sums just to keep our government afloat. China loans our own money back to us, which sustains the high value of the dollar and the low value of the yuan. That helps assure that Chinese goods will remain cheaper than ours.

Our pact with Jordan is perhaps the worst of the bunch. Jordanian garments flow in here freely to Walmart, Target, Macy's, and other major vendors, but no Jordanians ever touch them. Instead, Asian entrepreneurs open factories there and import young Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan women to do the dirty work. You can imagine the conditions. Presumably Jordanian aristocrats get a cut somewhere along the line. Anyway, all this conniving was running smoothly and quietly until the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights revealed that plant managers were raping some of the workers. It created quite a scandal in Jordan, but not here.

With cheap imports woven so tightly into U.S. manufacturing and retail, corporations have a lot at stake. Thus, their generous campaign contributions roll into the big political parties' coffers during election years.

What about American workers? Manufacturers don't seem to need that many anymore. Not only have millions of jobs flown overseas, but millions more have been lost to technology. Meanwhile, legislative assaults spearheaded by Republicans and corporate lobbyists have slashed the numbers of workers who belong to unions.

And the free-trade juggernaut rumbles relentlessly on under the mantra of "cheaper goods." Cheaper they are, but with America's stagnating median family income, tens of millions of us can't afford goods at any price nowadays.

After years of decline, the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs has begun to inch up. But we'd see up to2.25 million new jobs created within two years if Washington were to compel China and other Asian nations to stop manipulating their currencies, according to EPI economist Robert E. Scott.

Germany has survived this plague pretty well with higher taxes, more education, selective tariffs, higher wages, long vacations, and less borrowing. Our attitude is different. Workers here are expendable. That's why keep forging these suicidal trade deals.

OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative, and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut. otherwords.org

Otherwords is a project of the Economic Policy Institute

New Superintendent Search Missed Key, Controversial Information on Kelt Cooper

Kelt Cooper, the choice of the Board of Education (BOE) to lead New Britain schools, rose to the top of the finalist list based on a good educational resume, accomplishments with English Language Learners  and extensive experience in diverse districts in Arizona and Texas.

The winnowing process concluded after two days of interviews by advisory committees and the BOE.  In a divided vote that stood at 5 to 5 during a tense meeting,  Cooper finally got the nod 6 to 4  and may be the schools' chief  come  July 1 subject to contract negotiations and a critically important site visit to the Texas district of Del Rio where he is superintendent now.

On Wednesday and the day of the decision, however, the process received a disturbing jolt of information about Mr. Cooper that did not turn up during the vetting process.

I found out about it from a retired New Britain music teacher and passionate advocate for education who posted on her Facebook page a disturbing story from the Texas Observer after what must have been a cursory search on the web.  

The balanced and thoroughly researched story, written by Melissa Del Bosque,  covers Superintendent Cooper's  controversial actions to expel students who allegedly were crossing over the Del Rio International Toll Bridge from Ciudad Acuna. The word allegedly is important here because Cooper turned out to be wrong about most of the children nabbed at the border by school employees who passed out warnings.  All but a few were  legally entitled to an education in his district. Nothing like using a sledge hammer to kill a fly to obstruct the civil rights of immigrant children.

From the Observer story:

All but 20 of the approximately 200 students issued warnings on Sept. 9 eventually returned to Del Rio schools. Texas RioGrande Legal Aid assisted at least 15 families who didn't meet the new residency requirements imposed by Cooper. Some missed school for up to four weeks. But the crackdown, and Cooper's blunt comments to the press about his actions, dredged up lingering racial division in Del Rio, where Mexican Americans have fought for equal education rights for more than century.
Mexican Americans in Del Rio say that whatever the legalities, Cooper's actions had a chilling effect that could hinder their efforts to enroll more children in school. "It's not in our interest to keep children who are U.S. citizens from getting a proper education," says Alpha Hernandez, another attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. "Every year some children don't get registered. I've seen children 7- or 8- years-old that have never attended school. We are already suffering from high unemployment and low educational achievement."
Cooper sees the issue as clear-cut. It was never a question of immigration status, he says, but of residency. "If 200 children crossing at 6:30 on a Wednesday morning is not cause enough to be suspicious, then I don't know what is," he says. "No, I guess they all have sick aunts because that's what a lot of them said.

Cooper, who received lots of national media attention from his moves and kudos from anti-immigrant forces, maintains he was just trying to enforce state law about residency requirements in organizing a border patrol that randomly stopped children and their families coming over  the border.   But the vigilante-like actions resulted in threatening notices to students who, when the facts were known,  had the legal status to be enrolled in the school district.

The New Britain Board of Education put their faith and money in the  IA-based firm of Ray & Associates.  But when crunch time came the firm's consultant had concluded the information about Cooper's controversial and excessive "enforcement" actions were irrelevant to New Britain's search.

However this search for a superintendent ends, it is clear Board of Education members were denied an important piece of information that should have been known during the screening process, not on decision day.

What Would a 21st Century Rev. King Be Saying and Doing in 2012?

Our national day to remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is an opportunity to focus and ramp up the political debate in 2012 on "saving the middle class" and addressing "income inequality" that has been, from all reports, getting worse since the early 1970s.

Over the last year "Tea Bag" politicians, lavishly funded by unlimited corporate money, have sought to make the income gap worse, launching an unprecedented assault on the public sector and collective bargaining.

Tune in to any Republican Presidential debate for the latest ways and means to maximize income insecurity for working and middle income Americans. Or listen to the likes of Boehner and McConnell as they trash the very moderate moves of Obama to mitigate income inequality and preserve a social contract so vital to a free society.

So what would a 21st Century Martin Luther King be saying about all of this?

From his splendid words and many deeds we already can surmise that he would be leading a moral charge to "occupy" every city and town on behalf of the 99%; he would be working with others to close the gap in incomes and establish a level economic playing field.

Most certainly, Rev. King would be lending his voice to an organized labor movement that over time has been shrinking in direct correlation to the falling incomes of most Americans.

Proof of what he would be saying now comes with remembering what he was doing during his last hours on this earth.

4 April 2007

I remember exactly where I was on April 4, 1968, the day the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. 

That week day, like many others in my senior year at Lynn English High School, I drove to Bradlee’s Department store on the Lynnway in Lynn, Massachusetts to punch in for the evening shift, earning some money before entering Boston University and its College of Basic Studies in the fall of 1968.

The news spread quickly that Thursday evening that King was dead. 

It didn’t take long to realize that my shift as a retail clerk would be different from all the others. The store quickly emptied out. Not a customer in sight all night. No need for Mr. Silverman, the shaken and somber store manager, to send me out on outside carriage control. The bullets in Memphis were enough to bring a normal business day to a halt in Lynn and most of the nation. Just five short years before I had come home from junior high on a late summer day to watch King deliver his “I Have A Dream” speech – an event that would inspire so many to become active in politics and protest. 

There are many good remembrances of what King said and stood for on his national holiday. But not so much is said on this anniversary of the day he died. It's worth remembering on his January holiday, April 4th and throughout the year why King was in Memphis on a day I will never forget. 

By 1968, Rev. King was widening the concerns of his movement. In his book Where Do We Go From Here? King opposed a Vietnam policy that had begun to break the nation further apart. The lunchroom sit-ins and battles over accommodations and voting rights were giving way to a broader agenda. He was planning a new march on Washington – “the Poor People’s Campaign” -- when he decided to take up the cause of 1,300 black sanitation workers in Memphis, a city of southern segregation, where the white power structure opposed the right to unionize and the Mayor vowed never to bargain in good faith in a way that would give the sanitation workers their dignity. 

The strike and a citywide economic boycott were a cause King knew he could not ignore.

King’s prophetic “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech on the eve of the assassination is his best known from Memphis. But two weeks earlier, on March 18th, King galvanized support for strikers by saying: “So often we overlook the worth and significance of those who are not in professional jobs, or those who are not in the so-called big jobs…..One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive.” 

Following King’s assassination, the Memphis power structure gave up its intransigence – recognizing the AFSCME union, awarding pay raises and instituting merit promotions. 

King’s campaign for striking sanitation workers reaffirmed his greatness at the hour of his death and resonates today in the cause of social and economic justice. 

That is worth remembering most from the day he died.

from  http://nbpoliticus.blogspot.com/2007/04/39-years-ago-today.html

Other Words: The 2012 GOP Vote Suppression Plan

From Other Words:  2 January 2012

Disenfranchising Voters is Un-American

Buying elections on the one hand and keeping people away from the polls on the other isn't what our democracy is supposed to be about.

By William A. Collins

Love my voting,
Makes me grin;
But these new rules,
Won’t let me in.

You may not realize just what depths the Republican Party has been plumbing to regain the presidency next year.

By now it should be plain that its contingent in Congress has steadily voted to keep unemployment high and the Great Recession alive. The goal is to hang each of these millstones, recession and unemployment, around President Barack Obama’s neck until November. The health of our economy is of less interest to those folks.

Voting Rights Obstacles, an OtherWords cartoon by Khalil Bendib.

Likewise, allowing virtually unlimited campaign contributions from wealthy individuals and corporations is another part of the plan. Labor unions and workers cannot compete with that level of largesse. Such big money means that Obama must also snuggle up to Wall Street and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But most egregious of all these schemes is the movement, in the states where Republicans hold sway, to deter prospective Democratic voters from even getting to the polls. Most states with tea party-inspired governors and legislatures have been working feverishly at this. The common theme is to require every voter to present a state-issued ID card.

The gimmick, of course, is to make these cards hard to come by. Generally they must be obtained at motor vehicle offices, frequently inaccessible on foot and notoriously frustrating. The targeted victims are the poor, the young, the old, and the black. The main GOP objection to these folks is that they suffer from a nearly uncontrollable urge to vote for Democrats.

New York University's Brennan Center for Justice estimates that approximately 5 million eligible voters will be sufficiently deterred by this inconvenience so as not to get a card. That burden will fall most heavily on those without a car, without good physical mobility, or without available time off from work.

That, of course, is the whole idea. Since these poor generally don’t vote for Republican candidates, the goal is keep them out of the voting booth.

Some 25 percent of African-American voters don’t have a state ID, as opposed to just 11 percent of all voters, according to the Brennan Center. Given some of our recent tight presidential races, removing 5 million low-income voters from the pool could easily turn the election. Not to mention all those governors and legislators now rubbing their hands with glee over the benefit to themselves the next time out.

There are other wrinkles too. Louisiana has subverted the Motor Voter Law by simply not distributing enough registration forms to DMV offices, and by failing to designate social service bureaus as registration sites. Florida has new rules as well, designed to suppress absentee voting, mostly by the elderly. These regulations are so stringent that the League of Women Voters (LWV) will no longer participate.

Then in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker, who may face a recall election in 2012, signed a bill putting an end to same-day voter registration. Still other states are curtailing their early voting rules.

The public justification for this hard-driving crusade is the supposed scourge of “voter fraud.” The LWV used to wave that banner itself when big city political machines essentially set up polling places in graveyards. But today there's very little detectable fraud. Even the hyped-up case against the citizens' action group ACORN turned out to be phony. ACORN, which fell apart because of these trumped-up accusations, was ultimately exonerated.

So please be depressed. This is what American democracy has come to: buying elections on the one hand and keeping people away from the polls on the other.

OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative, and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut. otherwords.org

See more items tagged with: GOP, 2012 Elections, voting rights

Categories: Rights/Democracy

The Politics of Division: Cafero, GOP Seek To Make 5th Congressional District Less Diverse

The impasse over the redistricting of  Connecticut's Congressional political map is jeopardizing New Britain's place as one of the major cities in the 5th Congressional District.

Republican Minority Leader Larry Cafero  and his GOP cohorts on the stalemated legislative commission want New Britain to vacate the new 5th to join the 1st District where Hartford and New Britain are "communities of interest" that should go together.

In their brief to the state Supreme Court,  Cafero and company are using the "communities of interest" factor cynically and falsely to tilt the 5th into a Republican-leaning Congressional District.

New Britain,  the home of 12-term Republican Nancy Johnson until 2006, provides the 5th District with the diversity and political balance it needs to be a level-playing field for politicians of all stripes and backgrounds.

Without towns such as New Britain the 5th Congressional District becomes much less diverse.  The Republicans, who sabotaged an agreement within the commission, argue for a proposal that promotes a racial and socio-economic isolation on the political map for the next decade. This strategy may serve the GOP's short-term election agenda,  but will be divisive, diminishing the influence of New Britain voters.

Congressional districts should reflect a political and demographic balance. The 5th District should remain what it is now: a mix of urban and suburban and the wealthy and the working class voting together.

Taking New Britain out of the 5th District will create an imbalance and reduce the chances of advancing the state's common interests by its Congressional delegation.