Vara writes: "The current and former Corinthian students participating in the strike, who call themselves the Corinthian Fifteen (Heiney is among their most outspoken members), are publicly refusing to pay both their federal and private debt."
Fifteen students are refusing to pay back loans taken to pay for classes at a failed network of for-profit colleges. (photo: Michael Okoniewski/Bloomberg News)
The refusal of fifteen students to pay back loans taken to pay for classes at a failed network of for-profit colleges could have far-reaching consequences.
n the fall of 2013, Mallory Heiney returned from a mission trip to Guinea with a plan to go into health care. She enrolled in classes at a for-profit college called Everest Institute, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, expecting to graduate with a degree that would help her become a nurse. But, after less than a year, she said, her instructors stopped showing up. Corinthian Colleges, the company that owned Everest, had admitted that its finances were in trouble, and that it expected to go out of business; it later said it would shut down several campuses, including the one in Grand Rapids. Heiney graduated but felt she had learned very little. When she tells people where she went, she told me, she gets sympathetic looks. She said, “You go to school so they look at you and think, ‘Wow, this person must be educated’—not so they look at you and think, ‘Oh, this person went to Everest. They must be trash.’ ” Heiney’s student debts include more than ten thousand dollars owed to the federal government and more than ten thousand dollars in private loans; that’s what remains after she repaid some of the interest on her debts while she was in college, in part by selling her own plasma.
On Monday, Heiney and fourteen other people who took out loans to attend Corinthian announced that they are going on a “debt strike,” and will stop repaying their loans. They believe that they have both ethical and legal grounds for what appears to be an unprecedented collective action against the debt charged to students who attended Corinthian schools, and they are also making a broader statement about the trillion dollars of student debt owed throughout the country.
Corinthian was one of the world’s largest for-profit operators of colleges; at its height, in 2010, more than a hundred thousand students were enrolled in its schools, which operated under the names of Everest, Heald, and WyoTech, throughout the U.S. and part of Canada. These days, the company can hardly be said to exist. Over the past few years, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the attorney general of California, and the attorney general of Massachusetts have brought separate lawsuits accusing the company of all kinds of bad behavior: pressuring students into signing up for huge loans, misleading them about their prospects after graduation, and strong-arming them into beginning to repay their private loans before they had even graduated. Last year, Corinthian stopped filing financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and, earlier this month, the Nasdaq Stock Market sent Corinthian a letter informing its officials—those who remain—that the business would be delisted. All fourteen of Corinthian’s Canada campuses have been shut down. In the U.S., more than fifty campuses have been sold off; a dozen have been closed.
Corinthian’s downfall has come to be seen as a symbol of the ills of for-profit higher education—the false promises of employment, the mounting student debt, the aggressive collection tactics. But, for Corinthian students and graduates, the company’s failure has had more practical repercussions. Most Corinthian students cover their tuition by taking out federal and private loans. That debt, it turns out, is far more resilient than Corinthian itself. Students and graduates of the company’s schools are, by and large, expected to repay their federal student loans; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has negotiated for forgiveness of part of the private debt, but not all of it.
For anyone, student loans are burdensome; a recent report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the student-debt problem is so severe that it seems to be reducing the formation of new households (a phrase often used as a euphemism for young people moving out of their parents’ homes) and home ownership. Adding to that, students and graduates of Corinthian-owned colleges are finding that their degrees are all but worthless; when they try to transfer, they discover that other colleges won’t recognize their course credits and, when they try to get work, they learn that employers are not at all impressed by Corinthian coursework.
In December, a group of Democrats in the Senate, led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, wrote to the Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, calling on the Department of Education to “immediately discharge” the federal loans of at least some students who attended Corinthian. This wasn’t a toothless press stunt. The department, the senators noted, has the power to cancel federal loans for students who attended institutions that violated their rights. In fact, they pointed out, the department’s federal-loan agreements with students go as far as to spell this out, if in fine print: “In some cases, you may assert, as a defense against collection of your loan, that the school did something wrong or failed to do something that it should have done.” Earlier this month, the attorney general of Massachusetts made a request similar to that of the senators.
A spokeswoman said that the Education Department “shares the commitment” of the senators and the Massachusetts attorney general “to upholding the rights of students who may have been harmed by the actions of institutions that participate in federal student-aid programs.” She said that the department has been in touch with Senator Warren and the attorney general’s staffs and is working on a response. The Education Department doesn’t have jurisdiction over private loans, which amount to far less than federal ones; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which aims to protect consumers from private-debt troubles, is seeking full relief of the private Corinthian debt, but is meanwhile urging people to continue to pay off the loans.
The debt strike is at once an unusual and obvious protest strategy in response to the Corinthian debt. The current and former Corinthian students participating in the strike, who call themselves the Corinthian Fifteen (Heiney is among their most outspoken members), are publicly refusing to pay both their federal and private debt. With respect to the federal debt, they plan to file legal documents with the Education Department and with the servicers of their federal loans that assert the little-known right Warren and her colleagues describe in their letter. The strike is the result of an alliance between the students and an offshoot of the Occupy movement known as the Debt Collective. Last year, activists affiliated with the Debt Collective became acquainted with Corinthian students through a campaign to buy and “abolish” large amounts of private student debt—a stunt, which I covered, that was meant to shed light on the magnitude of the student-debt problem. Together, the Debt Collective organizers and some of the students came up with the idea for the current action, drawing on some of the power-in-numbers theories behind the labor movement.
Debt Collective volunteers—among them, lawyers and people who had dealt with the press—are giving legal, financial, and media support to the strikers, along with training in skills like financial literacy. In addition to committing time and energy, the strikers are assuming the considerable financial and social risks—lower credit scores, embarrassment—of making it publicly known that they don’t intend to repay their loans. (More than a fifth of borrowers of federal student loans go into default, but people who default tend not to announce their status publicly.) Ann Larson, one of the main Debt Collective organizers, talked to hundreds of Corinthian students, many of whom were put off by the potential financial repercussions of striking, not to mention the time commitment and the embarrassment. But she said that she hopes—and expects—that when the first fifteen strikers go public, others who have attended Corinthian campuses will be encouraged to join.
The stakes are high for the Education Department. Corinthian has said that its students have taken out more than a billion dollars in federal loans annually. Kevin Carey, a fellow at the New America foundation who studies higher education, told me that the Education Department is likely wary of setting a precedent that could inspire students who attended other troubled institutions also to seek loan forgiveness. “Drawing legally and logically defensible lines around this situation will be tricky for them,” he told me. Still, Carey said, “In this particular case, I think there’s a pretty strong argument that they ought to forgive a lot of the debt.”
Heiney recently began working as a home-health-care nurse—although, she said, “only after a five-hour interview explaining why my school doesn’t reflect my knowledge or patient care.” When I asked why she was willing to make such a public statement about not repaying her debt, she told me that she hopes to influence policy changes that would help future students. “In history, in the civil-rights movement, if everyone was afraid of their own personal repercussions, no progress would ever have been made,” she said.
FOCUS | Bernie Sanders: "Stand Up and Fight With Me"
Monday, 23 February 2015 13:13
Galindez writes: "Senator Bernie Sanders loves Iowa, but not enough to spend three days here in the heart of winter without a very good reason: he was here to see if Iowans are ready to take on the oligarchy that is running America."
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Sanders.gov)
Bernie Sanders: "Stand Up and Fight With Me"
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
23 February 15
enator Bernie Sanders loves Iowa, but not enough to spend three days here in the heart of winter without a very good reason: he was here to see if Iowans are ready to take on the oligarchy that is running America. Sanders served notice that he is not interested in just beating whomever the Republicans nominate for president. He is ready to take on the billionaire class, but only if we stand up and fight with him.
Sanders stressed the need for a massive grassroots movement to take on the Koch brothers and other millionaires, and the hundreds of millions of dollars they’ll be spending to maintain the status quo. He talked of his frustration with people who no longer participate in the political process, people who have given up. “If elections were not important, why would the Koch brothers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to win them?” asked Sanders.
My impression is that Bernie wants to run, and run to win. He isn’t running just to influence the debate. He wants to take on big money; he wants to build an America that works for all people and not just the elite. However, he doesn’t want to do it alone – he wants a massive grassroots army to fight with him. He wants to know if the American people are up for the fight.
Bernie’s visit to Iowa began in Iowa City at the Prairie Lights Bookstore. It was billed as a reading from his book, “The Speech,” but when the senator arrived and saw a packed room with people standing in places where they couldn’t even see the podium, I think he saw an opportunity. He seized on it and gave his stump speech to a crowd that seemed to agree with his message. Bernie was very pleased. He said he had expected about 40 people and there was clearly close to four times that. Many who couldn’t find a seat sat in the cafe in the next room. When the senator spoke of equal pay for women, applause rang out in the cafe.
That evening Senator Sanders held a town hall meeting on campus of the University of Iowa. Over 100 people attended and appeared to be very supportive of his message.
The following day began at Drake University in Des Moines. After we heard from a panel of students on climate change, student debt, Citizens United, and violence against women, Bernie delivered his message and then took questions. When asked if he would run for president, he turned the question on the crowd, essentially asking if they were ready to run with him. They seemed to be ready: one woman had driven four hours to attend the event, and a “Run Warren Run” supporter expressed support for a Sanders run. When one young man said the election of Obama showed that the country was ready for a Sanders run, Bernie shot back, “But I’m going to take on people he didn’t take on.” Read into that what you will, but it sounds to me like the senator is planning to run.
The second day ended in Johnston, Iowa, at the 35th anniversary dinner for the Iowa Citizen Action Network. About 80 people enjoyed barbecue before the senator delivered the keynote speech.
After visits to Cedar Rapids and Tipton, the last stop was the highlight of the three days in Iowa. The Story Counter Democratic Party held what they called a “soup supper.” By my count, 300 people packed the room. A band played country music while the crowd enjoyed chili and soup while waiting for the senator to arrive. The new state party chairman was in attendance and could be seen agreeing with Bernie often. The local Democrats brought the soup and Bernie delivered the red meat and drew frequent applause during his speech. I heard the party treasurer tell people that they raised more money that night than at any previous event. I spoke to many of the Story County Democrats’ leaders, who said they were impressed with the senator and thought that his message would play well in Iowa.
Story County treasurer Tom Corrieri told me that Bernie spoke to working class issues that unfortunately the Democratic Party has walked away from, and he said that Sanders’ message could “resonate throughout Iowa and the nation.”
Another local party leader reminded me that while it was very early, and the polls show Hillary with a big lead in the state, nobody had expected Obama to win in 2008. He also said that Bernie touched on many issues that people are concerned about and don’t know how to address, and that Bernie provided encouragement by telling people they can do something about issues like income inequality if they stand up together.
Throughout the three days, one constant theme presented by Bernie Sanders was that, while it will not be easy, if we stand up together we can win. He offered recent examples of progressive victories, asking all of the audiences what they would have said 30 years ago if someone in the crowd had said that a black man would be elected president in 2008 and then be re-elected in 2012. He pointed out that 25 years ago there was only one woman in the U.S. Senate, but now there are 20 and the number is still rising. He reminded the crowd that 10 years ago, if someone had said that gay marriage would be allowed in conservative states, you would have asked him what he was smoking.
Sanders then went on to say that while we have been winning big battles, on economic issues we are losing, but if we stand together and fight we can build an America that works for us all again.
Bernie on the Issues
Sanders highlighted many issues that will be at the forefront of his campaign. They all come back to money is politics. As long as our government is owned and operated by the oligarchy, progress will not be made. Here are just a few topics he covered.
Citizen United and the Koch Brothers
Bernie believes that no matter which issue is most important to people, if we don’t take the money out of politics we won’t be able to address the issue. As long as the Koch brothers and their ilk own the Congress, issues like climate change and inequality will not be a priority. The Koch Brothers have pledged to spend as much money on the 2016 election as the Obama and Romney campaigns spent in 2012. They have a database of Republican voters that is larger than the RNC’s. If this continues, they will soon be more powerful politically than either major political party. Sanders believes that if Citizen United isn’t reversed, the billionaire class will control the economy and our political discourse, if they don’t already.
Climate Change
Bernie said: “It is not a good thing for a nation to reject science. On this issue there is no debate. The scientific community is very clear: climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and is already wreaking havoc around the world. What the scientists are telling us is if we don’t get our act together and act boldly to cut carbon emissions, by the end of this century Planet Earth will be 5 to 10 degrees warmer.” Bernie blamed big money on the resistance to the science. The fossil fuel industry, including the Koch brothers, are making too much money to stop what they are doing. For them, the continuation of their harmful practices is profitable.
The Economy
Bernie also took aim at economic inequality. He gave examples of how the economy is rigged against the poor and the middle class. He pointed out that real unemployment is over 11% if you count people who have given up on finding a job. Unemployment is 18% for young people and over 30% for young African Americans. Bernie supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour over 2 years.
Student Loan Debt
One thing for sure, Bernie is going after student loan debt. He is not looking to just lower interest rates, he wants to eliminate tuition in America. He talked about how most of Europe has free college education. He said President Obama is proposing a $36 billion increase in military spending. Sanders proposed shifting $18 billion to public universities to provide tuition-free education.
Taxes
Bernie blasted corporations for sheltering their money in offshore accounts and criticized the tax breaks for the wealthy. He said “Corporations and the wealthy are going to have realize they are part of America and need to play their fair share."
Bernie also blasted the media for not covering the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, saying he would reject the TPP. He opposes sending troops back to the Middle East, and said ISIS will have to be defeated by the countries in the region. He acknowledged our role in creating ISIS, saying that if we hadn’t invaded Iraq in the first place, there would be no ISIS.
Without a doubt, for progressives, Bernie Sanders checks all the boxes. In Part 2, I will tell you why Bernie thinks he can win if you stand with him.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
FOCUS | Why We're All Becoming Independent Contractors
Monday, 23 February 2015 11:56
Reich writes: "GM is worth around $60 billion, and has over 200,000 employees. Its front-line workers earn from $19 to $28.50 an hour, with benefits."
Economist, professor, author and political commentator Robert Reich. (photo: Richard Morgenstein)
Why We're All Becoming Independent Contractors
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's blog
23 February 15
M is worth around $60 billion, and has over 200,000 employees. Its front-line workers earn from $19 to $28.50 an hour, with benefits.
Uber is estimated to be worth some $40 billion, and has 850 employees. Uber also has over 163,000 drivers (as of December – the number is expected to double by June), who average $17 an hour in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and $23 an hour in San Francisco and New York.
But Uber doesn’t count these drivers as employees. Uber says they’re “independent contractors.”
What difference does it make?
For one thing, GM workers don’t have to pay for the machines they use. But Uber drivers pay for their cars – not just buying them but also their maintenance, insurance, gas, oil changes, tires, and cleaning. Subtract these costs and Uber drivers’ hourly pay drops considerably.
For another, GM’s employees get all the nation’s labor protections.
These include Social Security, a 40-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime, worker health and safety, worker’s compensation if injured on the job, family and medical leave, minimum wage, pension protection, unemployment insurance, protection against racial or gender discrimination, and the right to bargain collectively.
Not to forget Obamacare’s mandate of employer-provided healthcare.
Uber workers don’t get any of these things. They’re outside the labor laws.
Uber workers aren’t alone. There are millions like just them, also outside the labor laws — and their ranks are growing. Most aren’t even part of the new Uberized “sharing” economy.
They’re franchisees, consultants, and free lancers.
They’re also construction workers, restaurant workers, truck drivers, office technicians, even workers in hair salons.
What they all have in common is they’re not considered “employees” of the companies they work for. They’re “independent contractors” – which puts all of them outside the labor laws, too.
The rise of “independent contractors” Is the most significant legal trend in the American workforce – contributing directly to low pay, irregular hours, and job insecurity.
What makes them “independent contractors” is the mainly that the companies they work for say they are. So those companies don’t have to pick up the costs of having full-time employees.
But are they really “independent”? Companies can manipulate their hours and expenses to make them seem so.
It’s become a race to the bottom. Once one business cuts costs by making its workers “independent contractors,” every other business in that industry has to do the same – or face shrinking profits and a dwindling
share of the market
Some workers prefer to be independent contractors because that way they get paid in cash. Or they like deciding what hours they’ll work.
Mostly, though, they take these jobs because they can’t find better ones. And as the race to the bottom accelerates, they have fewer and fewer alternatives.
Fortunately, there are laws against this. Unfortunately, the laws are way too vague and not well-enforced.
For example, FedEx calls its drivers independent contractors.
Yet FedEx requires them to pay for the FedEx-branded trucks they drive, as well as the FedEx uniforms they wear, and FedEx scanners they use – along with insurance, fuel, tires, oil changes, meals on the road, maintenance, and workers compensation insurance. If they get sick or need a vacation, they have to hire their own replacements. They’re even required to groom themselves according to FedEx standards.
FedEx doesn’t tell its drivers what hours to work, but it tells them what packages to deliver and organizes their workloads to ensure they work between 9.5 and 11 hours every working day.
If this isn’t “employment,” I don’t know what the word means.
In 2005, thousands of FedEx drivers in California sued the company, alleging they were in fact employees and that FedEx owed them the money they shelled out, as well as wages for all the overtime work they put in.
Last summer, a federal appeals court agreed, finding that under California law – which looks at whether a company “controls” how a job is done along with a variety of other criteria to determine the real employment relationship – the FedEx drivers were indeed employees, not independent contractors.
Does that mean Uber drivers in California are also “employees”? That case is being considered right now.
What about FedEx drivers and Uber drivers in other states? Other truck drivers? Construction workers? Hair salon workers? The list goes on.
The law is still up in the air. Which means the race to the bottom is still on.
It’s absurd to wait for the courts to decide all this case-by-case. We need a simpler test for determining who’s an employer and employee.
I suggest this one: Any corporation that accounts for at least 80 percent or more of the pay someone gets, or receives from that worker at least 20 percent of his or her earnings, should be presumed to be that person’s “employer.”
Congress doesn’t have to pass a new law to make this the test of employment. Federal agencies such as the Labor Department and the IRS have the power to do this on their own, through their rule making authority.
Davidson writes: "'Thank you to Edward Snowden for his courage,' Laura Poitras, the director of 'Citizenfour,' said as she accepted the Oscar for best documentary."
Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald at the Academy Awards. (photo: John Shearer/Invision/AP)
A statement by Edward Snowden about CitizenFour's Oscar win last night: "When Laura Poitras asked me if she could film our encounters, I was extremely reluctant. I'm grateful that I allowed her to persuade me. The result is a brave and brilliant film that deserves the honor and recognition it has received. My hope is that this award will encourage more people to see the film and be inspired by its message that ordinary citizens, working together, can change the world." Edward Snowden, ACLU.org
hank you to Edward Snowden for his courage,” Laura Poitras, the director of “Citizenfour,” said as she accepted the Oscar for best documentary. Neil Patrick Harris, the award show’s host, noted that Snowden couldn’t be there “for some treason.” Treason isn’t one of the crimes Snowden has been charged with—the government wants to prosecute him under the Espionage Act—but both the praise and the joke point to why this Snowden Oscar mattered. What he did was useful, and dangerous.
That wouldn’t have been enough if the movie were bad. But “Citizenfour” is worth watching, as well as celebrating. One still has to ask where the cinematic romance is. At the Oscars, an answer was provided by the young woman onstage with Poitras: Lindsay Mills, the woman whom Snowden at first left behind when he left his job and everything else for a hotel room in Hong Kong. One of the minor revelations of “Citizenfour” was that Mills had joined him in Moscow.
“Just walk me through it,” Glenn Greenwald tells Edward Snowden, in that Hong Kong hotel room. The guidance Greenwald and his colleagues look for is of three distinct kinds: How do you keep secrets? Why would Snowden tell secrets? And what has the government been hiding?
The first is the most one-sided. Greenwald, as the narration delicately makes clear, initially can’t figure out or can’t be bothered to set up the encrypted line of communication needed to satisfy the mysterious source who e-mails him—this is why Snowden turns to Laura Poitras, who knows exactly what he’s talking about when he asks, in their first exchanges, about her public keys. (George Packer wrote a Profile of Poitras for The New Yorker.) Snowden shows Greenwald how to do it (“It seems hard, but it’s not—this is super-easy”), and why he should. Here is one of the practical, paradoxical gifts of the Snowden affair: don’t give up on the idea that your words can be secret, at least slightly more secret than is convenient for companies or spies. If you are a little disciplined, you can be freer. There is a lovely shot of Greenwald’s face when Snowden, who is about to enter a password, asks for his “magic mantle of power,” a red sweatshirt, and pulls it over his head, as if he were a man running in the rain, or a teen-ager with a flashlight under his blankets. Looking at him, Greenwald, whom we’ve already encountered as a big talker, is, for a moment, only quiet and curious, with barely a flicker in his expression before he asks, “Is that about the possibility of—overhead?” Greenwald adds that nothing will surprise him anymore. His tone in that instant is one that the film, for all the scenes with angry activists, ultimately shares, and why the film works—neither titillated nor portentous, and just abashed enough to keep its importance from becoming self-importance.
Narcissism is the charge that’s thrown at Snowden—that he thinks he gets to decide what’s secret. His character, or, rather, his motivation for leaking, is the second puzzle for Greenwald and for Ewen MacAskill, the Guardian reporter also in the hotel room. Here, it is MacAskill’s face that is revealing. Greenwald seems sure of what category to put Snowden in, once he is persuaded that the leak is for real and the information is good. (“The fearlessness and the ‘fuck you’ to, like, the bullying tactics has got to be completely pervading everything we do.”) MacAskill, though, begins by telling Snowden that he doesn’t know anything about him; when Snowden starts talking about the N.S.A.’s relation to Booz Allen Hamilton, his on-paper employer, MacAskill stops him: “So, I don’t know your name.” He takes notes; his glances, when he looks up from writing in the scenes that follow, suggest a skeptic’s trust being earned.
The journalists’ relationship to Snowden opens up other sets of questions: What obligations do reporters have to their sources? The legal jeopardy in which James Risen, of the Times, found himself when the government moved to prosecute Jeffrey Sterling, a C.I.A. employee who it argued was Risen’s source, outraged journalists. And rightly so: the Obama Administration, in going after leakers, has pioneered the use of inappropriate legal instruments like the Espionage Act of 1917, which was also used to charge Snowden. (Ben Wizner, of the A.C.L.U., offers a good primer on the Espionage Act in a scene in “Citizenfour,” in which a group of lawyers meet in Berlin; Wizner also says that their phones should go in the refrigerator while they talk, which is funny but not a joke, the opposite of Neil Patrick Harris’s “some treason” line). The government ultimately decided not to jail Risen, but Sterling was convicted last month, and will be sentenced in April. Last week, after Attorney General Eric Holder bragged about the Administration’s press-freedom legacy, Risen went on what was variously called an “epic” or “vitriolic” “Twitter rant.” (“I plan to spend the rest of my life fighting to undo damage done to press freedom in the United States by Barack Obama and Eric Holder.”) Margaret Sullivan, the Times’s public editor, wrote that it was actually a pretty reasonable statement of journalistic principles: “Maybe the tenor of Mr. Risen’s tweets wasn’t very Timesian. But the insistence on truth-telling and challenging the powerful is exactly what the Times ought to stand for. Always.” The sense that intemperance can be publicly useful is one of Snowden’s legacies, and Poitras’s film captures it.
In “Citizenfour,” Snowden has a lot to say for the notebook, blog, and camera. He is pronouncing sentences that he seems to have rehearsed in his mind for months or years. He is a guide in the third area that needs to be charted: What is in these documents, and what does all their technical language mean? The danger here, given the number of documents, is that the film could become one big PowerPoint presentation—“just walk me through.” Mostly, Poitras avoids that, once the film gets past the first fifteen minutes. She sketches some programs, offers a route into others, and adds in long shots of things that are not only on paper or in code: an N.S.A. building under construction in Utah, the spot on the British coast where cables disappear under water. There is enough here to make a person better-prepared, later this year, when the authorization for the N.S.A.’s phone-metadata program is set to expire. President Obama’s comment on the matter—“No, I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot”—feels badly off base. The President sounds petty when he insists that he was on top of this without any help from Snowden.
What the country still has to work out is whether the Snowden documents were simply revealing or actually transformative. That’s the question about a good movie, too, though one shouldn’t underestimate the value of revelation, or truth, alone. Snowden has his silent moments. There is a scene, when he is getting ready to sneak out of the hotel in Hong Kong, after he has revealed himself, in which he stands in front of a mirror. Wearing a black shirt, he has put in contact lenses, shaved (after debating the amount of stubble that will make him look least like the pictures now playing on television), and, with a handful of foam, tries to slick back his hair. Watching it again on Oscar weekend, one thinks of Poitras and her team, and all the other filmmakers and actors, getting ready to step out. Snowden tries, and expects, to look different. When he sees that he doesn’t—his hair won’t stay down—he crumples a little, and looks as scared as anyone. There is no magic mantle of power. But outside the hotel room, things really did change.
This Billionaire Governor Taxed the Rich and Raised the Minimum Wage. Now, His State's Economy Is One of the Best in the Country
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7118"><span class="small">Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Monday, 23 February 2015 09:51
Gibson writes: "The next time your right-wing family member or former high school classmate posts a status update or tweet about how taxing the rich or increasing workers' wages kills jobs and makes businesses leave the state, I want you to send them this article."
Governor Mark Dayton of Minnesota. (photo: AP)
This Billionaire Governor Taxed the Rich and Raised the Minimum Wage. Now, His State's Economy Is One of the Best in the Country
By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News
23 February 15
he next time your right-wing family member or former high school classmate posts a status update or tweet about how taxing the rich or increasing workers' wages kills jobs and makes businesses leave the state, I want you to send them this article.
When he took office in January of 2011, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton inherited a $6.2 billion budget deficit and a 7 percent unemployment rate from his predecessor, Tim Pawlenty, the soon-forgotten Republican candidate for the presidency who called himself Minnesota’s first true fiscally-conservative governor in modern history. Pawlenty prided himself on never raising state taxes – the most he ever did to generate new revenue was increase the tax on cigarettes by 75 cents a pack. Between 2003 and late 2010, when Pawlenty was at the head of Minnesota’s state government, he managed to add only 6,200 more jobs.
During his first four years in office, Gov. Dayton raised the state income tax from 7.85 to 9.85 percent on individuals earning over $150,000, and on couples earning over $250,000 when filing jointly – a tax increase of $2.1 billion. He’s also agreed to raise Minnesota’s minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2018, and passed a state law guaranteeing equal pay for women. Republicans like state representative Mark Uglem warned against Gov. Dayton’s tax increases, saying, “The job creators, the big corporations, the small corporations, they will leave. It's all dollars and sense to them.” The conservative friend or family member you shared this article with would probably say the same if their governor tried something like this. But like Uglem, they would be proven wrong.
Between 2011 and 2015, Gov. Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to Minnesota’s economy – that’s 165,800 more jobs in Dayton’s first term than Pawlenty added in both of his terms combined. Even though Minnesota’s top income tax rate is the 4th-highest in the country, it has the 5th-lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6 percent. According to 2012-2013 U.S. census figures, Minnesotans had a median income that was $10,000 larger than the U.S. average, and their median income is still $8,000 more than the U.S. average today.
By late 2013, Minnesota’s private sector job growth exceeded pre-recession levels, and the state’s economy was the 5th fastest-growing in the United States. Forbes even ranked Minnesota the 9th-best state for business (Scott Walker’s “Open For Business” Wisconsin came in at a distant #32 on the same list). Despite the fearmongering over businesses fleeing from Dayton’s tax cuts, 6,230 more Minnesotans filed in the top income tax bracket in 2013, just one year after Dayton’s tax increases went through. As of January 2015, Minnesota has a $1 billion budget surplus, and Gov. Dayton has pledged to reinvest more than one third of that money into public schools. And according to Gallup, Minnesota’s economic confidence is higher than any other state
Gov. Dayton didn’t accomplish all of these reforms by shrewdly manipulating people – this article describes Dayton’s astonishing lack of charisma and articulateness. He isn’t a class warrior driven by a desire to get back at the 1 percent – Dayton is a billionaire heir to the Target fortune. It wasn’t just a majority in the legislature that forced him to do it – Dayton had to work with a Republican-controlled legislature for his first two years in office. And unlike his Republican neighbor to the east, Gov. Dayton didn’t assert his will over an unwilling populace by creating obstacles between the people and the vote – Dayton actually created an online voter registration system, making it easier than ever for people to register to vote.
The reason Gov. Dayton was able to radically transform Minnesota’s economy into one of the best in the nation is simple arithmetic. Raising taxes on those who can afford to pay more will turn a deficit into a surplus. Raising the minimum wage will increase the median income. And in a state where education is a budget priority and economic growth is one of the highest in the nation, it only makes sense that more businesses would stay.
It’s official – trickle-down economics is bullshit. Minnesota has proven it once and for all. If you believe otherwise, you are wrong.
Carl Gibson, 27, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nonviolent grassroots movement that mobilized thousands to protest corporate tax dodging and budget cuts in the months leading up to Occupy Wall Street. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary We're Not Broke, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Carl is also the author of How to Oust a Congressman, an instructional manual on getting rid of corrupt members of Congress and state legislatures based on his experience in the 2012 elections in New Hampshire. He lives in Sacramento, California.
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