Rich-poor spending gap on schools hurts kids, report says
By Renee Schoof
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America is failing too many of its children in public schools because it doesn’t spread the opportunity for a good education fairly to all, according to a report for the government released Tuesday.
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It found that schools in poor communities in many cases spend thousands of dollars less per student than those in more affluent areas do. As a result, poor schools can’t compete for the best teachers and principals, buy the best technology and support rigorous academic and enrichment programs.
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Among other things, it recommended higher pay and better work conditions for teachers and principals, and universal high-quality early education. The commission said that the U.S. could afford to pay teachers more, and it argued that raising starting pay to $65,000, instead of today’s average of $37,000, and increasing top salaries to $150,000, instead of around $70,000, would help attract better teachers.
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The report said that states should adopt finance systems that divided funds equitably, which doesn’t mean evenly, the commission said, because some students need more support. It called on the federal government to use incentives to push states in this direction, and for more money for schools with large numbers of low-income students.
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Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who was on the conference call, said the commission was independent. “We asked them to tell us not what we wanted to hear,” he said, “but to tell us the truth.”
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The virtues of being unreasonable on Keystone
By David Roberts
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I know Andy Revkin of The New York Times writes posts like this in part to bait people like me. But like Popeye, I yam what I yam. So consider me baited. Self-proclaimed moderates like to lecture anti-Keystone XL activists that they are “distracting” and “counterproductive,” without spelling out what the hell that means, yet they seem bewildered when that makes the activists in question angry.
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Back before the election, Revkin acknowledged that “the pipeline, in isolation, is not in the national interest,” but “overall,” Obama “should not stand in the way of the pipeline.” Huh? It’s not in the national interest but he should greenlight it? Why? Because “it’s very much in the national interest for Obama to avoid saddling himself with an unnecessary issue that would be easy for his foes to distort into an Obama anti-jobs position.” So Obama should sacrifice the national interest in the name of political positioning. Got it. Time’s Bryan Walsh and Mike Grunwald echoed Revkin’s sentiment, warning that Keystone activists risked empowering Obama’s opposition and getting a Republican elected, which would be way worse for the climate than the pipeline.
A couple things have happened since then. One, Obama got reelected, pretty easily. Two, it’s become clear that literally anything Obama does will be distorted as anti-jobs by congressional Republicans, which is one reason they are so widely hated.
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Intensity wins in politics, as I’ve said many times before, even if — Levi’s unreasonable demand notwithstanding — its effects cannot be easily predicted. There are benefits to an activated, impassioned constituency and the social and political machinery that brings them together in large numbers. It’s what the right has: an intense core, fighting on behalf of the status quo (using the status quo’s money), that has captured one of America’s two political parties. It’s what the fight against climate change does not yet have: an intense core, fighting on behalf of social and political change, with at least one political party that is scared to cross it.
Intensity is built through conflict, through the drawing of political and moral lines. That’s what activists like Bill McKibben are trying to do, with activist logic, not wonk logic, taking advantage of symbolism and opportunity. If there’s some other groundswell for change from which those efforts are “distracting,” I haven’t heard about it.
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Google warns of rising account break-ins
By (UPI)
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Google is warning of an increase in sophisticated attempts to hijack legitimate user accounts and use them in email scams.
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"Although spam filters have become very powerful -- in Gmail, less than 1 percent of spam e-mails make it into an in-box -- these unwanted messages are much more likely to make it through if they come from someone you've been in contact with before.
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Spammers are increasingly attempting to break into legitimate accounts and send mail to those accounts' contacts, CNET reported Tuesday.
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Google has recommended users take advantage of the company's two-step verification and recovery options to secure accounts.
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Justices to hear appeal of individual donation limits
By David G. Savage and Melanie Mason
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The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to consider taking another step toward dismantling campaign finance laws, potentially freeing wealthy donors to give as much as they want in any election cycle and raising the possibility that it could overturn limits that apply to individual candidates as well.
In its landmark Citizens United decision, the court ruled in 2010 that corporations, unions and individuals could spend unlimited sums on campaign ads so long as they are independent of the candidates and political parties. That triggered the creation of so-called "super PACs," which can raise and spend huge sums on politics, so long as they are ostensibly independent of a candidate or party.
On Tuesday the court moved to a different arena: that of limits on the sum individuals can contribute directly to candidates and parties.
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Super PACs have already created an avenue for wealthy donors to give unlimited amounts to independent political action committees. By striking down the limit on total donations to candidates and parties, the court would be giving individuals the option of donating money to a party to be spread among its candidates, rather than to a supposedly independent super PAC.
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Supporters of the current law called the court's action troubling. "If the current aggregate contribution limits were to be struck down, 1- or 2- or even 3 million dollars in contributions could easily be funneled by a single donor to his or her party and candidates," said Tara Malloy, counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, which supports campaign finance regulation.
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Warren Hill granted stay of execution
By Ed Pilkington
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Warren Hill, an intellectually disabled prisoner, has been spared the death chamber just 30 minutes before he was due to die by lethal injection in Georgia despite a US supreme court ban on executions of people with learning difficulties.
Hill, 53, had already taken an oral sedative of Ativan to help calm himself for the gurney before he learned of the stay of execution from the federal appeals court for the 11th circuit. The court agreed to consider the issue of his intellectual disabilities in the light of a 2002 US supreme court ruling that prohibits executions of "mentally retarded" prisoners as a breach of the constitutional safeguard against cruel and unusual punishment.
Georgia is the only state in the union that insists prisoners must prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that they have learning difficulties – a standard that experts say is almost impossible to achieve.
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Hill's scheduled execution attracted a comparatively small response, with few protesters and campaigners present in the prison grounds as the appointed hour approached. This was the second time in seven months that Hill has come close to the death chamber: last July he was spared by just 90 minutes and the experience was repeated on Tuesday night with just 30 minutes to go.
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