Two 2012 ballot initiatives to raise taxes in California #Occupy

Bob Samuels describes the new ballot initiative on taxes that emerged as a compromise between Governor Jerry Brown's initiative and the California Federation of Teachers' Millionaire's Tax.

1. PERSONAL INCOME TAX:
a. 1% increase on incomes of $250,000 ($500,000 for couples). No change from Governor’s initiative.
b. 2% increase on incomes of $300,000 ($600,000 for couples). Governor’s initiative was 1.5%.
c. 3% increase on incomes of $500,000 ($1 million for couples). Governor’s initiative was 2%.
d. These tax increases remain in place for 7 years. Governor’s initiative was 5 years.
2. SALES TAX: increase quarter cent (Governor’s was half cent). Same expiration as the Governor’s.
3. STRUCTURE: The measure will be based on the Governor’s initiative structure, with the changes noted in #1 and #2 above.
4. REVENUES (NOTE: THESE ESTIMATES ARE PRELIMINARY): This new measure will generate about $9 billion for the 2012-13 budget (up from the $6.9 billion in the Governor’s initiative).

Meanwhile Pasadena civil rights attorney, Molly Munger, the daughter of billionaire Berkshire Hathaway chairman Charles Munger, pushes forward with her own initiative despite Brown's claim that the presence of two tax initiatives on the ballot will kill them both.  Munger's initiative, "Our Children Our Future," increases income taxes on a sliding scale ranging from 4/10 of 1% for households making less than $35,000 and 2.2% for couples making more than $5 million.  It seems unlikely to pass as it raises income taxes on more than just rich people.  The tax increase will raise $10 billion and this will be earmarked for K-12 education.  The initiative has been endorsed by the California Parent Teacher Association (PTA).  Munger has donated $3.4 million to the effort and has already begun airing a very nice television ad.  Munger and Brown are talking but have not yet reached any agreement.

Brown claims that all the money raised by his initiative will go to K-12 education and community colleges but this is only technically true because Brown will reduce other funding to schools and colleges in order to balance California's budget.

Henry A. Giroux on Why Faculty Should Join #Occupy

Henry A. Giroux writes movingly on Why Faculty Should Join Occupy Movement Protesters on College Campuses:

The notion of the university as a center of critique and a vital democratic public sphere that cultivates the knowledge, skills, and values necessary for the production of a democratic polity is giving way to a view of the university as a marketing machine essential to the production of identities in which the only obligation of citizenship is to be a consumer.

Thanks to Jaime Becker for the link.

Kenneth Saltman on Corporate School Reform

Kenneth Saltman, in a long critique of the corporate take over of K-12 education, offers several insights relevant to the privatization of public higher education.  

For example:

The corporate takeover of schooling means the overemphasis on standards and standardization, testing and "accountability" that replicate a corporate logic in which measurable task performance and submission to authority become central. Intellectual curiosity, investigation, teacher autonomy and critical pedagogy, not to mention critical theory, have no place in this view. "Critical" in this context means not merely problem-solving skills, but the skills and dispositions for criticizing how particular claims to truth secure particular forms of authority. 

...

Privatization produces social relations defined through capitalist reproduction that function pedagogically to instantiate habits of docility and submission to authority at odds with collective control, dialogue, debate, dissent, and other public democratic practices. Privatization fosters individualization in part by encouraging everyone to understand education as a private service primarily about maximizing one's own capacity for competition. This runs counter to valuing public schooling for the benefit to all. 

Thanks to Jaime Becker for the link.  Wendy Brown is also very good on the relationship between democracy and the privatization of schooling.

We Want The Same Deal You Got!

UC Davis history professor Louis Warren's A New Campus Contract provides a history of declining funding for the University of California and a strategy for restoring it.  It revolves around reminding California taxpayers, and especially legislators, that they benefited from affordable education when they were young but are now unwilling to pay for the next generation.  He argues that students should tell legislators--"We want the same deal that you got!"

I think Warren's talk at a recent teach-in was more powerful than this piece.  But it's good to have this in print.

Higher Education as a Public Good

Recently my colleagues Laura Grindstaff and John R. Hall wrote excellent pieces on the marketization and privatization of the UC System and on the necessity of convincing Americans that higher education is a public good.

New Blog: UC Faculty Supporting Students #UCDavis #OccupyUCDavis

A new blog by UC Davis Faculty (where I am posting occasionally):

"We believe that public education is the cornerstone of democracy. We are concerned about education disappearing as a shared public good. We are UC Davis faculty committed to advocating and supporting access to higher education, galvanized by Nov. 18th.

The goals of this website are:

1) aggregate and disseminate information related to Nov. 18th (pepper-spraying at UC Davis),

2) collect the voices and actions of faculty related to Nov. 18th and larger struggles around privatization and decline in public funding for UC and higher education more broadly."

College Credit for Occupiers! #UCDavis #OccupyUCDavis

UC Davis Professors Julie Wyman (Technocultural Studies) and Julie Sze (American Studies) are offering courses this winter for students involved or interested in the Occupy movement or the anti-UC Privatization movement.

Julie Wyman, Technocultural Studies 198: Documenting the Movement, Part One: Building an Archive

This is a 2 unit directed group study course in winter 2012 that allows students to produce an archive of footage, audio, photographs, and media coverage of the student movement on campus preceding, during, and following the recent student protest movement on campus. 

Students will earn credits for gathering, digitizing, and organizing materials, obtaining releases and ownership information where possible, and also beginning to disseminate and edit this media. The end result of this quarter will be a shared public archive of media - for current and future students, faculty, and researchers. 

We will be discussing and formulating a longer-term project of creating a longer documentary film and/or a collection of short student films that look in depth at this moment, through many modalities (ie experimental, narrative, and longer form documentary). In addition to journalistic reporting on events that have transpired, students will be encouraged to  utilize the material they collect and organize with a larger-scope and more artistic approach. 

During Spring 2012, students in TCS 104: Documentary Production - will be using this archive to create original short pieces that tell a broader story of our campus. In spring 2012, there will also be an opportunity for further independent study work for students who've already taken TCS 104 but would like to continue working with this material for course credit.

The course will meet as a group bi-weekly (every other week) on Thursday afternoon - 4:30 - 5:40 pm, and will involve lab work and research activities on a weekly basis. Students should expect to spend an average of (at least) 5 hours/ week on this course. 

Julie Sze, American Studies 198: Occupy Your Education!

This is a 2 unit directed group study course in winter 2012 that allows students interested or already involved in student activism to get course credit to support your learning on activism on UC privatization and Occupy movements

Rather than prescribe the topics and activities, each student will construct their own plan in conjunction with the instructor, outlining your particular learning objectives and activities for the quarter.

 Here are some ideas (preliminary list only):

• Produce social media/ regular thoughtful blog posting
• Do photo/ video documentary micro-projects
• Create/ disseminate a reading list on a specific theme (i.e. the history of the CA Master Plan, Prop. 13, privatization in the UC, etc)
• Create teaching curriculum (i.e. how to teach the crisis to different groups)

Students will earn credits for constructing your own learning plan, completing the activities specified in your specific plan, and regular meetings with the instructor. You are required to meet with the instructor, either on a one-on-one basis, or during the group bi-weekly meetings on Thursday mornings 11-12 (beginning 1/26- first week in my office). Students should expect to spend an average of (at least) 4 hours/ week on this course.

Instructor:

Julie Sze, Associate Professor Director of American Studies

Email at jsze@ucdavis.edu
http://ams.ucdavis.edu/~jsze/

Save the University

UC Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown offers the best statement I've seen of the many facets of the privatization of the University of California.

#occupyucdavis protestors are not dirty, drug-addled potential rapists after all!

After some angry e-mails, the UC Davis news service toned down its article portraying protestors occupying Dutton hall as dirty, drug-addled potential rapists. Original article. Revised article.

Weird fashion shoot #occupyucdavis

Link

UC Davis: Protestors are Pigs and Druggies!

The University's official organ, Dateline, ran an inflammatory and unintentionally hilarious article today that belies the Chancellor's pledge to enter into a respectful dialogue with the protestors. It bemoans the costs of cleaning up after the dirty protestors, the inconvenience of staff and students, and employees' fears of sexual assault. My favorite parts are a picture of an empty wine bottle (Barefoot Winery--I guess the 99 percent can't afford Mondavi) and complaints about lingering body odor. Update: UC Davis news service changes its tune.

Some ideas about the struggle to fund Higher Ed in California

Tonight I was at the northern California meeting of the Scholars Strategy Network. A couple of ideas struck me as especially useful. 1. There is a reasonable chance that the Democrats could win a 2/3 majority in the 2012 California legislative elections, making it possible for them to pass tax increases to fund higher education (if pressured enough). 2.Progressive UC faculty and staff should start a PAC to defeat legislators who don't support higher education. 3. The PAC and the student movement should target legislators with universities in their district. 4. The UC administration has a very narrow view of politics. It is focused on lobbying legislators for more funding (and is essentially resigned to failing at that) rather than on leading a political movement that can elect a 2/3 Democratic majority in the legislature. One demand to make of the regents and the embattled chancellors (Birgenau and Katehi) is that they step up and help lead such a movement. Refund California has made a similar demand--that the regents pledge support for a tax increase on the rich to fund higher education.

Strategic Advice from Louis Warren

UC Davis History Professor Louis Warren gives some good advice to the UC student movement. I especially like his point that with the recent redistricting of California, the Democrats may be able to achieve a 2/3 majority in both houses of the legislature in the 2012 election--enabling them to raise taxes to fund education (if pressured enough). This has been impossible up to now because Prop 13 requires a 2/3 majority for raising taxes and Republicans have opposed any and all tax increases. I also like his suggested slogan for approaching legislators (most of whom went to public colleges): "We want the same deal you got!" (an affordable and high quality public education).

Facts?

Via Jonathan Eisen, the Administration's Fact Sheet on the Pepper Spraying annotated by some faculty.

Majority of Davis Faculty Association (DFA) opposes DFA Board's call for Katehi's Resignation

In an earlier post, I noted that the Davis Faculty Association (DFA) Board had called for Chancellor Katehi's resignation the day after the pepper spraying without polling its 145 members (including myself) and that some members felt that it should have done so first. Many members were also upset that the media failed to distinguish between the position of the DFA board and the DFA membership and, even worse, implied that the DFA represented "the faculty" rather than a mere ten percent of the faculty (which is actually represented by the Academic Senate). In my view, both the DFA and the Academic Senate should have disabused the press of this notion. In response to this discontent, the DFA begin surveying its members on November 23 (five days after November 18). And yesterday (three weeks after November 18) the DFA Board released the results: Only 45% of members responded and, of those, the majority opposed the DFA's call for Katehi's resignation.

DFA board chair Scott Shershow's letter reporting the results is below. Shershow reports that the Board's decision to ask for Katehi's resignation was not unanimous. He also notes that three members of the Board have recently resigned and two have been replaced by new members appointed by the Board. At least one of these resignations, that of Board chair (at the time), Bob Rucker, was related to Rucker's opposition to the Board's call for Katehi's resignation. Though Rucker resigned three weeks ago, the Board only informed the membership of this resignation yesterday. And only in the most indirect way: Shershow does not name Rucker as one of the Board members who resigned and does not reveal that his resignation was prompted the DFA statement on Katehi.

None of this is very democratic or transparent, especially when compared with the inspiring example of the Occupy General Assemblies.

----------------------

Letter from DFA Board Chair Scott Shershow

On November 19, 2011, in the immediate aftermath of the pepper-spraying of non-violent UC Davis students protesting tuition increases, the DFA board issued a statement calling for the immediate resignation of Chancellor Katehi, and calling for an end to “the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protestors by police.”

http://ucdfa.org/2011/11/19/dfa-board-calls-for-katehis-resignation/

In the last two weeks, we surveyed the DFA membership for their opinions of the board’s action. Sixty-four members responded (out of a total membership of 145). On the first question, regarding our call for an end to the policy of using the UCD police to suppress demonstrators, 58 members approved and 4 did not approve. On the second question, regarding our call for the Chancellor’s resignation, 34 members did not approve, and 29 approved. (A few respondents did not answer both questions.) The opinions expressed in the comment portion of the survey varied widely. Some members expressed enthusiastic support for the Board’s action, praising the DFA for assuming a leadership role in this pressing issue. Some others expressed strong disapproval of the Board. In particular, some members claimed the Board’s decision was “premature,” suggested that the membership ought to have been surveyed first, or noted the fact that some media outlets reported that this was an action of the DFA in general.

Several members asked for more information about the Board’s process. It should be noted that the DFA acts by majority vote of its Board in accordance with the organization’s by-laws. In this specific case, on the Saturday following the pepper spray incident, the Board debated its response via email. A majority voted to release the statement on the DFA website, in response to what we deemed an extremely urgent and quickly-evolving situation.

In making this decision, the Board majority took into strong consideration the initial statement of Chancellor Katehi in which she blamed the protestors for the violence, as well as her second statement in which she acknowledged ordering in the police. We also took into consideration a similar, less publicized event that took place in 2009 where UCD police in riot gear were sent in to Mrak Hall to remove peaceful protestors of tuition increases and faculty and staff furloughs, resulting in several injuries and 52 arrests.

http://www.kcra.com/education/21669598/detail.html

Finally, we were especially mindful of the brutalization of students and faculty at another peaceful demonstration at UC Berkeley nine days earlier. In the wake of this event, it seemed to us that the Chancellor had every reason to anticipate something similar here, and that, under these circumstances, her decision to order armed police onto the campus in the context of a peaceful demonstration was absolutely unacceptable.

The DFA Board’s action, was, to our knowledge, the first explicit statement of faculty solidarity with the students involved, and was portrayed in the initial wave of press reports as representing faculty support for their students. Some reports simply ascribed the statement to “the DFA,” whereas the statement itself clearly notes that it comes from “the board of the DFA.” It should be noted, however, that according to our by-laws, the elected board does have the duty to act for the Association.

The Board has met twice to evaluate developments since its statement on November 19. A majority continues to stand by its initial statement to uphold its support for the student movement in general. We are not encouraged by the Chancellor’s statements and apologies, which appear to have shifted according to the needs of the moment, nor by the revelation of a new Chancellor's "advisory board" filled with corporate CEOs. Chancellor Katehi has already publicly stated that she is fully responsible for the pepper-spraying incident. We agree, and therefore continue to call for her resignation.

DFA board members are elected at a yearly election in the spring, in accordance with the bylaws. Two current members were appointed by the board to fill two vacancies caused by two of three recent resignations. The board wishes to fill the remaining vacancy, and we encourage any member who wishes to help steer future board decisions to nominate him or herself.

Chancellor Katehi and the Faculty

One noteworthy aspect of Tuesday’s Town Hall meeting with Faculty and Staff was that many of the speakers expressed support for Chancellor Katehi and rejected calls for her resignation. Entomology Professor Walter Leal presented an open letter to that effect, which was signed by over 200 faculty members and published in the Davis Enterprise this morning.

Prior to Tuesday, many news accounts claimed that the UC Davis Faculty sought Chancellor Katehi’s resignation. In fact, only some of the faculty, and far less than the majority, have made such demands—the English Department (40 members), some members of the Physics department (31 of 50), and the 11-member Board of the Davis Faculty Association (DFA). This amounts to approximately 80 faculty out of the approximately 1400 faculty at UC Davis. The DFA does not represent the whole faculty. It is a voluntary membership organization of approximately 120 members (less than 10 percent of the faculty). Few, if any, news accounts noted this--most assumed or implied that the DFA represented the entire faculty. Moreover, the Board’s statement represented the views of the Board only (and was not unanimous)—the membership was not polled. Most news accounts failed to distinguish between the position of the association’s Board and that of its members. (I am a member of the association, but do not support calls for the Chancellor’s resignation at this time). On Wednesday, November 23 (5 days after the pepper spray incident), the DFA finally polled its members. This poll will be complete on December 7. Some DFA members have questioned the Board’s haste in calling for the Chancellor's resignation, and its failure to consult the DFA members first.

The body that does represent the entire faculty is the Academic Senate. Its Representative Assembly will hold a special meeting with Katehi in the Mondavi Center tomorrow morning. Some faculty members are circulating a letter to the chair of the Academic Senate calling for a vote of “no confidence” in Katehi. Fifty signatures are required for such a vote to occur before February (the next regularly scheduled meeting of the faculty Senate). And even if they get the signatures (which they probably will), the vote will not take place until January. I am one of the signatories, not because I am ready to vote for the motion, but because I would like there to be a vote.

Finally, several departments (including mine) have issued statements condemning the use of pepper spray and asking for an investigation, but stopping short of demanding Katehi’s resignation at this time.

UPDATE: A colleague and a student suggested that I clarify my position on the no-confidence resolution because it seems contradictory.

Petition for vote of no-confidence in Chancellor Katehi

The following petition is currently being circulated among the faculty. It needs 50 signatures for the vote to occur prior to the February meeting of the Representative Assembly of the Academic Senate. I have decided to sign the petition. I am not sure how I will vote when the time comes (that will depend on the pending investigations) but I would like the vote to occur.
______________________________

Professor Linda Bisson, Chair
Davis Division of the Academic Senate

Dear Chair Bisson;

The undersigned members of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate hereby call on you to put the following motion of non-confidence in the leadership of the Chancellor to a vote of the entire membership of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate.

Motion: In light of the events on the quadrangle of the UC Davis campus on the afternoon of Friday November 18, 2011, in light of Chancellor Linda’s Katehi’s email to faculty of November 18 in which she admitted that she had ordered the police to take action against the students who were demonstrating on the quadrangle and said that she had had “no option” but to proceed in this way, and in light of the failure of Chancellor Katehi to act effectively to resolve the resulting crisis in the intervening days,

Be it therefore resolved that the Davis Division of the Senate of the University of California lacks confidence in the leadership of Chancellor Katehi, and

Be it also resolved that the result of the vote on this motion be communicated to the Board of Regents and the President of the University of California.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We realize that Senate rules would require delaying the vote on this motion until sometime in the middle of January.

Letter from Chair of Davis Division of the Faculty Senate, Linda F. Bisson

Dear Colleagues:

Many of you have asked me to issue a preliminary assessment of the events occurring on November 18, 2011, and to describe the actions taken to date by me and Executive Council. I know I have asked extraordinary patience of you while I undertake the job that I was appointed to do as your Chair of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate. As a scientist it is not in my nature to get ahead of the data; as a faculty member I put the students first. When I saw the first video of the brutality on the quad I felt as if I had been stabbed in the heart, a feeling I know the majority of you share.
My first communication to the Chancellor on Friday, November 18th was to make sure the charges against the students would be dropped and all medical bills would be covered; she had already made the decision to do so. My second immediate demand was that those directly involved be placed on leave. I learned that although she had requested this be done she has more limited authority than I thought over our police force. Finally, I asked that the police presence on or around the quad be diminished and if necessary I would have faculty patrol the quad to ensure the safety of our students. The members of Executive Council were prepared to be there themselves and to contact their committee members and faculties to back up this position. I had immediate responses from graduate and professional school students to also patrol the quad. The Chancellor assured me that this would not be necessary. Executive Council members periodically went by the encampment once it was reestablished to check on the wellbeing of the students. Executive Council met with the students of the Occupy movement on Wednesday, November 23rd to ask if they felt safe and if there was anything we could do to make them feel safer. They said they felt safe as long as the police were kept away.

Many of you have sent me emails about the man in the grey suit filming the crowd on November 18th with concerns about the intent of that filming. I have asked the Chancellor and she has told me that she does not know who that individual is nor why he was filming the crowd and appeared to be with the police. I will continue to press on this issue.

Second, during the tragedy on the quad we were holding an Executive Council meeting with the Chancellor. I had not been in the loop on decisions that were being made so I had as an agenda item a discussion of her intentions with respect to the Occupy movement and student demonstrations. We learned that she had already called for the tents to be removed and that this was happening as we were being told of her decision. There was no consultation with the Senate regarding this decision. She assured us at that time that although the police had been told to remove the tents as is apparently a UC policy, she had clearly instructed them to do it peacefully and without force unless physically threatened or attacked. Further the reasons for the order to remove the tents were health and safety related, due to poor sanitation practices. As a microbiologist, who teaches sanitation, I know this is indeed a problem. We registered our opposition to the use of excessive force probably just as it was happening. During the meeting, the Chancellor was seated next to me and I know she did not receive any communication from the field. She did get called to the hallway and came back and her report of what had happened was identical to the statement that she subsequently made to the press and that you all have heard and that turned out to be egregiously incorrect as evidenced by the videos released by the press. When I asked the Chancellor about this the next day, she said she had repeated what she had been told by her staff concerning the events of the quad, and it was not until later that she saw the videos released by the press herself. Some Executive Council members thought the clearing of the Occupy movement was timed deliberately during our meeting to prevent any meaningful consultation; others viewed it as simply unfortunate timing. As a consequence, the tenor of my conversations with the Chancellor has been quite different from that of the main campus and I will give a full report at the Representative Assembly meeting.

Third, I started investigating the culture and origin of our repressive policies. I received immediate assistance from the systemwide office of the Academic Senate in sourcing these policies. Bob Anderson called for an emergency teleconference meeting of Academic Council in which I participated. I believe our polices are historic, many a legacy of the incident involving the active shooter at Virginia Tech., and the sharp criticism in the press of campus police being “mall cops” at that time. I know changes were mandated by both state and local governments after that event. I personally do not think one should send inexperienced and untrained individuals against an active shooter. However, I also do not think one should send a SWAT team to issue citations for minor violations.

Executive Council has taken three actions: First, to issue our statement that many have thought was weak but that reflected a commitment to get the facts first. We called for an independent investigation into the events on the quad and I advised the Chancellor to abandon her plans for formation of a taskforce as it would likely not appear credible. Further, if an administrative task force was necessary I believed it should be formed by someone else. We continually emphasized the need for independence of the task force. The result of this request was the decision by the Office of the President to conduct the administrative inquiry. Second, we have formed our own Special Committee to examine the events leading up to the actions taken on the quad and also to review our policies, procedures, culture and climate to make strong recommendations for change. I have read the Brazil report issued by the Police Review Board of UCB in 2010 after an incident in 2009 and agree with most of their recommendations that obviously have not been adopted (http://administration.berkeley.edu/prb/6-14-10_prb-report.pdf). Our Special Committee may have different or additional recommendations of its own. I will do everything that I can to make sure our report is not ignored. Provost/Executive Vice President Pitts has assured me personally that policies will change. Third, I called for a special meeting of the Representative Assembly. I report directly to the Representative Assembly and will have more to say on Friday when we meet. Representative Assembly meetings are public and open to all faculty. The Chancellor will be there. We will hold the meeting in the Mondavi Center to allow for full attendance by the faculty. Executive Council intends to introduce a resolution at that meeting commending our students. I hope to have the text of that resolution finalized and out to all departments and their Representative Assembly members prior to the meeting on Friday.

I am continuing to look into the events of November 18th, and will issue periodic updates to the faculty. I have found many things that I would like to propose that we change, but ask for your continued patience as I am still uncovering new information.

Sincerely,

Linda F. Bisson, Chair
Davis Division of the Academic Senate
Professor: Viticulture and Enology