Why California is Missing Out on Federal Education Grants
Working in a bi-partisan manner, Senate Republicans encourage the Democratic Leadership to join local teachers, parents, and students across the state to ensure that California qualifies for and embraces the $4.35 billion Educational Grants offered by the Obama Administration.
As stated in the Los Angeles Times article, “President Obama singled out California on Friday for failing to use education data to distinguish poor teachers from good ones, a situation that his administration said must change for the state to receive competitive, federal school dollars.”
Our state spends more than $40 billion on education. That investment buys us 25th place among the states. We have an opportunity to protect the jobs of our local teachers and end the status quo that says this is the best we can do and this is the best our children can achieve.
Katie, Bar the Door; The Blue Dogs are Howling
On Wednesday, an agreement with
Blue Dog Democrats was announced, resolving ten days of stalemate on moving the
Obama National Healthcare Plan forward. The agreement, brokered by Obama aides with the Blue
Dogs, cuts projected costs for a National Healthcare bill and exempts many
small businesses from having to providing Healthcare benefits to their
employees.
We still won’t be seeing any Obama
National Healthcare Plan pass this Summer, as the Obama Administration had both
promised and planned. This is due
to the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats flexing their new power, assuring
that their concerns now must be considered if there is to be any National
Healthcare bill passed at all.
As if in answer to my oft -repeated
fantasy of a viable, national third party, and just when the Democrats finally
got Al Franken seated, their 60th Filibuster-proof Senate vote, the
idea of a third, balancing voice in our federal government, lying somewhere
between Republicans, on the right, and Democrats, on the left, has appeared –
Hello Blue Dogs and welcome to the national stage!
The Beer Summit…It Was Flat
Imagine the lunacy. The most powerful elected official in the world – although at times President Obama does his absolute best to dispel that image by constantly apologizing for pre-Obama America – actually had to schedule a “summit” to have his buddy, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, and a white Cambridge police officer who recently arrested Gates, over to the White House to negotiate a truce in an escalating public relations nightmare for the president.
The media reported that, “White House aides are downplaying expectations that the beer summit will produce a resolution.” Sounds like they were talking about the latest negotiations with Russia over the number of nuclear weapons or something important. Geez. Maybe we need former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger or Madeline Albright to get involved and bring the two parties together.
The reality is that we, as Americans, shouldn’t even be here in the first place! What a complete waste of newsprint and presidential time.
Governor’s Spending Vetoes are Legal
Over the past couple of days, there has been some post-budget chatter around the Capitol on whether Governor Schwarzenegger has the legal authority to make additional cuts to the budget, such as those he made on Tuesday in order to balance our budget and maintain a reserve.
The ability to make these line-item cuts – more commonly known as “blue penciling” – is a standard course of action following the legislature’s approval of a budget agreement. In a typical budget year nobody would think twice about this perfectly normal step in the process. This year however, is far from typical.
What constitutes an “appropriation” has been long established in California law. All that is required is a fund source, an amount, and a purpose. That’s it. There is no requirement for special words, or particular verbiage, or a special format. Instead all that is needed is a clear intent by the Legislature to provide that a certain sum of money – and no more than that sum – may be spent out of a particular fund on a particular activity. (Humbert v. Dunn (1890) 84 Cal. 57, 59.) Relying on this more that 120-yearold definition, the amendment to the budget bill which was sent to the Governor this week did contain appropriations. Indeed at the front of this same bill is a statement by the legislature’s own legal counsel that it is “An act… relating to the State Budget, making an appropriation therefore…”