February, 11 2020, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Diane Alexander, Democracy 21—202-355-9600 or dalexander@democracy21.org.
Democracy 21 Calls for House and DOJ Investigations of Unfit to Serve AG Barr, Documents Barr's Repeated Abuses of Office
WASHINGTON
In an apparently unprecedented act, the sentencing recommendation submitted by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the case of Roger Stone was withdrawn and changed by the Justice Department.
According to a report by NBC News, this withdrawal and resubmission occurred after President Trump attacked the original Stone sentencing recommendation and Attorney General William Barr took control of the Stone case. The report says that Barr has also been taking control of other legal matters of interest to President Trump.
"Attorney General Barr is politicizing the Justice Department in plain sight. Barr is dangerously SP undermining the Department's independence, integrity and credibility by engaging in multiple abuses of office," Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said.
On January 17, 2020, Democracy 21 filed a complaint with DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) against Attorney General Barr that documented Barr's pattern of biased actions in favor of President Trump and the Attorney General's repeated failures to comply with Justice Department norms, rules and standards of conduct. The complaint requested OPR to investigate and take appropriate action regarding Barr's improprieties.
See the Democracy 21 complaint here and a Wertheimer article published by Just Security entitled "William Barr: A Failed Attorney General Unfit to Serve" here.
"The House of Representatives should begin an investigation and hearings promptly into Attorney General Barr's repeated abuses of his office, starting with the reported interventions in the Roger Stone and Michael Flynn convictions," according to Wertheimer.
The stated core mission of the Justice Department is "to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans."
"Attorney General Barr has repeatedly compromised and publicly undermined the Justice Department's mission. Barr is misusing the Justice Department to serve President Trump's political interests and personal desires at enormous costs to the Department, to the public servants who work there and to the American people. Barr is unfit to serve as Attorney General and the sooner Barr leaves office, the better off our country will be," Wertheimer said.
Democracy 21 is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to making democracy work for all Americans. Democracy 21, and its education arm, Democracy 21 Education Fund, work to eliminate the undue influence of big money in American politics, prevent government corruption, empower citizens in the political process and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. The organization promotes campaign finance reform and other related political reforms to accomplish these goals.
(202) 355-9600LATEST NEWS
Calls Mount for US to Provide Free School Meals to All Children
"Hiving off a tiny part of the public school bundle and charging a means-tested fee for it is extremely stupid," argues Matt Bruenig.
Mar 20, 2023
Minnesota last week became just the fourth U.S. state to guarantee universal free school meals, triggering a fresh wave of demands and arguments for a similar federal policy to feed kids.
"Universal school meals is now law in Minnesota!" Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents the state, tweeted Monday. "Now, we need to pass our Universal School Meals Program Act to guarantee free school meals to every child across the country."
Omar's proposal, spearheaded in the upper chamber by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), "would permanently provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack to all school children regardless of income, eliminate school meal debt, and strengthen local economies by incentivizing local food procurement," the lawmakers' offices explained in 2021.
Congressional Republicans last year blocked the continuation of a Covid-19 policy enabling public schools to provide free breakfast and lunch to all 50 million children, and now, many families face rising debt over childrens' cafeteria charges.
"The school bus service doesn't charge fares. Neither should the school lunch service."
Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, highlighted Monday that while children who attend public schools generally have not only free education but also free access to bathrooms, textbooks, computer equipment, playgrounds, gyms, and sports gear, "around the middle of each school day, the free schooling service is briefly suspended for lunch."
"How much each kid is charged is based on their family income except that, if a kid lives in a school or school district where 40% or more of the kids are eligible for free lunch, then they are also eligible for free lunch even if their family income would otherwise be too high," he detailed. "Before Covid, in 2019, 68.1% of the kids were charged $0, 5.8% were charged $0.40, and 26.1% were charged the full $4.33... The total cost of the 4.9 billion meals is around $21 billion per year. In 2019, user fees covered $5.6 billion of this cost."
Bruenig—whose own child has access to free school meals because of the community eligibility program—continued:
The approximately $5.6 billion of school lunch fees collected in 2019 were equal to 0.7% of the total cost of K-12 schooling. In order to collect these fees, each school district has to set up a school lunch payments system, often by contracting with third-party providers like Global Payments. They also have to set up a system for dealing with kids who are not enrolled in the free lunch program but who show up to school with no money in their school lunch account or in their pockets. In this scenario, schools will either have to make the kid go without lunch, give them a free lunch for the day (but not too many times), or give them a lunch while assigning their lunch account a debt.
Eligibility for the $0 and $0.40 lunches is based on income, but this does not mean that everyone with an eligible income successfully signs up for the program. As with all means-tested programs, the application of the means test not only excludes people with ineligible incomes, but also people with eligible incomes who fail to successfully navigate the red tape of the welfare bureaucracy.
The think tank leader tore into arguments against universal free meals for kids, declaring that "hiving off a tiny part of the public school bundle and charging a means-tested fee for it is extremely stupid."
Bruenig pointed out that socializing the cost of child benefits like school meals helps "equalize the conditions of similarly-situated families with different numbers of children" and "smooths incomes across the lifecycle by ensuring that, when people have kids, their household financial situation remains mostly the same."
"Indeed, this is actually the case for the welfare state as whole, not just child benefits," the expert emphasized, explaining that like older adults and those with disabilities, children cannot and should not work, which "makes it impossible to receive personal labor income, meaning that some other non-labor income system is required."
Conservative opponents of free school lunches often claim that "fees serve an important pedagogical function in society to get people to understand personal responsibility" and because they "are means-tested, they serve an important income-redistributive function in society," he noted. "Both arguments are hard to take seriously."
Pushing back against the first claim, Bruenig stressed that right-wingers don't apply it to other aspects of free schooling such as bus services. He also wrote that the means-testing claim "is both untrue and at odds with their general attitudes on, not just redistribution, but on how child benefit programs specifically should be structured."
A tax for everyone with a certain income intended to make up the $5.6 billion in school meal fees, he argued, "would have a larger base and thus represent a smaller share of the income of each person taxed and such a tax would smooth incomes over time," while also eliminating means-testing—which would allow schools to feed all kids and ditch costly payment systems.
As Nora De La Cour reported Sunday for Jacobin: "The fight for school meals traces its roots all the way back to maternalist Progressive Era efforts to shield children and workers from the ravages of unregulated capitalism. In her bookThe Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, Jennifer Gaddis describes how early school lunch crusaders envisioned meal programs that would be integral to schools' educational missions, immersing students in hands-on learning about nutrition, gardening, food preparation, and home economics. Staffed by duly compensated professionals, these programs would collectivize and elevate care work, making it possible for mothers of all economic classes to efficiently nourish their young."
Now, families who experienced the positive impact of the pandemic-era program want more from the federal government.
"When schools adopt universal meals through community eligibility or another program, we see improvements in students' academic performance, behavior, attendance, and psychosocial functioning," wrote De La Cour, whose reporting also includes parent and cafeteria worker perspectives. "Above all, the implementation of universal meals causes meal participation to shoot up, demonstrating that the need far exceeds the number of kids who are able to get certified."
Crystal FitzSimons, director of school-based programs at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), told Jacobin, "There is a feeling that we can't go back."
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'The Fight Continues' in France as Macron Government Survives No-Confidence Vote
Protests—some of them violently repressed by police—broke out in Paris and cities across the nation after a parliamentary vote following the government's deeply unpopular move to raise the retirement age by two years.
Mar 20, 2023
Fresh protests erupted in Paris and other French cities on Monday after President Emmanuel Macron's government narrowly survived a pair of parliamentary no-confidence votes over bypassing the lower house of Parliament to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
The first parliamentary vote of no confidence, called by a small group of centrist lawmakers, fell nine votes short of the 278 needed to pass, Agence France-Presse reports. A second no-confidence vote, brought forward by the far-right National Rally, was also rejected.
The French Senate, which is dominated by right-wing parties, approved the higher retirement age last week. However, faced with the prospect of a vote shortfall in the National Assembly, Macron's government then invoked special constitutional powers to push through the retirement age hike.
The deeply unpopular policy has sparked widespread protests, some of which have drawn hundreds of thousands of people into the streets despite government bans on gatherings in locations including Place de la Concorde and the area of Avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris.
Protests renewed following Monday's votes, with thousands of demonstrators marching in Paris alone. Videos posted on social media showed police charging protesters, spraying them with pepper spray, and beating them. One video showed officers brutalizing a person who appeared to be a photojournalist while an onlooker repeatedly shouted "it's the press!"
"We are not resigned," the Aubervilliers parliamentary group of the left-wing populist party La France Insoumise (LFI), or France Unbowed, tweeted Monday. "The fight against retirement reforms continues. All together in the street until the retirement of this unjust and illegitimate reform!"
LFI's parliamentary group in Haute-Garonne—which includes the southern city of Tolouse—tweeted that "Macron is more isolated than ever."
"The fight continues tonight," the party group said, previewing a Monday evening demonstration.
French unions are calling for a nationwide general strike on Thursday.
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Tens of Thousands of LA Teachers to Strike in Solidarity With Support Workers
"How do we properly service our students when we are being overworked and underpaid and disrespected?" asked one special education assistant.
Mar 20, 2023
Demanding "respect and dignity" for tens of thousands of school support workers who help the Los Angeles Unified School District run, the union that represents 35,000 teachers in the city has called on its members to join a three-day strike starting Tuesday as school support staffers fight for a living wage.
Members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99 "work so hard for our students," said United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) on Monday. "They deserve respect and dignity at work. We will be out in force tomorrow to make sure they get it."
Roughly 65,000 teachers and support professionals including bus drivers, cafeteria workers, teaching aides, and grounds workers are expected to walk out from Tuesday through Thursday this week, nearly a year after SEIU Local 99 entered contract negotiations with LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the United States.
The union is calling for a 30% pay increase for its members, who earn an average of $25,000 per year, or roughly $12 per hour. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a living wage in the Los Angeles area is more than $21 per hour for a single person with no children and far more for people with children.
"I am a single mother and for the past 20 years I have worked two and sometimes three jobs just to support my family," Janette Verbera, a special education assistant, told In These Times Monday. "How do we properly service our students when we are being overworked and underpaid and disrespected?"
The school district offered a 20% overall pay increase spread over several years on Friday, along with a one-time 5% bonus.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, noted that LAUSD has a $4.9 billion surplus and said the district must use those funds to "invest in staff, students, and educators."
SEIU Local 99 members voted to authorize a strike in February, and said the limited three-day action is a protest against the district's negotiating tactics.
LAUSD has claimed the strike is unlawful and that workers are actually staging the walkout over pay without having exhausted all bargaining avenues. A state board over the weekend denied the district's request to block the strike.
As In These Timesreported, negotiations between the district and SEIU Local 99—as well as separate ongoing talks with the teachers' union about educators' contracts—are being led by Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho, "whose $440,000 salary is nearly 10 times that of a starting salary for a LAUSD teacher."
"LAUSD won't get away with underfunding our schools," tweeted UTLA last week. "This is for our students, for our communities and for our lives."
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