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Originally posted Aug 28, 2007 @ 10:05:
When I was teaching, I thought that many of my students’ ideas about and impressions of teachers came from childhood and had that veneer of invisibility parenting has when you’re on the receiving end–clean clothes appear in drawers, cooked food put on the table, empty ice trays filled, glasses and plates suddenly clean and stacked in the cabinets. Students do not see class preparation, the number of books or articles you read, the notes you take and throw away just like The Girl rarely sees me totally sweating the details of motherhood. (Well, mostly rarely.) So my students were baffled, some even offended, when I was busy or couldn’t (or wouldn’t) grade their 2-weeks-late paper right away or they had to wait 2 weeks for me to fill out a recommendation form. They thought I was just dissing them, that I sat in my office looking out of my ivy-framed window arranging for maid service and ordering cases of champagne and Prada (or whatever the hell they talked about and carried) bags from Neiman Marcus. Their ideas of being a professor were insultingly simple-minded and student-obsessed, like children who cannot conceive of their parents as anything but parents and are shocked to find they like, for example, Justin Timberlake or Twinkies or crashed a few cars in their day. Parenting is hard. Teaching is also hard. And much of that hard work is done out of the presence of the recipients. If it looks like you’re working too hard, you lose face and effectiveness. Like some of the best writers look like they could never make a mistake, typo or bad sentence. We do not see the 500 discarded pages, only the 200-or-so that end up published. If it looks like you’re working or trying too hard, you’ve failed.
I heard Matt Roberts’ commentary on Morning Edition after dropping off The Girl. Like many new teacher recruits before and after him, he quit. His principal told him not to see it as a failure but it is hard, he says, for him not to. He wanted to be part of the change and recovery, he wanted to “make a difference,” he wanted to be part of the healing and rebuilding of local schools and, by extension, the lives of our (yes, our) children. But something didn’t click, couldn’t work long term. Matt was being too hard on himself by listing the on-the-ground, day-to-day problems of life here as “excuses,” even though it did make a nice frame for his commentary and gave a nice little chime at the end. Unremediated schools, blocks upon blocks of unremediated houses, rents and insurance rates that have doubled or tripled or more, what money the metro area has coming to it unfairly distributed or just held up in squabbling–these aren’t “excuses,” like you don’t feel like going to the store with your mother, but realities, harsh ones that do have negative effects and pretending they don’t or aren’t supposed to or attributing it all to personal failure is counterproductive enough to drive people mad (as in insanity), distortingly angry and/or out of the region entirely. We do no one a favor by asking for superhuman tolerance, work, faith, turning of cheeks or eyes. Matt says New Orleanians are “sick of…excuses.” We are sick in general. And looking around, there are blocks and blocks of reasons to be and remain so for quite some time.
graphic: nola.com/Times-Picayune
Teaching is hard. Only students, the recipients, think it’s easy. And in a “system” with this many challenges, even more, amazingly, than before The Floods, teaching is even harder. No amount of youthful or mid-career-change enthusiasm mutes that. And in challenging school systems (much less a “system” like this one), turnover is high. Like others, I am quite happy about the influx of the young and energetic, the dedicated and devoted but I do not believe that this influx will somehow be immune to turnover (and that turnover can take 3 days or 2-3 years) or will somehow solve it.
Concentrated poverty poured challenges on the Waverly community [a struggling Hartford, CT school] but spared Marlborough [a more successful suburban CT school]. Semisaints like Lois Luddy [3rd grade teacher at Waverly] and James Thompson [principal of Waverly] bore it brilliantly. More ordinary people stumbled, tripped, fell, and quit (Eaton 275).
We cannot assume or unwisely hope that this influx is full of semisaints. Some people will stumble, some sooner than others, some later than others, and some of those who stumble later will take some folks with them in one way or another. That’s not an excuse but a reality. You can prepare for reality but not excuses.
Also see:
Teacher Attrition: A Costly Loss to the Nation and to the States, August 2005 (PDF)
Among teachers who transferred schools, lack of planning time (65 percent), too heavy a workload (60 percent), problematic student behavior (53 percent), and a lack of influence over school policy (52 percent) were cited as common sources of dissatisfaction.Many teachers who see no hope for change leave the profession altogether. While it is true that teachers of all ages and in all kinds of schools leave the profession each year, it is also true that
- the rate of attrition is roughly 50 percent higher in poor schools than in wealthier ones;
- and teachers new to the profession are far more likely to leave than are their more experienced counterparts.
Teacher Turnover Leaves Void in US Schools, August 27, 2007
Some educators say it is the confluence of such retirements with the departure of disillusioned young teachers that is creating the challenge. In addition, higher salaries in the business world and more opportunities for women are drawing away from the field recruits who might in another era have proved to be talented teachers with strong academic backgrounds.
“The problem is not mainly with retirement,” said Thomas Carroll, the president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. “Our teacher preparation system can accommodate the retirement rate. The problem is that our schools are like a bucket with holes in the bottom, and we keep pouring in teachers.”
The commission has calculated that these days nearly a third of all new teachers leave the profession after just three years, and that after five years almost half are gone – a higher turnover rate than in the past.
Eaton, Susan. The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin. 2007.
originally posted Aug 27, 2007 @ 7:09
In 1994, just two years after the Sheff trial began, Professors Amy Stuart Wells and Robert Crain of Columbia University’s Teachers College reviewed decades of studies on longer-term outcomes of desegregated schooling. Wells and Crain wrote in their conclusion, “Beginning with the aspirations of high school students and ending with tangible results of black adults’ social networks and participation in the work force, our analysis has attempted to trace the path of perpetual segregation and isolation, pointing out the various junctures at which the cycle can be broken by black students who have access to information about better education and occupational opportunities and who are less fearful of whites.”
Ten years later, in 2004, Amy Stuart Wells and her colleagues released findings from a qualitative interview study of more than 500 adult graduates of desegregated high schools. “Our central finding is that school desegregation fundamentally changed the people who lived through it,” Wells wrote. “Desegregation made the vast majority of the students who attended these schools less racially prejudiced and more comfortable around people of different backgrounds.”
In a rigorous statistical study, desegregation in Texas schools was strongly associated with higher achievement among black students and had no statistically significant effect upon whites. This led the study authors to recommend more housing desegregation programs so black families could move from isolated, high-poverty neighborhoods into more diverse schools.
Meanwhile, a growing body of research indicates that students from low-income families simply do better academically in predominantly middle-class schools. (Studies also show that the same is true of middle-class students.) Findings such as these have led the Century Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research think tank, to consistently argue that “the best way to improve education would be to give every American schoolchild the chance to attend a middle-class public school.” (Former Connecticut governor Lowell Weicker, a Sheff supporter, who is also a former Republican U.S. senator, chaired the Century Foundation panel that made the recommendation.)
It appears that an increasing, though still quite small, number of school officials agree with the Century Foundation’s conclusion. In 2000, officials in the 101,000-student Wake County, North Carolina, district adopted a combined racial and economic integration plan. Under the policy, each school enrollment would have no more than 40 percent poor students. There has been no rigorous statistical study of district policy, but school officials have publicly speculated that increased test scores may stem, at least in part, from a reduction in concentrated poverty. At the end of the 20th century, several other school districts began experimenting with racial integration plans or as an alternative to race-based policies. These include St. Lucie, Florida; San Francisco; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Greenville, South Carolina; and Brandywine, Delaware, among others.
A study of elementary school students in Madison-Dane County, Wisconsin, found that for each 1 percent increase in middle-class enrollment, low-income students improved .64 percentage points in reading and .72 percentage points in math. For the typical low-income student, this would mean that moving from a school with 45 percent middle-class classmates to one with 85 percent middle-class classmates would mean “a 20 to 32 percentage point improvement” in the low-income student’s test scores. Researchers in Denver, Colorado, in Maryland, and in Escambia, Florida, report positive relationships between a student’s attendance at a middle-class school and his or her achievement.
Despite the small successes, economic school segregation, like racial segregation, is on the rise, according to the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg, the intellectual father of the economic integration movement. One Century Foundation study projects that economic segregation will increase in all but 6 states between 2000 and 2025 (345-347).
Eaton, Susan. The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial. Algonquin: Chapel Hill, NC, 2007.
Also: Desegregation #3, Desegregation #2, Desegregation
originally posted Aug 26, 2009 @ 17:04
No, it’s not a joke or oxymoron. Though it does sound like a pipe 10-foot-water-bong dream…
In no society are women treated equally yet. I believe strongly that if women are not full participants in society, the society does not advance the way that it could. And if women are denied their rights, it affects children, families and the entire social structure. ~ Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Feb. 2009
pic: openDemocracy under this Creative Commons license
In December 2005, we put up Xmas lights outside, lots of them, all along the rails and the door. All the streetlights were out then so it was important in our privileged, shamefully-lucky way. It was nice, though, to see a light at night that wasn’t the slow, blue blip of a National Guard Humvee. That was only every few hours.
This year…maybe I’m just tired. Maybe The Girl is over the giggly, kid-ish gimme lust and somewhat ambivalent herself, or just playing it very cool as she passes into the teens. Many things displease me now, too many to attend to, and I have more needs than I’d like and have to ask for more allowances and concessions than I am comfortable with so it’s time for a holiday break. Of sorts. As much as it can be. I have Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” to get me in the spirit. All I need is “The 12 Drinks of Christmas,” “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” and “The 12 Yats of Christmas” and I’m set. Gimme me something to wrap and, depending on the surrounding relations, a drink.
So Black to a Black to the G Bitch archives:
I am ambivalent and conflicted about Christmas. I’m not about the Christ story; I have only recently learned the art and nuance of gifting and being gifted; I’m a loner; I like the compulsion to see, talk to and hang out with family, something that can be too easy to slip past; I’m grateful to be in NO and it to still be here; I like little colored lights and red and green chili peppers and stars and tinsel and the smell of a tree and wrapping presents and actually cooking instead of tossing, heating, unwrapping, microwaving. But then there I am out in the mishpocheh–vegan, atheist and from New Orleans. Ouch.
So Black to the G Bitch Archives:
It’s time to make another magical, atheist, vegan Christmas/holiday season for The Girl. I will take a break from now until about the 30th. Spare an animal–have a vegetarian/vegan holiday meal. Donate to others and smile for no reason.
It’s that time of year again! And time for a still-true G Bitch rerun:
Last week, the grocery ads got more meat-heavy than usual which tipped me off that a holiday is coming, the Fourth of July specifically. It is a day, as Mister, Girl and I say, for folks to burn some dead animal. For us, it’s a time to be given the fourth degree about not eating meat (or fish or even chicken?) and waiting for the proper appearance time has passed to either rush home to gobble down tofu and vegetables or race to the nearest Subway.
Except this year. I am “giving myself permission” to avoid insane and/or animal-burning family members and drink at home.
As the omnivores eat their charred animal flesh with ketchup and bread, we’ll grill some veggies, smother potatoes in the coals and start the margaritas around noon. Happy Independence (for whom?) Day!
graciously cross-posted at Humid City when the Spot was spotty
The Lump (our 11-1/2-year-old spawn) reads during Jazz Fest. I have found this humiliating and/or embarrassing over the years, and make pains to point out her bobbing or tapping foot. This year, though, people were quite charmed. One man talked to me at length about her liking to read, about that keeping her “mind off all that mess” and away from too much TV. He was also charmed at how I “took care of her”–adjusting the umbrella and her circle of shade, spraying cold water on her legs to cool her off, checking in with her every song or break or so. She’s my child. That’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s just not that common to see. One day, she will be grown and gone. And I want her to miss the loving care she got from us.
Every child, especially the toddlers, reminded me of my Lump back in the day, the days of “Jazz Fest braids,” red shorts, no shirt, one quick diaper change, lots of mango freeze, jama jama, snowballs, lemonade and herbal tea and a 3-wheeled stroller that parted the crowds.
But I have gotten old. It took 3 days to get my Jazz Fest legs. And now, I am done for a week even though Monday is tomorrow and the race begins.
Happy Fucking Jazz Fest, y’all. See you next year.
I think of this as a guest post at Humid City though the Spot was down….
I got a long Jazz Fest tradition, one of those who went as a child and carts her spawn there each year. Every year of my daughter’s life, we’ve gone to Jazz Fest. She never complains or begs off–going to Jazz Fest is what we do. Some people have dinner together at 6 every night, we go to Jazz Fest every year.
We used to spend most of our time in Economy Hall but the brass band groove has moved to the Jazz & Heritage Stage and we even see some of our Economy Hall family, people who watched our daughter grow up on the dance floor, over there now, people I know by hats, shoes, bandannas, umbrellas, and usual outfits. Names, no.
I love Jazz Fest Thursdays. It’s mellower and less crowded in general, though I can’t say for the big stages because we rarely go to the headlining, packed-in-with-the-masses acts. Or maybe we just think it is because we have no kid, also known as The Lump, in tow. I especially love seeing school kids there, packs of 5, 10, 20 in their matching shirts–my favorite today was Langston Hughes’ “Dream it. Be it. Do it.”–and uniform pants and shorts, eating snowballs and getting close to the Indians on the Jazz and Heritage Stage, being watched and directed by their teachers in matching t-shirts. They were all just so damn cute.
The best band today was the New Orleans Nightcrawlers–tight, full brass sound and traditional boogie. Panorama Jazz Band earlier was good, too, but for this granddaughter of a sax player in a traditional NO brass band, the Panorama is light on brass and kind of quiet.
I was glad to see some variety in the free-Harrah’s-drink and Hustler-Club airplane banners: Rouse’s–Buy Local.
My site is down again. Look for me here until further hysteria.
G Bitch
NOLA
I am ambivalent and conflicted about Christmas. I’m not about the Christ story; I have only recently learned the art and nuance of gifting and being gifted; I’m a loner; I like the compulsion to see, talk to and hang out with family, something that can be too easy to slip past; I’m grateful to be in NO and it to still be here; I like little colored lights and red and green chili peppers and stars and tinsel and the smell of a tree and wrapping presents and actually cooking instead of tossing, heating, unwrapping, microwaving. But then there I am out in the mishpocheh–vegan, atheist and from New Orleans. Ouch.
So Black to the G Bitch Archives:
It’s time to make another magical, atheist, vegan Christmas/holiday season for The Girl. I will take a break from now until about the 30th. Spare an animal–have a vegetarian/vegan holiday meal. Donate to others and smile for no reason.
Over the whole issue, I’ve just been shaking my head and having trouble coming up with anything else to say. Lots of folks are writing, ranting, and protesting over the demolitions of the St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper housing projects. Protests have been held, calls made, meetings held and attended. And the demolition has already started:
The only visible plan is to tear down the buildings. There is no concrete plan for housing, redevelopment, anything. (See Update below. Also check out Editor B’s and Alli’s comments on the Lafitte plan.) The goal is to tear down Those Buildings. And then what? When will there be housing? And for whom? Another River Garden? A few dozen or so people and companies making money and nothing else changing but the pastel color of the walls in view? This is not about “improving the lives” of the black women, children and older people who lived in Those Buildings because if it were about them, people would be housed and helped before anything was torn down. The mincing noises about “failed” housing, the “horrible” conditions (asserted by people who often have the least experience in or with these projects–and no, they were not utopias but people did live there and did their best to make what they had work), The Drugs, the walls, wiring, etc.–all a fucking ruse to cover up the real goal and meaning–to eliminate Those Buildings that remind us of society’s and our city’s multiple human, humane and economic failures; the fear of being held accountable for throwing people away; people blamed for being thrown away by others then exiled and what homes and neighborhoods and communities they knew and had demonized and demolished to “help” them defeat the social ills they are held down by and under that they are also blamed for; the delusion that money, resources, education, status and hope trickle down from luxury apartments and condominiums built so fast you can see their Section 8 future and yet another future insistence that the way to solve housing and poverty problems is to tear down buildings and move people, black people, women, out of sight. Those making decisions in the open and in the dark–including Shelley Midura, Stacy Head, Ray Nagin, David Vitter, Alphonso Jackson and the usual few dozen local moneyed minions from hell–talk out of both sides of their mouths and all their assholes and then are shocked when the people they are cleansing from the cityscape object, fight, yell and make it damn clear they see through the faked compassion and reason to the real heart of it all–we don’t want you, go away, at least until we need someone to clean the floor and wipe the shit off Great-Grandma’s ass.
Demolition of New Orleans public housing hits a snag–nola.com
New Orleans: Public Housing Supporters Speak Out Against Demolition–Infoshop.org
New Orleans to Raze Public Housing–WA Post
Something fishy in rush to demolish-–Lolis Eric Elie
Christmas Presents for New Orleans, From HUD: Bulldozers for the Poor, Huge Tax Credits for Wealthy Developers–Bill Quigley in Counterpunch
Republican interests are clearly not served by the return of all African-Americans to New Orleans. Louisiana was described before Katrina as a “pink state”–one that went Democratic some times and Republican others. The tipping point for Louisiana Democrats was the deeply Democratic African American city of New Orleans. Immediately after the hurricanes struck, one political analyst said “the Democratic margin of victory in Louisiana is sleeping in the Astrodome in Houston.” Tiny turnout by African-American voters in New Orleans in recent elections has led white Republican interests to calculate immediate new political gains. Demolition of thousands of low-income African American occupied apartments only helps that political and racial dynamic.
But no one will say openly that African American renters are not welcome. Supporters of the destruction of thousands of apartments have come up with a series of stated reasons for their actions, but it clearly looks like political gain and economic enrichment for contractors, lawyers, architects and political friends are the real reasons.
Reduction of crime was supposed to be the main reason for getting rid of thousands of public housing apartments–yet crime in New Orleans has soared since Katrina while the thousands of apartments remain shut.
Every one of the displaced families who were living in public housing is African-American. Most all are headed by mothers and grandmothers working low-wage jobs or disabled or retired. Thousands of children lived in the neighborhoods. Race and class and gender are an unstated part of every justification for demolition, especially the call for “mixed-income housing.” If the demolitions are allowed to go forward, there will be mixed income housing–but the mix will not include over 80 percent of the people who lived there.
This absolute lack of any realistic affordable alternative is the main reason people want to return to their public housing neighborhoods–or be guaranteed one for one replacement of their homes. Absent that, redevelopment will not help the residents or people in the community who need affordable housing.
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson has his own reasons for pressing ahead with the demolitions. HUD has approved plans to turn over scores of acres of prime public land to private developers for 99 year leases and give hundreds of millions of dollars in direct grants, tax credit subsidies and long-term contracts. One of the developers described it as the biggest tax-credit giveaway in years.
There may be crime in the projects after all–even if the residents are gone. Consider the following examples.
Investigative reporter Edward T. Pound of the National Journal has uncovered many questionable and several potentially criminal actions by HUD in New Orleans. Pound reported that HUD Secretary Jackson worked with, and is owed over $250,000 from an Atlanta-based company, Columbia Residential. Columbia Residential was part of a team that was awarded a $127 million contract by HUD to develop the St. Bernard housing development. Columbia was also awarded other earlier contracts for as yet undisclosed amounts under still undisclosed circumstances.
Pound also discovered that a golfing buddy and social friend of Secretary Jackson was given a no-bid $175 an hour “emergency” contract with HUD within months of Katrina. The buddy, William Hairston, was ultimately paid more than $485,000 for working at HANO over an 18 month period.
A review of the dozens of no-bid contracts approved by HUD in New Orleans shows millions going to politically connected consultants, law firms, architects, and insurance brokers.
UPDATE: from “The Big Four.” The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, 16 Dec. 2007, A14.
St. Bernard
Built: 1942-43.
Units: 1,436 on 52 acres.
Top residential count: 1,436 families.
Residents when Katrina hit: 1,015 families.
Units temporarily opened: None
Plan after demolition: Build 624 mixed-income units in rwo phases; reduce density from 28 public housing units per acre to 12 mixed-income units per acre. Small retail complex, with apartments above commercial space, and a community center. Two charter public schools envisioned.
Developer: Bayou District Foundation, comprised of Columbia Residential of Atlanta; the Baton Rouge Area Foundation; and the Fore! Kids Foundation of New Orleans.
B. W. Cooper (formerly Calliope)
Built: 690 units built in 1942. An additional 860 units built in 1954.
Units: 1,474 on 55 acres.
Units temporarily reopened since Katrina: 261.
Residents when Katrina hit: 1,015 families
Plan after demolition: Build 660 mixed-income units in two phases; density to be reduced from 27 public housing units per acre to 12 mixed-income units per acre. No commercial development planned.
Developer: KBK Enterprises of Columbus, Ohio, and the B. W. Cooper Resident Management Corporation.
C. J. Peete (formerly Magnolia)
Built: 723 units built in 1941. An additional 680 units added in 1955 were later torn down.
Units: 723 on 41-1/2 acres.
Residents when Katrina hit: 144 families.
Units temporarily reopened since Katrina: None.
Plan after demolition: Build 460 mixed-income units in two phases; reduce density from 45 public housing units per acre to 11 mixed-income units per acre. An 18,000-square-foot community building but no commercial development.
Developer: Central City Partners, which is made up of McCormack Baron Salazar, a national real-estate developer, and KAI Design and Build of St. Louis. They will work with the New Orleans Neighborhood Development Collaborative.
Lafitte
Built: 1941 with 896 units in 77 buildings.
Units: 896 on 28 acres.
Units temporarily reopened since Katrina: None currently. Work is under way to reopen 94 units.
Top residential count: 896 families.
Residents when Katrina hit: 865 families.
Plan after demolition: Build 1,500 mixed-income units on the Lafitte site and surrounding neighborhood, including 600 home ownership units.
Developer: Providence and Enterprise (PDF), both nonprofit agencies.
[This is my favorite because of the expansiveness, the inclusion of the surrounding neighborhood in the plan and the home ownership units.]
SCHIP–like Iraq in the past and Iran in the near future, he’s explaining his actions with lies and myths. What’s really up:
from SCHIP Reauthorization: What’s at Stake for Louisiana (PDF)
WHO’S COVERED IN LOUISIANA?
Louisiana covers children with family incomes up to 200 percent of poverty ($34,340 for a family of three in 2007). In 2006, LaCHIP covered 142,389 children. Still, 135,239 children remain uninsured. SCHIP reauthorization offers an opportunity to get more of these children covered.
Source: Number of children in SCHIP from CMS data for federal fiscal year 2006. Number of uninsured children from a three-year merge of 2003-2005 data for children aged 0-18 from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.
Oh. My. Gobble. The Gold Coast luxury of $34,340 a fucking year. How dare they.
Programs That Keep on Giving
State funds that are spent on Medicaid and SCHIP are matched by the federal government at a rate that varies by state. The federal government gives Louisiana $3.71 for each dollar the state spends on LaCHIP and $2.30 for each state dollar it spends on Medicaid. Because SCHIP is a block grant, each state receives a certain amount of federal funding to pay for the program each year, but it is up to the state to spend the money to draw down those federal dollars.
Because of their financing structures, SCHIP and Medicaid introduce new money into the state’s economy, which has a positive and measurable impact on state business activity, available jobs, and overall state income. SCHIP and Medicaid payments to hospitals and other health-related businesses have a direct impact on the state’s economy. These dollars then trigger successive rounds of earnings and purchases as they continue to circulate through the state’s economy.
For example, health care employees spend part of their salaries on new cars, which adds to the income of employees of auto dealerships, enabling them to buy washing machines, which enables appliance store employees to spend additional money on groceries, and so on. This ripple effect of spending is called the “economic multiplier effect.”
This is why Louisiana will reap so many economic benefits from additional SCHIP and Medicaid spending, above and beyond expanded coverage for children. If SCHIP is reauthorized with the full $50 billion in additional five-year funding promised in the budget resolution, the $812.8 million in additional federal dollars injected in Louisiana’s economy will generate:
- $317.2 million in new business activity (output of goods and services),
- $116.5 million in new wages, and
- 3,897 new jobs.
A Key Issue That Is Likely to Be Debated
Some in Congress and the Administration would like to roll back SCHIP, limiting it to children whose family incomes are below twice the poverty level. Although Louisiana does not currently cover children with incomes above this level or parents, 24 states provide such coverage. The cost of living varies considerably across the country, and state officials often find it helpful to have the ability to set eligibility for SCHIP at the level that makes sense for their state. In addition, offering SCHIP coverage to parents has proven to be a particularly effective strategy because it results in coverage for entire families who are otherwise hard to reach, and whose children might otherwise remain uninsured. Fully funding SCHIP will bring significant new federal dollars to Louisiana, and the outcome of this debate will determine whether the state has the flexibility it needs to expand health coverage in the future.
The president’s complaints and fears are based on the much more expansive House bill which is different from the one he vetoed. The one he vetoed limits states to families making 200% of the poverty level (see the multi-zeroed fortune listed above for LA) or less, not the much-ballyhooed and salivated over $82-something-thousand that New York state would like: see SCHIP Side-by-Side (PDF).
Again, a lying motherfucker.
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