AWOL At The Kvetching
By Peter SchragGov. Jerry Brown’s latest budget cuts prompted a quick and predictable response from the K-12 school lobby, aka the Education Coalition, among them state school superintendent Tom Torlakson, the teacher unions, the association of school administrators, the school boards, and the PTA.
And for the most part, the response was absolutely proper, especially when it focused on the unfairness and stupidity of the cuts to school transportation funds. As they said at a phone-in press event last week, those cuts will hit the state’s poorest and neediest students the hardest.
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No Exit: Many Drug Courts Don’t Reduce Re-Arrest Rates
By Margaret Dooley-SammuliDrug Policy Alliance
As I wrote last week, California’s counties have recently been given more authority (under AB 109, or “public safety realignment”) to develop their own policy responses to drug law violations. Given that drug offenses account for a huge proportion of all people involved in the criminal justice system at the county level, this is as big a challenge as an opportunity.
This isn’t just about reducing the number of people behind bars for a drug law violation, but about keeping them out of the criminal justice system all together – and about getting them out once they’re in.
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8 Stories Buried By the Corporate Media That You Need to Know About
By Rania KhalekAlterNet
As 2011 comes to a close, we will see lists of the year’s most memorable events and most important people, as is the pattern every year. But not all stories are created equal. When the corporate media bury significant developments in the back pages of the paper or the second to last paragraph of an article, it’s easy for stories to go unnoticed.
As usual, this year was packed with critical, newsworthy and insufficiently covered stories that should have, but didn't, make the front page. Below are eight explosive must-read stories of 2011 that you may have missed.
1) Our Planet Saw the Largest Increase in Carbon Emissions Since the Industrial Revolution
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