Education, economic opportunity best defense against violence

by Cheryle R. Jackson

A 10-year-old girl was struck by a stray bullet as she knelt down to tie her blind sister’s shoes. A 13-year-old girl visiting Chicago fatally was wounded only hours before she was to board a bus with her family back to her East Coast home. A 16-year-old boy was shot in the back as he played basketball on a court a stone’s throw away from his house.

All three of these victims were caught in the crossfire of gang violence that seems to have erupted anew across the city. And all three, according to news reports, were looking forward to the first day of school. They never made it.

As I read these tragic stories, I was reminded again of the critical link between education and economic opportunity, or lack thereof, and the violence robbing our communities of our most precious resource: our children.

Last week, in his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention, I was glad to hear Sen. John McCain say that education is the No. 1 civil rights issue of the 21st century. I agree with him wholeheartedly, but I would add to that economic opportunity–access to job training, good-paying careers and capital for start-up businesses–as essential to ending the cycle of violence in poor communities.

I am not making excuses for violent behavior, but violence, I believe, is a direct byproduct of undereducated people with no economic opportunities. We don’t need research studies to prove this point. We see it every day in neighborhoods around Illinois where schools are inadequately funded by a system that rewards students living in well-to-do communities and short changes everybody else.

Education funding reform is essential to reversing the cycle of violence in urban communities that are largely segregated by race. That is why the Chicago Urban League, together with the Quad County Urban League, filed a lawsuit against the State of Illinois and the Illinois State Board of Education last month asking the court to declare unconstitutional the state’s funding formula that leaves so many African American and Latino children behind.

McCain offered school choice as a solution. While the Chicago Urban League supports the innovation and success of charter schools with smaller class sizes, it is imperative that we fix the public education for the majority of children, not just a lucky few.

If we do not fight for equity in our schools, we will continue to set our children on a pathway leading to a life of crime, violence, poverty, drugs, unwanted pregnancy and long-term unemployment. In order to solve the violence problem, we have to concurrently tackle the problems of a poor educational system and lack of economic opportunities that breed violent offenders.

Students need better schools, true, but their parents also need better-paying jobs in order to create stable home environments for children to thrive in after the school bell chimes.

The Chicago Urban League is working hard to connect people to economic opportunities by creating job training programs, helping small businesses build capacity to create new jobs and smoothing the pathway to jobs in the corporate world. But all our efforts will be in vain if people do not have the basic educational skills to leverage those opportunities.

I want the best for Chicago’s children – all of them – and I believe that our lawsuit is an important step to changing the culture of violence that takes our attention away from the important issues to focus solely on survival.

The way I see it, the only thing worse than not fighting for our children’s education and for economic opportunities that will sustain them as adults is not fighting to ensure our children’s safety. What’s painfully clear is that you cannot have one without the other.

I pray that those in power will wake up and realize that reforming the state’s discriminatory educational funding system plays no small part in creating pathways to a better future for those who so desperately want to believe that the good life is within their reach.

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John McCain Has a Tax Plan To Create Jobs

September 2, 2008

John McCain
Has a Tax Plan
To Create Jobs

By MARTIN FELDSTEIN and JOHN B. TAYLOR
September 2, 2008; Page A23

John McCain's tax policies are designed to create jobs, increase wages and allow all Americans -- especially those in the hard-pressed middle class -- to keep more of what they earn. His plan achieves these goals in three important ways.

First, he proposes a package of tax incentives that will create jobs and raise earnings by inducing firms to invest more in the U.S. Second, he is strongly committed to blocking any increase in tax rates while doubling the personal exemptions for families with children, which will reduce the tax burden on working Americans. Third, he proposes a new, refundable tax credit that will increase health-care coverage, reduce the cost of health care, and provide more funds for families and individuals to purchase health care.

Here's how the three components of Sen. McCain's tax plan will work in practice.

To create jobs, Mr. McCain will reduce the corporate tax rate -- now at 35% the second highest among all industrial countries -- to one that doesn't penalize firms for doing business here. To encourage small businesses to expand, he will fight against higher tax rates on their income.

To increase wages, Mr. McCain will provide incentives to raise productivity, which leads to higher wages. To increase productivity, he will provide incentives for developing and applying new technologies by expanding the tax credit for research and development, and by making that credit permanent.

More savings and investment in businesses also raise productivity. Mr. McCain will stimulate saving by keeping tax rates low on the returns to saving in the form of dividends and capital gains. He will also allow faster depreciation of assets, which encourages investment. And he will strengthen the incentive to save by reducing the maximum estate tax rate, with a substantial, untaxed exemption.

In stark contrast to Barack Obama, Mr. McCain believes that tax policy should be used to foster the creation of jobs and higher wages through economic growth, rather than to redistribute incomes. The economy is not a zero-sum game in which some people can enjoy higher incomes only if others are made worse off.

Mr. McCain's plan will significantly ease the tax burden on American families with children by doubling the personal exemption to $7,000 from $3,500. This means a larger percentage tax reduction for families with smaller taxable incomes, and specifically helps families in the middle income levels. And a President McCain will enable people to keep more of their earnings by preventing Congress from raising tax rates.

Mr. McCain's overall tax policy will also expand health-insurance coverage, and make health care more efficient. Most taxpayers will also pay less in tax. Here's how it will work. His plan includes a refundable tax credit of $2,500 for single individuals and $5,000 for couples, if they receive a qualifying health-care policy from an employer (one that includes adequate coverage against large medical bills), or buy a qualifying policy on their own. The credit will replace the current tax rule, which excludes employer payments for health insurance from employees' taxable incomes.

This tax credit will be available to everyone, including the self-employed and the employees of businesses that do not provide health insurance. Thus it will lead to a major expansion of health-insurance coverage. The tax credit will of course be available to people who are between jobs, or have retired before they're eligible for Medicare.

Since any part of the credit not used to pay for insurance could be invested in a health savings account, individuals will have an incentive to choose less costly health-insurance policies. This will improve the efficiency of health care, to everyone's benefit.

Importantly, the tax credit will be a clear gain for most employees. Consider a married taxpayer whose employer now pays $10,000 for a health-insurance policy. Ending the exclusion will raise that individual's taxable income by $10,000 -- but the $5,000 tax credit will exceed the extra tax liability whether the marginal tax rate that individual pays is 10% or 35% or anywhere in between. Indeed, the lower the taxpayer's income, the more of the credit that will be available to pay for health care that's not reimbursed by insurance.

Sen. Obama was at best disingenuous in his convention speech when he criticized the McCain plan for taxing health benefits. The health insurance tax credit exceeds the extra taxes on existing benefits.

Mr. Obama also criticized Mr. McCain on the grounds that he doesn't cut taxes on 100 million families. But this ignores the fact that Mr. McCain's health-insurance credits would benefit most taxpayers and that many people who are not currently eligible for the increased personal exemption will become eligible when they have children. When these features are taken into account, the vast majority of today's 140 million taxpayers would pay lower taxes under the McCain plan.

Tax revenues will increase robustly over the next few years with Mr. McCain's overall tax strategy as the economy grows -- even with conservative economic growth assumptions. And by maintaining strong control over the growth of government spending, Mr. McCain will bring the budget into balance. His long record of fighting against excessive government spending, his plans to veto earmarks and reverse the spending binge of the past few years, and his strong commitment to balancing the budget can make this goal a reality.

Mr. McCain's tax policy stands in strong contrast to Mr. Obama's ever-changing tax proposals. Although it is difficult to know just what Mr. Obama would do if he were elected, it is clear that he wants to raise taxes on personal incomes, on dividends, on capital gains, on payroll income and on businesses -- all of which will hurt the U.S. economy. He regards the tax system as a way to redistribute income, and disregards the resulting adverse incentive effects that reduce employment and economic growth.

Mr. Obama's claim to being a big tax cutter defies credibility. His assertion that he would cut taxes on 95% of families reflects his one-time $1,000 rebate payouts, and a variety of new government spending handed out through the tax system.

Mr. McCain, on the other hand, has been clear that he wants to preserve the favorable incentive effects of the existing low tax rates -- and to reduce taxes in other ways that will strengthen the economy, create jobs and help current taxpayers, including those without health insurance.

Messrs. Feldstein and Taylor are economic advisers to John McCain and professors of economics at, respectively, Harvard and Stanford.

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Sarah Palin represents John McCain's new focus on reform

Like Hillary Clinton before him, McCain decides the experience argument is not the way to beat Obama. Palin helps personify his new message.

By Robin Abcarian and Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 1, 2008

ST. PAUL, MINN. -- With his selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain is giving his campaign a political makeover: Rather than selling himself as a war hero with national security credentials, he is donning the mantle of the reformer.

The new approach borrows a page from the playbook of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who late in the Democratic primary campaign framed herself as a hero of the struggling middle class.

• 

McCain, like the New York senator, has apparently decided that being the candidate of experience is not the formula for beating Barack Obama.

The 44-year-old Palin, with her union-member husband, her staunch conservatism on social issues and her limited foreign policy resume, personifies the new McCain theme.

Republicans conceded Sunday that her presence on the ticket undercuts McCain's argument that Democratic rival Obama lacks the experience to lead in a time of war.

But the surprising pick reflects an acknowledgment by McCain that the old strategy needed fixing at a time when economic woes have overshadowed the foreign policy issues that were once seen as the Arizona senator's greatest strength.

"It's a one-two punch," said John Hinderaker, who helps run Power Line, a popular conservative blog.

Hinderaker said he was initially dismayed, thinking that Palin would diminish McCain's experience argument, but said he had begun to feel that she could help the presumptive Republican nominee.

"You have to have the base turning out and motivated," he said, but noted that Palin would also attract blue-collar voters because of her middle-class roots and taste for hunting and fishing.

Many GOP strategists and voters said they were still digesting Palin's selection and what it meant for McCain's chances. New surveys conducted since Friday's announcement were inconclusive about whether she would have a meaningful effect on the vote.

Campaign officials said Palin could help them woo a constituency that was important to Clinton and remains skeptical of Obama -- so-called hockey moms and other working-class voters. And she has already proved effective in energizing evangelical leaders, some of whom had been threatening to withhold support from McCain.

The Palin announcement was a shock to many Republicans, who had expected McCain, a 72-year-old cancer survivor, to choose someone who complemented his strengths and could easily assume the presidency should something happen to him.

But as McCain and Palin wrapped up their first weekend as a team, it was clear the campaign had changed focus. Palin represents the culmination of a weeks-long search for the best way to blunt Obama's themes of hope and change.

And Palin has quickly been thrust from political obscurity into a starring role.

At the Minnesota State Fair, a hub of political culture in this battleground state, the McCain campaign booth was adorned with a large color portrait of the Alaska governor. There was no comparable McCain photo in sight.

And, while top Republicans such as President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney canceled their scheduled appearances tonight at the Republican National Convention, Palin was dispatched to Minnesota at the last minute to rally the party. The symbolism was clear: Palin, a national newcomer, was now a standard-bearer for the party.

"They had to pivot away from experience," said Republican consultant John Weaver, a former McCain advisor. "In a change election, they have to give that up now."

As recently as Wednesday, in the midst of the Democratic National Convention, a McCain television ad dismissed Obama as "dangerously unprepared to be president." But by this weekend, McCain senior advisor Charles Black was downplaying the idea that experience had ever been a central McCain theme. "We never used experience as the big argument," he said.

And Sunday in St. Paul, the site of this week's Republican National Convention, House GOP leader John A. Boehner dismissed the importance of experience.

"We've all started new jobs from time to time in our career," he said. "And most of you can remember the first day that you spent on almost every one of those new jobs. Because when you got it, you thought, 'Oh my God, how am I going to do this?'

"Nobody's qualified on the first day," he continued. "I don't care whether it's Barack Obama or whether it's John McCain sitting in the White House."

McCain, despite more than a year of casting himself as the best-prepared to be commander in chief, used a Fox News interview to describe the nationally unknown Palin as his "soul mate" for her work as a reformer in Alaska.

"In all due respect to my friends [who think] that she has never been on some of the inside-the-Beltway activities, I say thank God," McCain said.

The McCain shift mirrors Clinton's primary campaign tactics when, trailing Obama, she pushed hard to win support from white middle-class voters with whom Obama failed to connect. The change was not enough to help Clinton overcome Obama's advantages, such as his dominance among African American voters excited about his historic candidacy.

McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds insisted Sunday that McCain's themes had been consistent for months, using the catchphrase "reform, prosperity and peace" to describe the agenda adopted by the GOP since it became clear Obama would be the Democratic nominee.

And Bounds said that experience remained an important issue, noting that Clinton's attempts to exploit it failed only in the context of a Democratic primary decided by liberal voters. "Hillary Clinton's arguments . . . were not illegitimate, ill-founded or ineffective," he said. "It was just a different election."

At the Minnesota fair, many said they were impressed by Palin's unusual credentials, but interviews with a number of voters showed it remained uncertain whether her appeal would translate into support for the Republican ticket.

Tamar Fenton, 45, of suburban Minneapolis, said she admired Palin, a mother of five, and was not bothered by the governor's relative lack of experience. "If you can go up against a teenaged kid," said Fenton, "you could go up against a world leader."

Nevertheless, Fenton said, she could not support a candidate such as Palin who opposes abortion rights and gun control.

Times staff writers Bob Drogin, James Hohmann and Maeve Reston contributed to this report.

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A lesson from Cindy McCain

Dawn Turner Trice

September 1, 2008

I'm still amazed at the number of people who brand Michelle Obama as an angry black woman who's un-American. But those who don't like her, or her husband, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, won't no matter what. I suppose that's OK.

But this isn't so much about Michelle Obama as it is about the other woman who may be our first lady: Cindy McCain.

At some point this week during the Republican National Convention, as Sen. John McCain gets ready to accept his party's nomination for president, the McCain clan will take the stage. For those who don't already know, one child looks a wee bit different from the others.

She has dark hair and deep caramel-colored skin. Bridget McCain is 17 and was born in Bangladesh. She was the subject of a nasty smear campaign by Republicans during the 2000 primary. They said Bridget was McCain's love child, the product of an affair.

Dawn Turner Trice

As the true story goes, Cindy McCain was traveling in Bangladesh when she came upon two children who needed medical help. McCain decided to bring both back home. She and her husband adopted Bridget. Another couple, at Cindy McCain's urging, adopted the other child.

I know we've heard a lot of other things about McCain, but that she adopted a child in need speaks volumes about her. That she adopted a brown child (long before Angelina and Madonna made it trendy and hip), and didn't let that child's skin color obscure her need, rounds McCain out even more.

Everybody knows Cindy McCain is loaded. But this isn't about money. Such an adoption asks your family, including your children, to extend themselves in a way that lends more than lip service to the idea of colorblindness.

It's one thing to believe one way when it comes to race. But when you get your children involved, that's quite another.

I remember during President George W. Bush's first term when he wanted to nominate Judge Charles Pickering, a conservative Republican, to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This time it was the Democrats launching a smear campaign that accused Pickering of being a racist who had made some racially insensitive rulings.

During a profile on CBS' "60 Minutes," some of those complicated rulings were explained. But what spoke volumes about Pickering and race was that when his Mississippi school district began to integrate, he and his wife decided not to send their children to private schools as their friends were doing. Their children attended the public school, which soon became mostly black.

I consider myself open-minded when it comes to race. But I've always believed that I will be tested when (years and years and years from now) my daughter brings home a man of a different race and introduces him to her parents as the man she hopes to marry.

Will I say: "Oh . . . him? Really?"

Or will I say to her, as my mother said to me: "Honey, if he treats you well, you have my blessings."

To be clear, I'm not saying that McCain or Pickering is totally free of prejudice. We do live in a country where it's impossible to avoid the taint.

The point is that people are complicated. And if we sit in our little partisan echo chambers, we don't get enough information to see any of these people with more clarity. Conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats, wealthy heiresses and black women with Ivy League educations don't fit into neat boxes.

But neither do civil rights leaders often accused of race-baiting and chasing television cameras. Last week, during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, I spent some time with the controversial Rev. Al Sharpton.

Check out my essay, "An hour with 'Uncle Al' " at Exploring Race at chicagotribune.com/race.

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