Cartoon of the day

Special mention

 

Map of the day

source

In February of this year, 15 percent of the U.S. population—47.6 million people—were on food stamps.

Mississippi was the state with the largest share of its population relying on food stamps (22 percent), although the nation’s capital was even higher (at 23 percent). One in five residents in Oregon, New Mexico, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky also was a food-stamp recipient.

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

Chart of the day

source

In 2007, at the start of the Second Great Depression, 26.3 million Americans—8.7 percent of the population—were on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Today, that number has risen to 47.6 million, which means that 15 percent of the U.S. population is receiving food-stamp benefits.

What’s that you say about a recovery?

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

Map of the day

This is the action map for the 11 June Carnival Against Capitalism, which gives the names and addresses of 100 locations in the West End of London “connected to blatant murder, oppression and exploitation.”

There is also an online map, which features more details and even more addresses. It can be found by selecting “Mapping Capitalist London” in the sector menu at  mappingthecorporations.org/.

Protest of the day

Hundreds of fast-food employees in Detroit walked off the job today, temporarily closing down a handful of restaurants as part of a growing U.S. worker movement that—as we’ve seen in recent months, in New York City and Chicago—is demanding higher wages.

“Affirmative action for the wealthy”

Pell Grants and need-based financial aid are supposed to make a college education accessible for low-income students and institutions of higher education more socioeconomically diverse. But it’s not working. Instead, what we’re seeing is a determined effort on the part of many colleges and universities—both public and private—to recruit affluent students in order to boost their revenues and rankings. Those schools, in other words, are providing “affirmative action for the wealthy.”

That’s the conclusion of a recent study by the New America Foundation, “Undermining Pell: How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave the Low-Income Behind.”

With their relentless pursuit of prestige and revenue, the nation’s public and private four-year colleges and universities are in danger of shutting down what has long been a pathway to the middle class for low-income and working-class students. This report presents a new analysis of little-examined U.S. Department of Education data showing the “net price” — the amount students pay after all grant aid has been exhausted — for low-income students at thousands of individual colleges. The analysis shows that hundreds of colleges expect the neediest students to pay an amount that is equal to or even more than their families’ yearly earnings. As a result, these students are left with little choice but to take on heavy debt loads or engage in activities that lessen their likelihood of earning their degrees, such as working full-time while enrolled or dropping out until they can afford to return.

The problem, not surprisingly, is highest in the private nonprofit college sector, “where only a few dozen mostly exclusive colleges meet the full financial need of the low-income students they enroll.” The rest are leaving poor students behind, because they’re using their institutional financial aid as “a competitive tool to reel in the top students, as well as the most affluent, to help them climb up the U.S. News & World Report rankings and maximize their revenue.”

As it turns out, many public universities are traveling down the same road:

As more states cut funding for their higher education systems, public colleges are increasingly adopting the enrollment management tactics of their private college counterparts — to the detriment of low-income and working-class students alike.

One of the main ways that states have dealt with the financial pressure has been to free their public institutions to take a so-called “high tuition, high aid” approach — meaning that these institutions can sharply raise their prices with the expectation that they will provide more generous financial aid to offset the effect on low- and moderate-income students. This analysis finds that the high-tuition, high aid approach has been a failure for low-income students. In many states that are following this model, such as Pennsylvania and South Carolina, the neediest students are facing net prices that are more than double what they are being charged in low-tuition states such as North Carolina.

Penn State University is a case in point. In-state students attending the university’s flagship campus in University Park pay about $16,000 in tuition and fees annually, which is double the average charged at public four-year colleges and universities. Despite the fact that Penn State spends nearly $14 million a year on institutional aid, its lowest-income in-state students pay an average net price of nearly $17,000, the fifth-highest of any public institution this report examines. In other words, Penn State’s neediest students do not appear to be getting any discount relative to other students at all. At the same time, about 6 percent of the school’s first-time freshmen received an average of $3,800 in so-called “merit aid” in 2010-11.

Schools like Penn State seem to be using their pricing autonomy to gain an advantage as they fiercely compete for the students they most desire: the “best and brightest” students — and the wealthiest.

The result: too many colleges and universities, both public and private, are failing to maintain an accessible higher education for the nation’s students. They are, instead, making it more and more difficult for low-income students to acquire a high-quality postsecondary education while creating a system that provides affirmative action for the sons and daughters of already-wealthy Americans.

Cartoon of the day

Special mention

A cooperative New Era in Chicago

 

Workers at the New Era Windows Cooperative [ht: ke]—which, as I reported, was formed one year ago—are celebrating the grand opening of their new unionized, worker-owned and -operated business.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you making at the New Era Windows Cooperative? I mean, how do people get involved? What are the products you’re making?

ARMANDO ROBLES: We’re going to start making replacement windows, vinyl windows and commercial windows—it’s our goal—and for affordable price and a good-quality product for the workers. At the beginning of this, I think we, us, know how to make windows. But after all work done we have at this point, I learned so much in this year. We put a factory in place in all the right spots. Yesterday, we have our check from the city. They checked—the inspector, they inspect the whole building, and they approve us our job. So, not even do just windows, but we would like to make a New Era for the United States, helping people creating cooperatives and create our good-quality and affordable windows for the region and for the United States.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Brendan Martin, I would have to assume that the labor unions alone and labor union members could provide a steady demand for the products of the factory. Have you gotten any—any bites or orders yet from—pressed by other unions or other—or unionized workers?

BRENDAN MARTIN: We have actually gotten early interest in the windows from people in unions, from housing cooperatives, and just from people across the United States and in the Chicago area who support jobs being saved by their workers rather than destroyed by their owners. But without a doubt, we still need more support to come in. So, anybody out there—these are residential windows. Anyone who’s listening can buy them. They fit in anyone’s home. They’ll save you money on your energy bill and pay for themselves in a few years. So, please come to our website, newerawindows.com, participate in this project by buying some windows, and then go out and start your own cooperative. We do have a lot of interest from the community, but we need more of the community to pile in and make this happen.