Public schools' 'pay to play' fees: By the numbers

In the face of budget cuts and rising costs, public schools across the country are making ends meet by nickel-and-diming students

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The Week

In some financially struggling school districts, students have to pay fees to participate in extracurricular activities... or not participate at all.

Public schools are supposed to be free. But faced with budget cuts, rising staff costs, and declining tax revenues, many are instituting "pay to play" fees, charging students extra for everything from electives to after-school sports — and even some required classes, like French and basic sciences. Here, a brief guide, by the numbers, to these "controversial" fees:

$18

Course supplies fee for students taking English 9 at Dakota Ridge High School in Littleton, Colo.

The New Enemy of Economic Recovery: Austerity Protesters

George Osborne image

Eric Blair
Activist Post

As the United States surpasses the debt ceiling today, and Obama and Boehner play "let's make a deal" for deep cuts to the budget, citizens must prepare for austerity measures of higher taxes and less benefits.  These cutbacks won't necessarily be as evident as European austerity, because Americans scarcely get anything tangible from their tax dollars.  However, cutbacks will likely bring similar hardship and protest.

The increasingly ferocious protests over public service cuts and asset looting in the Euro-zone hints at what may be in store for America. Over the weekend a Washington Post article described the escalating unrest in Greece over punishing austerity measures.  However, the thrust of the article was to create the new enemy of the economy recovery: austerity "anarchists":

Despite deal, US budget woes far from over

The next fiscal showdown is likely to be
over the US's debt ceiling
© AFP/File image Shawn Thew

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The last-minute budget agreement that Republicans and Democrats reached may have averted a Saturday US government shutdown, but it's a mere skirmish in a looming war over the debt ceiling and the 2012 federal budget.

The agreement, reached after weeks of hard bargaining just before midnight Friday, funds the government for the rest of the fiscal year ending September 30, while making what President Barack Obama described as the deepest annual spending cuts in US history.

"This is not basically the last fight here," Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger told Fox News, some 12 hours after the 11th-hour vote. "This is the first opening salvo in a real attempt to bring back the size of government and start living within our means."

US lawmakers reach deal to avert govt shutdown

The agreement included some $38.5 billion
dollars of extra spending cuts
© AFP/File Jewel Samad

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A dramatic 11th-hour deal slashing spending has staved off a US government shutdown, ending a rancorous budget row between President Barack Obama and his newly empowered Republican foes.

Party leaders clinched the agreement, including some $38.5 billion dollars of extra spending cuts, after intense bargaining, barely an hour before the federal government effectively ran out of money at midnight Friday.

The showdown was just the first bruising engagement in a string of likely clashes between Obama and Republicans boosted by a new crop of conservative Tea Party lawmakers, as the president fires up his 2012 reelection bid.

Obama, Republicans seek spending cut endgame

© AFP/Getty Images/File Spencer Platt

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Barack Obama and his Republican foes, spurred on by archconservatives irate over gaping deficits, have until Friday to agree on what may be the deepest spending cuts in US history.

Key Democratic and Republican lawmakers, joined by top Obama aides, are inching privately towards a deal to fund the government to October 1 and avert a partial federal shutdown triggered when a short-term funding measure expires at midnight on Friday.

Republicans have publicly disputed a Democratic claim that the two sides have agreed to slash $33 billion (23 billion euros) and are now arguing over where to make the cuts, saying no single component is set in stone until a comprehensive deal is reached.

Portugal braces for govt collapse over debt vote

Wikimedia image Lars Aronsson

Barry Hatton
Yahoo/AP

LISBON, Portugal (AP) -- Portugal's government is on the verge of collapse after opposition parties withdrew their support for another round of austerity policies aimed at averting a financial bailout.

The expected defeat of the minority government's latest spending plans in a parliamentary vote Wednesday will likely force its resignation and could stall national and European efforts to deal with the continent's protracted debt crisis.

The vote comes on the eve of a two-day European Union summit where policymakers are hoping to take new steps to restore investor faith in the fiscal soundness of the 17-nation eurozone, including Portugal.

Last year, both Greece and Ireland had to accept multibillion dollar rescue packages after markets lost faith in their governments' efforts to deal with their debt burdens.

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Troopers would ‘absolutely’ use force on Wisc. protesters if ordered, police union president

But: 'That would not be something I recognize as the United States of America,' state patrol inspector adds

Dees Illustration

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story

Amid the largest protests Madison, Wisconsin has seen in decades, newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker last week issued a stark message to public labor unions occupying the capitol building: we have options, and using the National Guard against protesters is among them.

Since then, a myrad of rumors have circulated through crowds gathered at the state capitol, united in protest of a bill that would strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights. One rumor, which had not yet come to pass, even suggested that like Egypt's former dictator did in Tahrir Square, Gov. Walker may call in police to forcibly clear out the capitol.

And according to a Wisconsin police union president, whether the police agree or disagree with their governor's politics, they would "absolutely" carry out any order given to them ... even if that order included using force against their fellow Americans gathered in peaceful protest.

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The Great Global Debt Prison

Dees illustration

Giordano Bruno
Neithercorp Press

Tense and terrible times inevitably summon an odd coupling of two very different and difficult human conditions; honesty, and brutality. Certain painful truths are revealed, and often, a palpable fury erupts. Being that times today are particularly tense, and on the verge of being spectacularly terrible, perhaps we should embrace both conditions in a constructive manner, and become brutally honest with ourselves. This begins by admitting to that which most ails us. It begins by admitting how far we have fallen…

Our economy, our culture, our entire world, is built upon debt. No one ever asked us if that’s how we wanted it, it is simply how the system was designed when we came into it. Many of us have lived our entire lives under the assumption that debt is a necessary function of daily commerce and a valuable driver of successful society. Most households in America operate at a steep loss, trapped in constantly building cycles of liability and interest. There are even widely held schools of economic thought that are centered completely on the production and utilization of nothing but debt. Only recently have many people begun to ask themselves what the tangible benefits are (if any) in being dependent on debt based finance.

After careful examination, it becomes evident that debt does not fuel economy, it suffocates it. It does not nurture growth, it stunts and poisons it. Extreme debt is not a fundamental organ in a body of commerce; it is an aberration, a spreading cancer which disrupts the circulation of healthy trade. Debt is, in large part, unnecessary.

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INCREDIBLE Raw Footage of UK Students Battling Police (VIDEO)

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Mass demonstrations by thousands of students and trade unionists in central London against an increase in tuition fees, are growing more violent. It's the latest and the largest in a string of rallies against sweeping austerity measures and budget cuts across Europe. What started as a relatively peaceful march later turned into violent clashes with the police, which is largely outnumbered by the demonstrators.



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France awaits Eric Cantona's cashpoint bank revolution

The government has criticised the ex-footballer's call for the public to stage a mass cash-withdrawal protest

Eric Cantona calls for mass bank withdrawals to protest

Angelique Chrisafis
Guardian

France is bracing for Eric Cantona's bank-run revolution Tuesday, with the government criticising his call for the public to stage a mass cash-withdrawal and the left questioning whether it would have much effect.

When the former Manchester United footballer gave a video interview in October calling on citizens to stage a cash-point revolution, protest groups against the financial system decided to coordinate a world-wide withdrawal on December 7, the number of Cantona's lucky shirt.


Asked about street demonstrations to protest against government austerity measures, Cantona said: "We have to change the way we do things nowadays. Talking of revolution, I don't mean we are going to pick up guns and go out to kill people. Revolution is very simple to do nowadays," he told the French paper Presse Ocean.

"What's the system? The system revolves around banks. The system is built on the banks' power. So it can be destroyed by the banks. Instead of having three million people going out to demonstrate with a placard, those three million people go to their bank branch, they withdraw their money and the banks crumble." He directed people: "You go to your bank in your village and you withdraw your money." But as tens of thousands of people signed up to the online campaigns led by a Franco-Belgian anti-bank protest group, the French government warned against "Eric Le Rouge" sticking his nose into economics.

Francois Baroin, the budget minister, said: "It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic." FCantona's call to arms was "grotesque" and "not serious". inance minister Christine Lagarde said witheringly: "There are those who play football magnificently, I wouldn't dare to try. I think it's best for everyone to stick to their own speciality." The director general of BNP Paribas deemed Cantona's appeal "ill-founded".

Cantona told the daily Liberation that he would heed his own call to withdraw money. "Given the strange solidarity that has sprung up, yes. On December 7, I'll be at the bank." Online supporters have pledged that they will either definitely or probably withdraw cash. They are aiming for a bank-run like that which hit the UK's Northern Rock in 2008.

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The Austerity Hammer Starts to Fall on United States as Debt Consumes Europe (VIDEO)

It's the Bankers or the People - You have been Warned!

Alex Jones and Aaron Dykes
InfoWars

Problem, Reaction, Solution: Derivatives, Crash, Too Big To Fail, Bailout, Nationalization, Budget Crisis, Privatization, Debt Slavery, Austerity, Evaporating Pensions, Central Banks, Big Government, World Government. It’s been quite a saga, but this economic crisis has been planned sabotage by design. The age of the Offshore Global Cartel is the age of economic warfare with the wealthy Western world. The 3rd World has largely already been brought to its knees. The remaining vestiges of national sovereignty must be eliminated and the middle class consumer society must be swept back to the feudal age by way of a tidal wave looting of living standards, cut wages & pensions, and the bread and circuses of cheap plastic goods and entertainment. The upper middle classes, the array of independent businesses, remaining lone giants and other true competition to the New World Order mafia economy system must be consolidated or dominated.

Alex Jones explains why it is the bankers or us will be free at the end of this crisis. The total cost of the derivatives is over $1.5 Quadrillion, a sum that will completely consume the world in perpetual debt, a sum that can never be repaid. It is an economic shearing, a shearing of the sheep. The economic crisis has always really been a complete transfer of power to the banking class.


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Following Hungary And Ireland, France Is Next To Seize Pension Funds

Bank Looting in Progress

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge

If the recent Hungarian “appropriation” of pension funds, and today’s laughable Irish bailout courtesy of domestic pension funds sourcing 20% of the “new” money was not enough to convince the world just how bankrupt the entire European experiment has become, enter France.Financial News explains how France has “seized” €36 billion worth of pension assets: “Asset managers will have the chance to get billions of euros in mandates in the next few months for the €36bn Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR), the French reserve pension fund, after the French parliament last week passed a law to use its assets to pay off the debts of France’s welfare system. The assets have been transferred into the state’s social debt sinking fund Cades. The FRR will continue to control the assets, but as a third-party manager on behalf of Cades.” FN condemns the action as follows: “The move reflects a willingness by governments to use long-term assets to fill short-term deficits, including Ireland’s announcement last week that it would use the country’s €24bn National Pensions  Reserve Fund “to support the exchequer’s funding programme” and Hungary’s bid to claw $15bn of private pension funds back to the state system.” In other words, with the ECB still unwilling to go into full fiat printing overdrive mode, insolvent governments, France most certainly included, are resorting to whatever piggybanks they can find. Hopefully this is not a harbinger of what Tim Geithner plans to do with the trillions in various 401(k) funds on this side of the Atlantic.

More from FN on how first France, and soon every other socalized pension regime, will continue to plunder a nation’s life saving to fund short-term deficits:

The decision has prompted a radical restructuring of the FRR’s investments. The new strategic investment plan, which will be released in the new year, will see a rapid reduction in its 40% allocation to equities and a shift to cash and short-term government bonds, according to a source close to the situation.

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Citizens of Europe Rage Against the Machine

Austerity measures drive 100,000 protesters to the streets of Ireland, another 100,000 in Italy as Europeans continue to rage against the international banking machine.

Eric Blair
Activist Post

The international bankster machine seeking to colonize Western nations through debt is now meeting resistance from Greece, to France, to Ireland, to Italy, to Spain, to Portugal, and to the U.K. 

These new protests in Ireland and Italy follow a crippling 2-week strike in France where citizens took over fuel refineries and other vital infrastructure, more strikes in Greece which took over the Acropolis, and a massive student protest in the UK that caused physical damage to government buildings. All of these protests were sparked by governments reducing benefits or increasing fees and taxes on a population that had little to do with the private gambling of banks.

These European protests are intensifying as the international bankers move to collect their "pound of flesh" through austerity and sale of public assets.  As Europeans are becoming acutely aware of the dubious plan to loot them and the anger at their corrupt elected officials for bowing to banks has reached a boiling point.  In all cases the governments are enforcing austerity measures on the people after the private banks over-leveraged themselves to the breaking point, threatening to bring down entire nations. 


For years the bankers churned out easy credit to these nations while they invested public and private funds into worthless credit default swaps and derivatives. As if orchestrated to perfection, they pulled the plug on those toxic assets, essentially bankrupting the more fragile developed countries, followed by calling their debts due.  Now they're demanding that European governments be forced into IMF bailouts that impose drastic austerity measures on the populace.

By forcing tax increases and reducing benefits for the citizens of sovereign nations, the IMF is essentially rewriting their laws.  Well, it appears that the citizens of Europe have had enough.  The massive protests, strikes, and riots that have swept through the streets of many European countries have resulted in growing calls to reject the bailout money used to prop up failed banks and corrupt governments.  The Irish people prefer to default on the debt which drove the EU 'completely mad'.

The protesters are getting support from someone who is experiencing the outcome of resisting public bailouts of private banking debts.  The President of Iceland recently remarked that they're in much better shape than Ireland because they let the private banks fail and their currency naturally devalued, allowing them to regain some competitiveness relative to their neighbors:

“The difference is that in Iceland we allowed the banks to fail,” Grimsson said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Mark Barton today. “These were private banks and we didn’t pump money into them in order to keep them going; the state did not shoulder the responsibility of the failed private banks.”

UK's Libertarian politician, Nigel Farage, once viewed as a fringe player, is now getting international recognition for forewarning his European comrades about the troubles in the system.  He's quickly becoming a hero to the banker resistance as his credibility reaches new heights for being proved right -- much like his U.S. counterpart Congressman Ron Paul. His rants in the European Parliament are going viral on YouTube as the people are waking up to their servitude to banks and a lack of true democracy and sovereignty.

Nigel Farage speaks with such confidence against the EU, as he should, given that a recent mainstream media poll showed 99% of UK citizens want out of the Euro.  The battle against the banking cartel is clearly happening with Europe as the spearhead.  As Europeans continue to fight back against corrupt international banksters, lazy Americans continue to live with a much lower standard of living and do nothing to challenge the system.

The rage in Europe and quiet streets in America is causing the euro to fall against the dollar.  The dollar was all but declared dead in the lead-up to the Fed's QE2, but now the eurozone debt crisis has taken center stage.  The European Council is set to meet again this December to amend the Lisbon Treaty to essentially legalize more bailouts.  Some insiders are calling it an impossible mission to get all European countries to agree on fair amendments.  The outcome of these December meetings will assuredly be pivotal in determining whether the euro "experiment" will survive.

If it crumbles, so then does the structure for a global currency.  Indeed, the front lines in the battle to conquer plans for a global currency and the end of sovereign nation states is being waged by the angry citizens of Europe.  Bravo comrades, keep up the fight!


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120,000 protest over Irish economy

YouTube-ScarceNews
Over 100,000 people marched through Dublin on Saturday to protest at government cutbacks in the face of a deepening recession and bailouts for the banks.


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Spain's leader vows deficit reduction amid crisis

Harold Heckle
Associated Press

MADRID — Spain's prime minister mounted a vigorous defense Saturday of his nation's economy and finances, insisting his administration will forge ahead with austerity measures and force troubled banks and regional governments to reveal information about savings and restructuring efforts.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was responding to heavy market pressure that has put Spain in the spotlight as the country that could plunge the 16-nation euro zone into meltdown if it were to end up needing a bailout like those provided to Ireland and Greece.

Many investors believe Portugal could be next in line to need a bailout, and they fear Spain could then follow.

Zapatero spoke after meeting with the heads of 37 of the country's largest corporations, and he said Spain's plans for deficit reduction and increased competitiveness will restore the international confidence that has crumbled throughout the week.

Among those present were Emilio Botin, chief executive of Banco Santander S.A., the country's largest bank, Cesar Alierta of telecommunications giant Telefonica S.A. and Antonio Brufau of energy company Repsol YPF.

The meeting happened a day after Zapatero ruled out any possibility that Spain would require a bailout.

"The government is committed to austerity, to reducing the deficit," Zapatero said Saturday, seeking to reassure investors that his government is taking the threat to its economy seriously.

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