T workers protest privatization

Baker was co-director at Pioneer when MA charter school law first passed, about 18 years ago. The bill was their baby. They started small with tight limits on charter growth.

By 2010, Mass. passed an ed reform law that raised the charter cap to 18% of district budget. It's significant because budget cuts at this level hurt good public schools.

The MA senate voted down charter expansion last year because they saw how the finances work, and they didn't want to continue building two parallel schools systems when we have trouble affording one.

Now Baker wants to lift the cap again and they've set up three ways to make it happen,

• his bill
• a ballot question
• by lawsuit

He really wants this. My point is this. They started small and now Baker, after 2 decades wants to take the cap off charter expansion and privatize BPS, Lawrence, Holyoke, Springfield and every other district with kids who live in poverty (they're the ones with low scores.)

Towns like Andover, Weston and Wellesley will fend off charter expansion in their districts. Their school budgets are limited too and money spent on charters comes right out of the budget.

The carmen's union is right to see the writing on the wall.

Charlie Baker is a privatizer and as a result a union buster. He's just smarter about it than Walker and Kasich but they're doing exactly the same things. Walker turning 5 public schools turned into charters every year in Milwaukee. Baker wants 50 new charters opened, the majority of which in the state's biggest urban district-- Boston.

I'm sure Baker has business friends who'd love the ready-made business opportunity to run transit subsystem or invest in a charter schools. There's a lot of NYC hedge fund money invested in charter schools. Their pitch is, they can double your invetment in 5 years using federal tax credits.

Stand up. Fight Back. The 1% do not deserve to inheret profit from out transit and public schools.

Actually I work for a federal agency and we are required by law to have a balanced budget at the end of the year. A ton of programs and badly needed maintenance projects just got deferred last month because people elsewhere in the agency spent idiotic amounts of money on a new hospital across the country and the agency has to be at 0 by end of fiscal.

Because you now have a $1,000 - $2,000 deductible!

There are MANY serious problems with it, regardless if we're talking about England, Wales, Scotland, or N. Ireland. If we're going to compare the NHS (single payer, nationalized, the most genuinely socialist healthcare system of the major European countries) with other major Western Euro countries, certainly France, Germany (both multi-payer universal healthcare systems), are much better. But comparing a huge country like the U.S. with much smaller Euro countries is apples and oranges, and much more complex. At the end of the day, health and life expectancy in the U.S., Western Europe, UK, is roughly the same, equal. In some things the U.S. does better or worse, dittoEurope and the UK.

I'm not a right winger or left winger. There are serious problems with both the leftist and rightist narratives and agendas. And I find the left wing obsession with alleged European superiority (meaning they're more socialist? That depends on the country, and what kind of 'entitlements' we're talking about, and the U.S. is much more socialist than most ignorant Europeans realize and most far left Americans will admit) tedious and hackneyed. We aren't living in the 60s and 70s anymore.

Stomach cancer. NHS course of treatment was no treatment. Returned to the US and survived thanks to Dana Farber.

US teens ranks 36th in the world when it comes to math, science, and reading. "The U.S. ranks fifth in spending per student. Only Austria, Luxembourg, Norway, and Switzerland spend more per student. To put this in context: the Slovak Republic, which scores similarly to the U.S., spends $53,000 per student. The U.S. spends $115,000." - per the Programme for International Student Assessment in 2012.

A large majority attend of public schools while some sites suggest only 10% attend private schools. The point of this? Use deductive reasoning.

Not necessarily, if you have intermittent time approved for caring for a chronically ill relative. Emergency appt with the oncologist could be a call-out.

Less common, but it happens.

I think we can all agree with the extremely important role public employees play in our society. However, the difference as you mentioned tax payers "skin in the game.". When private sector employees 'screw up' or abuse FMLA/other benefits or cant perform their given job - its at no cost to the tax payers. To me that is a huge difference.

You've been had, anon.

I agree. Tax $ waste is a concern for everyone but the hating on unions is a tad ridiculous. Like I said, are there issues with them? Yes. Are there bad apples in them that will take advantage? Of course. But do they serve a good purpose? IMO they do. Imagine what corporations would be doing without them today.