With all that’s at stake in each state, you may be startled to learn that most legislatures remain boys’ clubs, with women so severely underrepresented that the political process suffers.  (No need to single anyone out, but let’s just say that at 9%, South Carolina is a great place to be when you can’t wait long for the ladies’ room!)

Guest blogger Laurie Kretchmar, media director for The 2012 Project, delivers an impassioned plea for women to seize the opportunities open in this year’s election below.  Read the original post via Care2 here, and heed her call to consider running for state office.  There’s still time to jump into a race…and there’s clearly still a deep need for informed, engaged, experienced women (why not you?) to shape the policies that affect your family every day. 

A detailed analysis of the last three budget requests reveals that President Obama has requested on average a nominal increase of 5.2% each year for children’s programs.  2011 saw by far the biggest proposed increase of more than 7%.  This stands in stark contrast to the last requested budget by President Bush, which proposed a 3% decrease.  For ease of comparison, these numbers only include programs on the discretionary side of the budget.  Discretionary programs include things Congress decides to fund each year, like Head Start, while mandatory spending represents long term commitments where Congress has little control over yearly funding levels, like Social Security.

Though this analysis excludes mandatory spending, the President has been a strong advocate for increased funding to many mandatory areas that benefit children.  This includes positive changes during the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in 2009 and the Child Nutrition Act of 2010. 

In addition to the commitments made in each budget, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), proposed by President Obama, made a tremendous investment in kids.  Almost one out of every five dollars provided in direct spending, or roughly $120 billion, from ARRA went to benefit children.[i]  ARRA provided much need boosts to education, children’s health, and children’s nutrition, as well as support to vital state run programs that impacted kids.  In 2010 alone, the ARRA support resulted in a 19% increase in the amount of federal money spent on children.

NOTE: Budgets are proposed in the current calendar year for the next fiscal year beginning in October.  For example, President Bush’s FY 2009 budget was proposed in February 2008.

Will the President Continue to Choose Kids?

Next week, President Obama will release his Fiscal Year 2013 Budget.  Analysts and commentators will pour over the numbers looking for signs of the President’s priorities for the year to come.  Over the past three years, it is clear that President Obama has chosen to make investments in kids a top priority.

Even with the President’s positive requests, Congress has authorized far less than what the President has asked for.  As a result of Congress’s decisions in conjunction with the expiration of ARRA, funding for children as a share of federal spending is still far below what is needed.  In 2011, only 8.4% of the federal budget went to children, including what’s left from ARRA.  As more and more of our children face unprecedented challenges, every dollar we invest can make the difference between a child having a balanced meal or going hungry.  As we anxiously await his budget, we call on President Obama to continue to make children a top priority.

And we need your ears too! Tweet with us @MomsRising in conversation on Twitter starting at 9:00 PM EST tonight.

If you don’t tweet, please join the conversation right here on the blog! Leave your comments under this blogpost during and after the speech. Let us know what you heard and what you think of the speech. We’ll be reading every comment–we want to know what you care about, what you think about the President’s remarks and what our national priorities should be for families in 2012.

Photo by Emily Welsch.

“My grandmother was a domestic worker,” said actor Harold Perrineau (Lost), co-host of the #BeTheHelp Children’s Art Party presented by the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) in Los Angeles this Saturday. “Today, we love the nanny who works with our family. We’re thrilled to support efforts to bring fairness to this important workforce.” Perrineau then smiled as his daughter raced by with a noisemaker in the kid-friendly playroom at the Treehouse Social Club.

Perrineau and his wife Brittany hosted the event along with fellow Hollywood parents Gina Torres (Suits) and Ann Lopez. In addition to the many excited children like Wynter, they were joined by Torres’ husband, Laurence Fishburne, Elisabeth Rohm (Law & Order), Kathleen Robertson (Boss), producer Chris Cowles, NDWA co-founder Ai-jen Poo, Aquilina Soriano of the Pilipino Workers Center, and Sarah Benor and me representing Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Association, a national network of families who employ domestic workers.

After jamming to a live band and enjoying glitter tattoos, children at the party painted large fabric panels with images and words that expressed their love for the nannies in their lives. These panels will be sewn together to create a banner that will be carried at the Children’s March for the CA Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (AB 889) in Sacramento on January 24th. This historic legislation, if passed, will end historical exclusions of domestic workers from most U.S. labor laws.

Ai-jen Poo talks with Harold Perrineau and Elisabeth Rohm.

The event is part of NDWA’s new #BeTheHelp campaign, launched in December to inspire viewers of the film The Help to take simple action to improve the lives and working conditions of domestic workers. NDWA has invited the entertainment community to help bring the real-life concerns of domestic workers into the pop-culture conversation, and Hollywood is answering their call.

Just last week, Octavia Spencer, one of the stars of The Help, used her Golden Globes acceptance speech to recognize today’s domestic workers; and in December, Participant Media partnered with the NDWA to release a series of videos featuring domestic workers discussing their work. The videos have been viewed and shared by over 80,000 people so far.

On Saturday, Perrineau, Torres and their friends joined this growing family of supporters who understand that the love, dedication and expertise domestic workers bring to families is invaluable. #BeTheHelp is an opportunity for parents and children to celebrate and honor these relationships.

To learn more about #BeTheHelp, visit www.domesticworkers.org. To learn more about how families and employers of domestic workers are involved, visit www.domesticemployers.org.

Originally posted on Huffington Post.

Thursday afternoon, I participated in the MomsRising live Tweet Chat with the White House on Unemployment Insurance and the Administration’s priorities for families for 2012. Unemployment was front and center because on Feb. 28, federally-funded unemployment benefits will expire for millions of long-term unemployed workers still trying to find jobs in this difficult economy. Struggling families need the benefit of extended UI benefits, and they need the nation’s policymakers to focus on restoring health to the economy and creating an environment that promotes jobs creation.

At the same time, policymakers must focus on the nation’s youngest citizens. In 2011, myriad data was released demonstrating that children are worse off due to the state of the economy and nation’s families. The year 2011 also saw an increase in child poverty, with one in four young children living in poverty. There also was a decline in child well-being as measured across a wide range of domains directly related to economic losses for families with children. And a recent article on economic mobility found that children in the United States are less likely to move up the economic ladder than in any other developed country.

But policy can make a difference. During the Tweet Chat, the White House responded to our question about  early education investments by noting that the Administration continues to make early learning a priority. It is true. In difficult budgets in FY 2011 and FY 2012, Head Start and child care received funding increases. The White House’s signature early childhood initiative, the Early Learning Challenge, came to fruition through funding for Race To the Top in FY 2011. In November, the Administration announced the first Office of Early Learning in the Department of Education, and in December it selected the first round of Early Learning Challenge grant recipients to receive funds for the critically important work of building strong, high-quality state systems out of fragmented early childhood programs and services.

Hopefully the commitment to children doesn’t end there because there is a lot more work to be done. Despite momentum, these are not the brightest days for early childhood. Only one in six children federally-eligible for child care assistance receives any help. In 22 states, families seeking child care assistance face waiting lists or frozen intake. Fewer than half of eligible preschoolers attend Head Start despite decades of research showing this critical comprehensive early education and family support program can help improve the odds for poor children. Moreover, Early Head Start reaches less than 4 percent of eligible infants and toddlers, a group of children for whom finding quality, affordable child care is a near impossibility for families regardless of income.

These core early childhood programs provide young children access to quality early education that helps prepare them to succeed in school and in life. And children need this support more than ever. The data on child well-being and poverty show that we are failing our children.

The Administration asked what should its policy priorities be for upcoming fiscal year 2013. Presidential candidates are also touting their priorities for the nation. The future of the nation will be determined not just by economic and workforce policies put in place now, but also by how we treat and invest in children, our future.

Putting a priority on young children means putting a priority on where children spend their time, which is a child care setting for 12 million young children every day. Quality child care builds a strong foundation for children’s healthy development. In 2012, Congress and the Administration demonstrated they understand the importance of investments in children in these difficult budgetary times. But the evidence shows we still have quite a way to go. In 2013 and beyond, we must make sure investing in young children remains a priority.

Follow me on Twitter at @HNMatthews

Don’t forget what the Affordable Care Act means for women:

* Free preventative screenings like mammograms

* Your children cannot be denied for a pre-existing medical condition – a new benefit already in place right now

* The end of higher medical insurance costs just because you are a woman

* No co-pay on birth control

* Your parents will benefit from stronger Medicare protections

Here’s a look at the top stories:

1)    The Supreme Court ruling: More than 100 law professors, 35 economists, and three Nobel Prize winners say there’s no doubt the new health law is constitutional.  A majority of bipartisan circuit court judges have ruled in favor of the law’s “individual responsibility” requirement where everyone must have health insurance.  This is an essential element of the Act, without which its goals to improve access, affordability and quality, could not endure.

2)    The battle for the White House: The GOP candidates want to eviscerate the Act, but even if one of them were to prevail in the general election,  it would take overwhelming agreement with a majority House Vote, White House support and 67 votes in the Senate, to abolish a law already on the books.  Don’t expect the 2012 election to be an upset for the Affordable Care Act.  The likely GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, also advocated for an individual responsibility requirement previously and passed similar health care legislation in Massachusetts. Reversing bans on lifetime limits, discrimination against those with preexisting conditions, reduced medication costs, free preventative care, and better quality, already in effect for millions of Americans will not be popular, or easy.  Americans know that the quality of their lives depends on the quality of their health.

3) Oh, Florida! Not much good news from the nation’s most unpopular governor, Rick Scott.  Scott’s extreme response in Florida to block the reforms and the federal money provided for health care access are a big political risk. Florida isn’t accepting federal monies to ready itself for the exchanges, isn’t working on accountable care projects, isn’t working to expand benefits through Medicaid, and is spending its resources in delay and legal actions against the government in order to preserve industry profit at citizen expense.  The consequence: Florida isn’t ready; its citizens aren’t covered; its healthcare future is in limbo. The federal government is poised to step in to set up the insurance exchange for its residents and has refused its request to allow Medicaid vendors to spend less money on health care.  What other assaults will the governor cook up this year? Stay tuned.

4) Expanded access to health care coverage:  Watch for those hard numbers tracking the increases in people covered under the ACA, increased protections for those covered, and increased use of services.  No more lifetime limits; more prevention, more people covered in the high risk pool, and more jobs created to fuel an effective and expanded private sector health care engine.

5)  Increased affordability of health care: Follow the money!  We’ll see more savings through better quality and less tolerance for abusive, wasteful and frankly fraudulent services.  Seniors receiving rebates as the pharmacy cost (donut hole) is reduced.  Industry will foot some of the bill for research, and caps on profit at the expense of quality.    Expect reports on the cost of premiums for states, employers, and individuals as the Health Care Exchanges rev up.  And expect stories on what its like for people who need and use care, health care professionals who provide care, and hospitals and systems that support care as our health care delivery system adjusts to a new and effective system focused on patient oriented outcomes that matter, rather than on transactions and money.

6)  Better quality of care. This year is about quality. Thirty-two health provider organizations will roll out innovative care delivery programs, called accountable care organizations, for Medicare enrollees with payment based on quality of care outcomes, rather than procedures and number of visits.   Look for stories about getting ready for evidence-based medicine approach to treatment.  The insurance industry will be contributing to the funding for the governments comparative effectiveness research initiative. The goal of this project is to make sure patients receive care that is effective.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will be the ACA. This is a big law with a big agenda for a great nation.  Already,  it is improving access.  More people are protected, covered and getting care.   Now, we are moving on to the issues of affordability and quality, initiatives that will continue to return benefits for years to come.  The individual responsibility requirement, up for a challenge in the Supreme Court this year, and health exchanges are critical to solving the affordability puzzle.

Equally important to affordability are the provisions to reduce waste, fraud and abuse, reduce payment to hospitals for avoidable readmissions, and oversight to ensure that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries contribute to fund quality initiatives and the acquire medications at competitive prices.

And for quality, this year is huge! This year, the nation’s health care entrepreneurs and providers begin the hard work to find programs that are based on innovative care models, improving quality, proving home-based care for seniors, and receiving payment based on the quality of the patient oriented outcomes that matter to people, rather than the number of procedures or visits that someone gets. This means better care, better outcomes for people, and more jobs.

The ACA solves big problems with innovative and entrepreneurial solutions.  There’s nothing more American than rolling up our sleeves and using our ingenuity to meet the important challenge of fixing our health care system.

A truly clueless if well-intentioned column by Gene Marks titled “If I Were A Poor Black Kid” in Forbes magazine is getting righteously ripped from journalists all around the web. They’re correctly pointing out how bereft Marks’ column is of history, research, practical awareness, racial sensitivity, or the sheer realities of hunger or even homelessness that low-income children face. Marks seems to suggest that kids from impoverished backgrounds – all too many of whom are African American – can simply access computers and lift themselves up by their digital bootstraps to use free websites and enter elite prep schools or colleges. Maybe a handful of motivated kids will manage a heroic feat like that despite all the odds, but is this going to work for the majority of poor kids?

And here’s exactly what’s wrong with Marks’ perspective and why it’s indicative of a 1% mentality among billionaire education philanthropists (Silicon Valley included) that results in failure to truly invest in public schools, despite those same businesses relying on a highly skilled and educated workforce: solutions lie in privatization — individuals hands on individual (digital) bootstraps.

But also privatization of another kind: web-assisted businesses that hollow out the public school system and see it as nothing but a lucrative market. Marks’ list of ed-tech resources is lengthy and a roll call of ideas, good and bad, to bring education into the computer age. But as recent article after article has pointed out, online education companies hawking virtual schooling are providing low quality schooling to at-risk kids with no accountability, and at the same time siphoning off public money intended for neighborhood schools on the corner. Billionaire philanthropists thwart democratic decision-making about taxpayer priorities by using string-laden foundation donations as a form of education policy, instead of those same businesses or their owners paying taxes to fund public education. For example, in Seattle, titans of Microsoft corporation donated to groups that swatted down a 2010 ballot initiative to tax millionaire incomes that would’ve funded public schools in Washington state.

This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s a greed issue. Many of these well-meaning “edupreneurs” are Democrats who are reliably liberal on stopping climate change, or banning genetically modified foods. But when it comes to the nation’s schools and cherishing the fact that every public school serves every child who comes to the door as they are, conveying important ideas about citizenship, diversity, democracy, and a common good to the nation’s children, “edupreneurs” miss the rainforest for the money tree. Our open, publicly-funded public school system, deeply woven into the fabric of our open, freedom- and innovation-loving society, is the gem in the crown of America that people from around the world for decades have tried to replicate. Certainly it’s our bricks-and-mortar universities, and not mediocre for-profit online colleges, that are still the envy of the world. Close the door of equal opportunity to children, especially poor children, and we turn our backs on our legacy as the land of opportunity.

Is the answer to reject technology, to do as 19th century Luddites did and smash laptops, the equivalent of mechanized looms, in order to save schools? Emphatically no, and here’s where I think many miss an important point about Marks’ misguided piece. The internet provides the same frictionless means to disintermediate middle men as it provides opportunities to insert middle men. And today’s education middle men are testing companies, textbook publishers, online learning companies, teacher certification companies, and standardized test prep companies, sometimes all rolled into the same conglomerate — taking a giant, profitable chunk from states and school districts even as money that goes to classrooms where kids are gets cut.

So here’s what I’d like to see: flip this state of affairs. Disintermediate high-tech middlemen selling silicon snake oil. State departments of education could start acting in the public interest and creating FREE and OPEN SOURCE websites where best practices in teaching, outstanding examples of curriculum, test prep materials, tests themselves, teacher certification, syllabi and other resources are made available to teachers and any student who wants to improve herself. With the millions saved from not buying an international conglomerate’s tests, curriculum, online school materials, test prep, or online teacher certification, there’d be plenty of money for small, intimate classrooms, plentiful well-trained and well-paid teachers, and every child who needs wrap-around services would have them. With the money saved from eliminating the middle man, we’d have plenty to invest in after-school enrichment, high-quality daycare, remedial help, special ed shadows, children’s dental or medical care, fully-funded music/art/sports programs, nutritious real vegetables (not pizza-like vegetables), and gifted and talented education.

The longstanding problems that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds face need a broad social and political response, not solutions that are occasional feel-good stories about one or two motivated kids who figure out how to do calculus online. Realizing you can use library computers to access the internet for free isn’t going to fill the stomachs of some 20% of all children –white, African American, Latino, Asian, Native American — under 18 who are struggling this very minute.

Poverty, hunger, homelessness, parents who are ineffective or unable to parent – these are all analog problems kids have that need the help of other people, not only computers, to solve. What Gene Marks and other Silicon Valley “edupreneurs” forget is that we live in a complicated three-dimensional world that doesn’t fit on a spreadsheet or a computer screen. Digital bootstraps aren’t enough; to help all the nation’s kids we need lifelines offered face to face to real kids, from a person who cares in their neighborhood schools.

Cynthia Liu is founder of the grassroots education news site K12NewsNetwork.com, which empowers parents, educators, and students to report on important events at their local neighborhood schools and provides tools for maximum civic engagement in support of public education. This piece originally appeared in Technorati.

Kelly Coyle DiNorcia is the author of this post.  Her bio is here with another piece she wrote several weeks ago.

In the car the other day, I was listening to NPR.  Brian Lehrer was interviewing Robert Guest, the global business editor of The Economist and author of the new book, Borderless Economics:  Chinese Sea Turtles, Indian Fridges and the New Fruits of Global Capitalism.  Here is a quote from Mr. Guest that has been sticking in my mind, and I’m hoping that the smart and savvy readers of MomsRising and Your (Wo)Man in Washington can help me decipher it:

“When immigrants come in they create jobs.  You have all these women here who can go out to work because they have cheap child care from Mexico.  That makes a huge difference to America when you compare it to a place like Japan that doesn’t allow any unskilled immigration at all and women can’t go out to work.”

I guess on the surface, that is a perfectly true and perfectly innocuous statement.  The fact that American women frequently employ immigrant women who are willing to watch their children for a very low wage so that the American women can find paying work outside the home is fairly indisputable, at least in the northeast where I come from.  Yet, I don’t think the characterization of these women as “unskilled labor” is entirely accurate.

In Morristown, New Jersey, near where I live, you can go to the train station on any given day and find an immigrant man who is willing to do just about any unskilled work you are willing to pay him to do, like paining your house or moving furniture.  Yes, you don’t need an advanced degree or specialized training to diaper a baby’s bottom or bandage a skinned knee any more than you need one to slap on a coat of primer or carry a couch up two flights of stairs.  Even so, you aren’t going to find me at the train station picking up a woman to watch my young children anytime soon.  So maybe it isn’t quite as easy as Guest seems to think it is.

Finding the kind of childcare that we need – consistent, reliable, high-quality and affordable – is often simply a matter of luck and is by no means a given.  Luckily, it seems that someone in Washington is finally figuring out what we have known all along.  According to a recent Washington Post article, Nancy Pelosi recognizes that the child care issue is key to allowing women to fully assert their presence in the workforce, and has vowed to put quality affordable child care on the national agenda if she regains her position as the Speaker of the House.  Even if she isn’t successful in her bid, at least she is finally bringing the issue to the fore: for women to be able to work for pay while maintaining a good quality of life, not to mention their sanity, we need someone to take care of our children.

Duh

Click here to read more posts from Your (Wo)manInWashington blog.

Next week the congressional “super committee” faces a deadline to reduce the deficit by more than $1 trillion. This is a critical time to tell Congress to protect the programs that protect kids. Everything from Pell Grants to food stamps could be affected unless we act. You can use our new Facebook app to contact the super committee directly and tell them, “Don’t Cut the Programs Children Depend On!”

Joblessness remains high, and we should remember that jobs lost often mean health benefits and food security lost as well. Although the recession is technically over, the hardship continues for the more than 9 percent unemployed, a rate that is much higher in certain hard-hit parts of the country.

It’s crucial that we demand our members of Congress put kids first. Please join us.

Unbelievably, details are surfacing about a plan proposed by Senator Toomey (R-PA) and some of his colleagues on the Congressional “Super Committee” that would actually REDUCE tax rates for millionaires while cutting essential services for children, youth, and the elderly.  In fact, Senator Toomey’s proposal would cut estate taxes for the very wealthy by $1 million dollars a piece below 2009 levels for the wealthiest one-quarter of 1 percent of Americans; and RAISE taxes for people with incomes of less than $200,000. [1]

What!? That’s just plain backwards.

It’s time for America’s 99 percent to weigh in!  Can’t march on Washington today?  No problem!

*Call a Senator on the Super Committee now by using this phone number: 888-892-2110. It’s fast and easy!  Our system will connect you directly to Capitol Hill!

When you are connected to the office of a Super Committee member you can say something like this:

“My name is X and I live in X city.  I’m calling today because I want to make sure that the Super Committee does not cut important services for children and families, while giving tax cuts for corporations and the very wealthy.”

[If you are particularly concerned about a certain program like Medicaid, HeadStart, K-12 education, Pell Grants, WIC, Social Security or Medicare, you can add that to your comment - e.g. I'm particularly concerned about [X program] which is very important to my family.]

(We’ll repeat these ideas to you on the phone right before you are connected.)

They won’t ask you any hard questions, I promise!  But it makes a big impression on members of Congress that people care enough about an issue to call them and they’ll record that you called and why you called.

And this is a critical time to weigh in.  The “Super Committee” is charged with coming up with a proposal by November 23rd (just 7 days from now!) to reduce the deficit by at least 1.2 trillion dollars.  And in these final days, the twelve members of the Super Committee will be trying to understand what the American people care about most.  So making calls to legislators is the most powerful thing you can do.

Right now, decisions are being made that could fundamentally change the direction of our country for years to come.  Your calls will send a clear message that Americans want to reduce our deficit by finally closing tax loopholes for corporations and wealthy individuals and cutting wasteful defense spending, rather than by cutting essential programs for children and families like Head Start, K-12 education, Pell Grants, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Call this number now 888-892-2110 to let your Senators know that any deficit reduction solutions that does not close tax loopholes for the wealthy and corporations is not acceptable to America’s families!

Thanks so much for standing up for the 99%!

P.S.  Want more inside info on what’s happening with the Super Committee and why we need to weigh in with Congress?  You are officially invited to an emergency update call with Senator Al Franken today, November 16th at 4 p.m. EST.  Register here to join by phone or by computer: https://chn.peachnewmedia.com/store/seminar/seminar.php?seminar=10021

When you register, you will receive instructions for connecting by phone and/or computer. There will be some slides accompanying this update online, and if you want to ask questions and download materials, you will need to do it by computer. But you will be able to follow everything on this 20-minute call by phone, if that’s more convenient for you.  This update call/webinar is off the record; it is not intended for the press.

[1] Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3612