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Leading Democrats are feeling the heat from black and Latino parents as the party's establishment and 2020 candidates turn their backs on charter schools, the New York Times reported.

"These are folks that should be champions of black children and allies of black educators," said Richard Buery to the Times.

Buery, who is the chief of policy at KIPP, the nation's largest charter network, described the Democrats' shift on the issue as "a reflection more broadly of the lack of respect for black voters in the party."

The concerns from parents and educators come as presidential candidates, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have pledged to cut school choice options that are popular in minority communities. As the Times noted, former Vice President Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg omit the schools in their education platforms and have expressed concerns with them. In 2019, House Democrats voted to cut funding for school choice.

Democrats favored charter schools during Bill Clinton's presidency in the 1990s. Their current about-face on the issue is driven by the growing influence of progressives within the party and candidates seeking endorsements from influential teachers unions who oppose them.

This is pitting white progressive Democrats, who are increasingly skeptical of school choice, against minority voters who support them. Several recent polls demonstrate the sharp racial divisions on the issue among Democrats.

Similarly, a poll from commissioned by Education Next found that among black and Hispanic Democrats' "support for charter schools held steady from 2016 to 2018," while "approval tanked" among white Democrats, dropping from 43 to 27 percent.

Minority voters are speaking out against Democrats' growing opposition to school choice options for low-income families.

Sonia Tyler told the Times, "As a single mom with two jobs and five hustles, I'm just feeling kind of desperate." Adding: "They're brilliant; they're curious. It's not fair. Why shouldn't I have a choice?"

Several weeks ago, a group of concerned black parents heckled Warren at a campaign event in Atlanta. Warren later spoke to one of the protestors who told her they only want the same opportunity the presidential candidate enjoyed of sending her children to private schools. The presidential candidate then falsely claimed her children only attended public schools.

School choice has also become a major issue in local and state races. In2018, progressive Democrat Andrew Gillum ran for governor of Florida opposed to charter programs with heavy backing from teachers unions. An analysis in the Wall Street Journal later concluded the issue may have tipped the race in favor of his rival, Republican Ron DeSantis.

As school choice advocate William Mattox noted, "Believe it or not, Republican Ron DeSantis owes his victory in the Florida gubernatorial election to about 100,000 African-American women who unexpectedly chose him over the black Democratic candidate, Andrew Gillum."

See the original post here:
Minority parents rip Dems as they side with white progressives against charter schools - TheBlaze

Some have more dollars than sense, they say, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of falling short, can easily find investors. And in their study titled Who Falls Prey to the Wolf of Wall Street? Leuz et. al. found that it is quite common for investors to lose money by buying into pump and dump schemes.

In contrast to all that, I prefer to spend time on companies like Progressive (NYSE:PGR), which has not only revenues, but also profits. Now, Im not saying that the stock is necessarily undervalued today; but I cant shake an appreciation for the profitability of the business itself. Loss-making companies are always racing against time to reach financial sustainability, but time is often a friend of the profitable company, especially if it is growing.

Check out our latest analysis for Progressive

If you believe that markets are even vaguely efficient, then over the long term youd expect a companys share price to follow its earnings per share (EPS). Its no surprise, then, that I like to invest in companies with EPS growth. I, for one, am blown away by the fact that Progressive has grown EPS by 47% per year, over the last three years. Growth that fast may well be fleeting, but like a lotus blooming from a murky pond, it sparks joy for the wary stock pickers.

Careful consideration of revenue growth and earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margins can help inform a view on the sustainability of the recent profit growth. Progressive maintained stable EBIT margins over the last year, all while growing revenue 17% to US$36b. Thats progress.

The chart below shows how the companys bottom and top lines have progressed over time.

Fortunately, weve got access to analyst forecasts of Progressives future profits. You can do your own forecasts without looking, or you can take a peek at what the professionals are predicting.

We would not expect to see insiders owning a large percentage of a US$43b company like Progressive. But we do take comfort from the fact that they are investors in the company. Indeed, they have a glittering mountain of wealth invested in it, currently valued at US$140m. I would find that kind of skin in the game quite encouraging, if I owned shares, since it would ensure that the leaders of the company would also experience my success, or failure, with the stock.

Progressives earnings per share growth have been levitating higher, like a mountain goat scaling the Alps. That EPS growth certainly has my attention, and the large insider ownership only serves to further stoke my interest. At times fast EPS growth is a sign the business has reached an inflection point; and I do like those. So yes, on this short analysis I do think its worth considering Progressive for a spot on your watchlist. Now, you could try to make up your mind on Progressive by focusing on just these factors, or you could also consider how its price-to-earnings ratio compares to other companies in its industry.

You can invest in any company you want. But if you prefer to focus on stocks that have demonstrated insider buying, here is a list of companies with insider buying in the last three months.

Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.

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I Built A List Of Growing Companies And Progressive (NYSE:PGR) Made The Cut - Simply Wall St

LAURIE DOPPMAN

The Metro-North station in the village of Brewster, which gets passengers to Manhattan in an hour.

BY EILEEN MCDERMOTT

Community News Group

Putnam County, New York: you may know it from Broadways The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee or perhaps youve gone apple picking here recently. Putnam is just north of Westchester, and youre most likely to have visited Cold Spring, which is on the Hudson River at the western end of the county, about 20 minutes south of Beacon, the Brooklyn of the Lower Hudson Valley. Cold Spring is near Breakneck Ridge and other popular hiking trails accessible by Metro-North from Manhattan.

But its less likely youve heard of communities farther east in Putnam Putnam Valley, Mahopac, Carmel, Kent, and Brewster. These are actually the more populated villages in the county, but they are less of a pull for tourists and decidedly more conservative than their counterparts on the Hudson. The particulars of their location and history have created a progressive desert of sorts even as Manhattans ongoing ejection of its middle class and swiftly-rising costs in Hudson River towns sends more progressives, including those of us in the LGBTQ community, to the eastern reaches of Putnam County.

My wife Laurie and I moved to Brewster, located at Putnams east edge, next to Danbury, Connecticut, in 2016. I had lived in Manhattan since 2001; she since 2005. Our individual love affairs with New York City had enjoyed good runs but its many wonders had begun to pale in comparison with its many inconveniences and a growing sense of angst. And as a couple we dont shun clichs: we hike, snowboard, and have a pit bull, so we looked northward in our search for a new home, anticipating woods, more space, less traffic.

After months of searching in the usual Gay Flight meccas of Beacon, Cold Spring, Peekskill, Cortlandt Manor, and other Hudson River spots, our realtor forced us to face reality we could not afford or handle a fixer-upper, and the prices and taxes for move-in ready houses in Westchester and Putnams riverfront communities were beyond us. So, she showed us a house in Brewster wherever that was.

It was perfect.

It was a modest ranch but were only two people and a dog. It had a decent sized yard, the taxes were low (around $8,500 compared to $10,000 and up in most Westchester towns), there were state-protected woods across the street, and most importantly the house had just been gut-rehabbed to be flipped. We didnt have to do a thing, and that was good, because after 15 years of depending on supers, neither of us knew an oil tank from a hot water heater. Brewster is a little further from the city than we would have liked, and we knew little about the town or surrounding area, but the village was quaint, the house four minutes from the Metro-North Harlem Line, and only an hour from Manhattan.

How different could it be?

Six months after we moved, we would find out.

On November 8, Donald Trump won the presidency, and at 3 a.m. the next morning, we were awoken to a celebratory booming bass our neighbors were elated. I had gone to bed hours earlier after sending off an angry Facebook fuck-you to no one in particular. Stirred by a party in our midst, I felt crushed, angry, and actually scared where was this place that I now lived? For weeks leading up to the election I had seen the Trump banners, bumper stickers, and lawn signs, but I wrote them off as the desperate rantings of a few local good ole boys. Turns out, there are a lot of those up here.

Five of the six officially-defined towns that make up Putnam County voted Trump in 2016. Philipstown, which includes Cold Spring, was the only one that went for Hillary. Trump won nearly 56 percent of the vote countywide and 61 percent in the town of Carmel. Compare that to Westchester County a five to ten-minute drive away where Trump got about 31 percent of the vote.

Looking at the racial makeup of Putnam County, this really shouldnt have come as a surprise according to the Census Bureau, the population is about 78 percent white, 16 percent Hispanic or Latinx, and just 3.7% black.

Yet Brewster has a large migrant worker community in the village of 2,360 residents, Hispanics/ Latinx make up 63.4 percent of the total. As of the 2010 Census, Brewster Village, which is within the Town of Southeast, had the highest concentration of Guatemalan residents in all of the US, at 38.2 percent of the population.

The villages atypical demographics for this area of Putnam County have not played out well. Some of my first encounters on local social media pages included current and former white residents of the area referring to Brewster Village as Little Mexico and to the residents in far more pejorative terms. When I challenged such comments and even called out to the page administrators to police them, I got kicked off some pages. The demographics have also resulted in a starkly segregated community as well as a proposed plan to redevelop Brewster Village in an effort to attract more white residents from New York. This is all framed in the plans language as attracting millennials, but the true intent is clear to those who live here. The redevelopment plan would bulldoze many of the villages historic buildings to the ground and replace them with condominiums and office space. If carried out, it would undoubtedly chase out a significant number of Latinx residents, many of whom own businesses in the village that would be affected or eliminated.

With many Latinx residents worried about endangering their own or family members immigration status ICE raids have surged in Putnam and Westchester lately that community has been broadly afraid to speak up in the debate over redevelopment and other public concerns.

And even as some are trying to attract city people to Brewster, the dynamics at play, in fact, dont bode well for progressive and LGBTQ newcomers. While Putnam libraries and some organizations have hosted Pride events in recent years and some schools have Gay-Straight Alliance groups, there is no nearby LGBTQ Community Center, no gay bar in Putnam or even within reasonable driving distance, and there has never been a Pride Parade. LGBTQ people and artists can often be the lifeblood of progressive communities, but without public spaces for queer people to convene and be visible, communities remain insular and conservative, keeping progressive values in the shadows.

One bright spot in Brewster is the Studio Around the Corner, owned by the Cultural Arts Coalition, a non-profit dedicated to creating and sustaining cultural arts within the Town of Southeast and its surrounding region. The Studio serves as a space for artists and theater geeks to gather, hosts ESL classes and support groups, and is spearheading an effort to restore Brewster Villages historic theater. At the same time, it is funded partially by the local Republican-run government and is sometimes pressured not to host events that might be viewed as too partisan.

Putnam needs more.

In response to this climate, Ive joined with some other Putnam residents in an effort to launch the first-ever Putnam Pride Parade in Cold Spring next year.

The event is badly needed, not just for Putnams LGBTQ residents who have nowhere to congregate, but to energize and bring visibility to the countys queer community and to ensure that the arc of New York State politics continues to bend forward rather than backward.

To be sure, other Lower Hudson Valley counties voted Trump in 2016, but Putnams margins stand alone and its local governments are broadly Republican-controlled. The County Legislature recently passed resolutions opposing the New York State Reproductive Health Act (RHA) as sanctioning infanticide and objecting to New York States Green Light bill to grant drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants. During the hearing to approve the RHA resolution, one supporter of the effort sitting near me held a sign that decried abortion on one side and homosexuality on the other as if he were hopping from one protest to another that night.

Putnam also hosts a federal government facility that may be harboring unaccompanied minors children who have been separated from their families at the border. Attempts so far to verify the conditions for these children have been largely resisted, with only one Republican elected official being granted a carefully-guided tour without a Spanish translator.

These kinds of politics persist only because the progressive community in this part of Putnam County has been silenced or become apathetic and disillusioned in light of it being a decades-long conservative stronghold. Like Beacon and Cold Spring, other communities in Putnam County have great potential for LGBTQ and other progressive families looking for more space, easy access to Manhattan via Metro-North, local arts, nature, farms, and more. But as long as the queer community is encouraged to stay quiet, the dynamic will not change.

There are certainly many forces working for change the Putnam Progressives, Putnam Young Democrats, and Putnam County Democratic Committee, to name a few with some recent successes that indicate Putnam may be trending toward change.

But we need more help. Join us for Putnam Pride on June 6 next year or lend your support, open an LGBTQ-friendly business in Putnam, or even consider moving here. If youre up for helping to foster change somewhere not too far away, Putnam needs you.

For more information on Putnam Pride, contact Eileen McDermott at putnamnypride@gmail.com.

Updated 12:05 pm, November 29, 2019

2019

Excerpt from:
In Search of Progressive Putnam - gaycitynews.nyc

From the beginning, there were good reasons for progressive leftists not to trust that Elizabeth Warren was on their side. For one thing, she had spent much of her career as a Republican, and only recently become a champion of progressive causes. Warren worked at Harvard Law School training generations of elite corporate lawyers; did legal work for big corporations accused of wrongdoing; collected donations from billionaires; held secret meetings with investment bankers and major Democratic party donors; and stood up and applauded when Donald Trump vowed that America would never become a socialist country. Even at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her most prominent initiative on behalf of ordinary borrowers, Warren brought in former Wall Street bankers, tasking financial foxes with guarding the henhouse.

Yet Warrens campaign debuted with a populist note. She chose to make her kick-off speech in Lawrence, Massachusetts, site of the famous 1912 Bread and Roses textile industry strike, and she explicitly invoked the spirit of organized labor in her campaign announcement. Warren unveiled a series of ambitious social policy plans designed to please leftists, and some of us praised her promises to levy new taxes on wealth, expand childcare and give workers new power within their companies. In debates, the more centrist candidates accused both Warren and Sanders of being too radical. Warren memorably snapped back at those who ran for president to tell the country that change was impossible.

Its been difficult for progressives to know what to make of Warren. Shes been antagonizing the super-rich, but some of them also seem fond of her, perhaps because they recognize that her regulatory proposals are actually a modest and pragmatic way of staving off a populist revolution. She has long been attacked for supporting Medicare for All, but she has also been troublingly vague about the details in ways that left single-payer proponents unsure whether she was with them or against them. (Harry Reid, having been Warrens colleague in the Senate, said she would probably ditch single-payer when she was actually in office, in favor of something more pragmatic.)

But lately, Warren has finally begun to make her true feelings clear, and progressives no longer need to wonder whether shes with us or not. Shes not. Warren released a Medicare for All plan that called it a long-term plan, which leftwing political analyst Ben Studebaker pointed out is code to rich people for this is all pretend.

A few weeks later, Warren confirmed that while in theory she supported single-payer healthcare, it would not be one of her primary initiatives, and she would initially push for a more moderate proposal similar to those advocated by Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. Political analysts quickly saw Warrens statement for what it was: an admission that she did not really intend to pass single-payer at all. Doug Henwood noted that Barclays bank put out an analysis assuring Wall Street that Warrens plan to put off Medicare for All until late in the first term decreases the likelihood that this plan comes to fruition. So much for big structural change.

Then theres foreign policy. Warren has never been particularly progressive on foreign policy, or even shown much interest in it at all. She has defended US military aid to Israel, and infamously, when Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, killing thousands of Palestinians including children playing on the beach, Warren spoke up for Israels right to defend itself.

Recently Warren has given progressives even more cause for alarm. Instead of condemning an obvious rightwing coup in Bolivia (as Bernie Sanders did), and denouncing the seizure of power by Christian theocrats, Warren gave a tepid statement that recognized the legitimacy of the countrys new interim leadership. On Venezuela, Warrens statements were even worse; she recently told Pod Save America that she believes the US should recognize the leader of the opposition as the legitimate president, and should maintain the sanctions that economist Jeffrey Sachs has said are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuelas economy and thereby lead to regime change. Sachs has called sanctions a fruitless, heartless, illegal and failed policy, causing grave harm to the Venezuelan people, yet Warren says she sides with Trump on the matter.

This is not trivial. Foreign policy is one of the most important parts of a presidents role. A president who is not a progressive in their dealings with the rest of the world is not a progressive at all. US policy has the potential to destroy lives and undermine popular movements, or to save lives and support those movements. It is critical to have a president who will take on human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and Israel, and who will stand up for authentic democracy around the world. Nobody on the left can support someone who casually supports the Trump administrations crippling sanctions, who excuses the wanton killing of Palestinians, and who declines to call a military coup a military coup.

It is helpful, at least, that we can now see more clearly the distinction between Warren and Sanders. She is not just a more wonkish and pragmatic advocate of the same politics. The politics themselves are very different. Sanders quickly denounced the Bolivian coup as a coup, and stuck to his assessment. He promised that Medicare for All would be a top priority, introduced in his first week. Sanders is far from a perfect candidate, but Warren has made it clear that she is no radical, that she accepts much of the Washington consensus that Sanders has devoted his career to disrupting and questioning.

Because candidates will typically try to tell voters whatever they think we want to hear, it is useful when they take actions that show us where they really stand and how we can expect them to act in office. Questions about the sincerity of Warrens progressivism are rapidly being answered by her public statements. Shes telling us shes not one of us, and we should believe her.

The rest is here:
Progressives, trust your gut: Elizabeth Warren is not one of us - The Guardian

Regardless of the timeline, the move could illustrate what City Hall might look like over the next few years, according to SF State's McDaniel.

"I think you'll continue to see things like that," he said, especially when it comes to measures on issues like mental health, health care and housing.

Another example of emerging political dynamics, McDaniel said, came after supervisors unanimously passed legislation that aims to create more housing funding for the city's middle to low-income workers.

Breed didn't veto or sign the legislation, which was introduced by Haney. Rather, she returned it unsigned, allowing the measure to become law but not without expressing her reservations.

In a letter to the board, Breed said she does support generating cash for affordable housing, but she voiced frustration over the particular measure, saying it wasn't financially feasible and that it could hurt small businesses, among other issues.

"I remain concerned that this legislation, while well intended, will not produce the revenue it promises for affordable housing," Breed wrote, arguing that the measure's $400 million funding promise was misleading.

For Haney, it was clear that the mayor was trying to send a message.

"It's a little unclear to me what the point of it was, at this stage, when it is going to become law," he said. "It certainly raises questions as to whether she's going to be able to be independent from some of the bigger developers and different forces in the city to be able to work with us when we challenge the status quo."

Of course, both the progressive faction and Breed's wing have more upcoming elections to consider as they navigate changing power dynamics.

In November 2020, six seats on the Board of Supervisors will be open, which could be an opportunity for progressives to further isolate the mayor. It could also be an opportunity for Breed to regain allies. Four years later, the mayor will be up for re-election once again.

How things turn out could come down to two things: Whether Breed will be able to use internal rifts within the progressive block that inevitably come along with a growing majority to her advantage, and whether progressives can pin Breed between a rock and hard place by passing pieces of legislation that, as McDaniel puts it, "make her oppose things that are popular in the city as a whole," like more affordable housing and police reform.

View original post here:
After SF Progressives Win Big, a Shift in Dynamics at City Hall - KQED