Tax day doesn’t sting much if you live at the gilded edge, according
to new data on how the top one-hundredth of one percent and the top
one-thousandth of a percent of all filers pay their income taxes. People
who make tens of millions of dollars enjoyed falling income tax rates
and ballooning wealth for a decade as middle-class taxpayers floundered.
Thanks to two well-trained, quick-thinking AFT members, 18 schoolchildren in Florida were able to safely escape their bus when the engine burst into flames. Driver Augustus Simpson and monitor Dorothy Manning, both members of the
Orange Education Support Professionals Association in Orlando,
evacuated the bus of preschool through fifth-grade students within
minutes. (They are pictured with local union president Damary Mercado.) Read the full story.
May 12
The latest “State of Preschool” report from the National Institute for Early Education Research shows some incremental progress in enrollment growth for public pre-kindergarten programs. But, as AFT President Randi Weingarten points out, at the current rate, it would take 150 years for publicly funded pre-K programs to reach 70 percent of 4-year-olds. The map above shows current enrollment rates. Read the AFT’s full statement on the report.
May 11
As this chart from the Economic Policy Institute shows, at its current level, the U.S. minimum wage ranks us near the bottom when you look at how the minimum in other countries compares to the median wage. Raising it to $12 would move us from 27th place up to 11th—progress, but still not enough. Read more.