About Prop 92
Lowers fees to $15 a unit
Limits future fee increases
Provides stable funding for community colleges for more classes and services
Guarantees that the community college system is independent from state politics
Does not hurt K-12 funding or raise taxes
California Community Colleges prepare students for four-year college, provide workplace skills and life-long learning skills, increase community economic development and provide instruction in basic skills for those who lack them.
Proposition 92 - the California Community College Initiative - will enhance this mission by lowering fees to $15 per unit - ensuring that community colleges are affordable. It also limits the rise in future fees to the cost of living. It provides stable funding for California community colleges. In addition, it guarantees that the community college system is independent from state politics.
Lowers Student Fees
Proposition 92 provides stable, affordable and predictable student fees by lowering fees to $15 per unit and limiting future fee increases to no more than the cost of living. When the Legislature doubled student fees in 2003-04, they also cut the state’s contribution to community colleges by an equal amount. This meant that the community colleges were no better off and that the students paid more. It also meant that once again the students were pawns in the budget battle. In 2004, when fees were hiked, 305,000 fewer students in California enrolled. Now that fees are starting to stabilize, we are starting to see community college enrollment increase across the state. Recent projections from the California Postsecondary Education Commission suggest that by the year 2010, 500,000 - 700,000 additional applicants will be heading to higher education – likely three-fourths of them to community colleges. We need to ensure the community colleges are ready for this surge.
Read more
Student Stories
Bernard Casey
Named the #1 community college student in California by the American Association of Community Colleges and one of the top 40 students in the nation by USA Today in 2006, Casey said that his recent achievements and awards were "something he never dreamed possible" in his troubled life.Read more student stories
Prop 92 in the News
Business and Taxpayer Groups Across the State Support Proposition 92
Business groups across the state are part of the broad coalition including labor and community organizations, as well as college leaders, advocates, local trustees and students supporting Proposition 92, the Community College Initiative, on the February 5 statewide ballot.Read more
Proposition 92 Endorsed by Santa Cruz Sentinel
The Santa Cruz Sentinel has called on voters to support Proposition 92, the Community College Initiative on the February 2008 statewide ballot, with an encouraging editorial recognizing the significance of California Community Colleges. Read more
Mayors Endorse Proposition 92
SACRAMENTO – Numerous mayors from across the state have endorsed Proposition 92, the Community College Initiative, set for the February 2008 statewide ballot.Read more
More from the newsroom
About Community Colleges
Community Colleges Provide Opportunity
Community colleges are affordable and accessible. Low student fees and financial aid have made community colleges a gateway to a better life for millions of Californians.
More than 70% of students taking college classes in California are taking them at community colleges.
Two-thirds of CSU graduates and one-third of UC graduates begin their college careers at a community college.
Proposition 92 Benefits Community College Students
Reducing fees helps give every Californian a chance to go to college.
In 2004 when fees were raised to $26 per unit, 305,000 fewer students than expected enrolled.
Community college students who earned a vocational degree or certificate saw their wages increase almost 90 percent after earning their degree.
By making college education even more affordable, students will have increased opportunities to pursue degrees or enhanced workforce training, thereby making a better life for themselves and their families.
Friday, January 25, 2008
HIV Prevention is a Failure
HIV Prevention is a Failure
By Michael Weinstein
The new numbers from the Centers for Disease Control showing a 50 percent rise in HIV infections in the United States prove two things conclusively: Abstinence-only education along with censoring prevention materials is a prescription for disaster, and that when people think HIV is as easy as popping a pill, we get sloppy.
The verdict is in: HIV prevention in the United States is a failure. At the rate we are going, we will double the number of people with HIV over the next 10-12 years.
Do the math: A condom costs 5 cents, an HIV test costs $20, and lifetime infection with HIV costs $600,000. So safer sex and routine testing are a great buy financially, not to mention personally. However, condoms are still the unwelcome guest at the party, and HIV testing is largely inaccessible. We know what to do to control HIV, but we are unwilling to do it.
The CDC has been unwilling to release the new official numbers, but many major publications have already published articles indicating that infections are now in the 60,000 per year range, up from earlier estimates of 40,000.
There are many contributing factors to the rise, but the heaviest burden of responsibility must rest with the Bush administration' s policies:
* For the last seven years, the Christian right has been determining HIV-prevention policy in this country. Despite the fact that there is no scientific basis for abstinence-only education, it received a hefty increase in funding this year.
* The CDC regularly censors safer-sex ads, which they say promote sex—as if sex needs promotion.
* Despite supporting routine testing in principle, the federal government has done virtually nothing to make it a reality.
* Prevention funding in general is down on an inflation-adjusted basis.
* Condoms are still not advertised on TV to any great extent. A wonderfully clever ad for Trojan condoms was rejected entirely by Fox and CBS. Most of the safer-sex messages we see are lame and restricted to the gay press. Condoms are seldom visible in gay or straight bars.
Gay organizations, politicians and celebrities seldom speak out about the culture of self-destruction in the gay community—a culture that includes a mixture of meth abuse, unregulated sex venues and bareback sex. “Party and play” ads are prominent in publications and on-line. AIDS organizations are still beneficiaries of circuit parties where untold numbers of people are getting infected.
The people most at risk of HIV are avoiding testing, and they are not routinely tested in emergency rooms or community clinics. A third of people who are HIV positive don't know it and represent 50-70 percent of new infections. Many more who know they are positive are not on medication and are not seeing a medical provider on a regular basis.
People of color with HIV are routinely diagnosed long after they are infected and shortly before they develop full-blown AIDS.
All in all we are a sorry mess.
So what is the reaction of CDC to all of this? Delay giving out the information.
Instead of giving us the bad news right away so that we can do something about it, they have sent it off to a medical journal for peer review. In the meantime, the budget for next year will already be introduced, and the nominees for the presidency will already be decided. Obviously, the academic exercise is more important than mobilizing the community.
This is another cover-up by the Bush administration of its incompetence — which we should loudly protest.
However, the dirty secret that we all know is that gay men are still the largest group of people becoming infected with HIV, and hardly anyone in our community wants to talk about it—it’s boring. So the price we will pay is that a very large portion of another generation or two of gay men will become infected.
So when the history of this period is written, how will we account for ourselves? Why were we silent? Why didn't we care? Was it because we can just pop a pill for it? Was it because we got tired of thinking about it? Was it because we were bought off by all the people who profit from the spread of the disease?
Now that we know for sure how bad it is, shame on us if we do nothing.
Personally, I refuse to accept that becoming HIV positive is the normal rite of passage for gay men. I hope this wake up call will cause others to feel the same way.
Michael Weinstein is president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
By Michael Weinstein
The new numbers from the Centers for Disease Control showing a 50 percent rise in HIV infections in the United States prove two things conclusively: Abstinence-only education along with censoring prevention materials is a prescription for disaster, and that when people think HIV is as easy as popping a pill, we get sloppy.
The verdict is in: HIV prevention in the United States is a failure. At the rate we are going, we will double the number of people with HIV over the next 10-12 years.
Do the math: A condom costs 5 cents, an HIV test costs $20, and lifetime infection with HIV costs $600,000. So safer sex and routine testing are a great buy financially, not to mention personally. However, condoms are still the unwelcome guest at the party, and HIV testing is largely inaccessible. We know what to do to control HIV, but we are unwilling to do it.
The CDC has been unwilling to release the new official numbers, but many major publications have already published articles indicating that infections are now in the 60,000 per year range, up from earlier estimates of 40,000.
There are many contributing factors to the rise, but the heaviest burden of responsibility must rest with the Bush administration' s policies:
* For the last seven years, the Christian right has been determining HIV-prevention policy in this country. Despite the fact that there is no scientific basis for abstinence-only education, it received a hefty increase in funding this year.
* The CDC regularly censors safer-sex ads, which they say promote sex—as if sex needs promotion.
* Despite supporting routine testing in principle, the federal government has done virtually nothing to make it a reality.
* Prevention funding in general is down on an inflation-adjusted basis.
* Condoms are still not advertised on TV to any great extent. A wonderfully clever ad for Trojan condoms was rejected entirely by Fox and CBS. Most of the safer-sex messages we see are lame and restricted to the gay press. Condoms are seldom visible in gay or straight bars.
Gay organizations, politicians and celebrities seldom speak out about the culture of self-destruction in the gay community—a culture that includes a mixture of meth abuse, unregulated sex venues and bareback sex. “Party and play” ads are prominent in publications and on-line. AIDS organizations are still beneficiaries of circuit parties where untold numbers of people are getting infected.
The people most at risk of HIV are avoiding testing, and they are not routinely tested in emergency rooms or community clinics. A third of people who are HIV positive don't know it and represent 50-70 percent of new infections. Many more who know they are positive are not on medication and are not seeing a medical provider on a regular basis.
People of color with HIV are routinely diagnosed long after they are infected and shortly before they develop full-blown AIDS.
All in all we are a sorry mess.
So what is the reaction of CDC to all of this? Delay giving out the information.
Instead of giving us the bad news right away so that we can do something about it, they have sent it off to a medical journal for peer review. In the meantime, the budget for next year will already be introduced, and the nominees for the presidency will already be decided. Obviously, the academic exercise is more important than mobilizing the community.
This is another cover-up by the Bush administration of its incompetence — which we should loudly protest.
However, the dirty secret that we all know is that gay men are still the largest group of people becoming infected with HIV, and hardly anyone in our community wants to talk about it—it’s boring. So the price we will pay is that a very large portion of another generation or two of gay men will become infected.
So when the history of this period is written, how will we account for ourselves? Why were we silent? Why didn't we care? Was it because we can just pop a pill for it? Was it because we got tired of thinking about it? Was it because we were bought off by all the people who profit from the spread of the disease?
Now that we know for sure how bad it is, shame on us if we do nothing.
Personally, I refuse to accept that becoming HIV positive is the normal rite of passage for gay men. I hope this wake up call will cause others to feel the same way.
Michael Weinstein is president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Boycott Roxy Night Club in Orlando Florida
Repost... please support and go to Facebook and join the boycott group
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7111918993
Greetings everyone. I’ll get to the point at hand.On the night of December 22nd, 2007 I went with a group of my friends to the Roxy night club located on Bennett in Orlando Florida. We showed them valid Florida ID’s showing that we were of legal age to enter the establishment. The bouncer asked us to produce ‘student ID’s’ which seemed a bit odd to all of us because they have never asked us this before. When we spoke to the manager he told us the same thing and asked us to step out of the line. We were all confused and a bit frustrated at this point. I had heard that there was a huge fight about 2 or 3 weeks before and The Roxy’s thinks that Asians started it, because of that I had heard that they were giving Asians a hard time getting in now. I knew that my group of friends had nothing to do with any of that so it bothered me a lot that we were being racially profiled and discriminated like that. We saw 3 more groups of people walk in with out even being asked to show any form of ‘student ID’ at that point we asked the manager “How come they got in? They didn’t show you any student ID.” The manager’s reply to us was this “This is our establishment and we reserve the right serve anyone we want.”
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7111918993
Greetings everyone. I’ll get to the point at hand.On the night of December 22nd, 2007 I went with a group of my friends to the Roxy night club located on Bennett in Orlando Florida. We showed them valid Florida ID’s showing that we were of legal age to enter the establishment. The bouncer asked us to produce ‘student ID’s’ which seemed a bit odd to all of us because they have never asked us this before. When we spoke to the manager he told us the same thing and asked us to step out of the line. We were all confused and a bit frustrated at this point. I had heard that there was a huge fight about 2 or 3 weeks before and The Roxy’s thinks that Asians started it, because of that I had heard that they were giving Asians a hard time getting in now. I knew that my group of friends had nothing to do with any of that so it bothered me a lot that we were being racially profiled and discriminated like that. We saw 3 more groups of people walk in with out even being asked to show any form of ‘student ID’ at that point we asked the manager “How come they got in? They didn’t show you any student ID.” The manager’s reply to us was this “This is our establishment and we reserve the right serve anyone we want.”
Thursday, January 3, 2008
United States Founding Principle: Seperation of Church and States
Most of the Founding Fathers were NOT Christian-John Adams: "The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."James Madison: "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."Thomas Paine: "All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish [Islamic], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. "Thomas Jefferson: "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors."Most of them were deists, and rarely ever referred to the Christian God or Jesus but instead to Providence or an ambiguous "Creator."
"Treaty of Tripoly" i think even more so expresses the Non-Christians founding of the United States. Article 11 reads."As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
or as Thomas Jefferson said:"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for is faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."
or as James Madison said;"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State." (1819).
Every man "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." - George Washington (Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789)
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson (letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787)
United States ConstitutionThe First Amendment"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Article VI, Section 3"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
"Treaty of Tripoly" i think even more so expresses the Non-Christians founding of the United States. Article 11 reads."As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
or as Thomas Jefferson said:"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for is faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."
or as James Madison said;"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State." (1819).
Every man "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." - George Washington (Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789)
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson (letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787)
United States ConstitutionThe First Amendment"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Article VI, Section 3"...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
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