Opinion The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com 4 — Tuesday, April 16, 2019 Zack Blumberg Emma Chang Joel Danilewitz Emily Huhman Tara Jayaram Jeremy Kaplan Magdalena Mihaylova Ellery Rosenzweig Jason Rowland Anu Roy-Chaudhury Alex Satola Timothy Spurlin Nicholas Tomaino Erin White Ashley Zhang FINNTAN STORER Managing Editor Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. MAYA GOLDMAN Editor in Chief MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA AND JOEL DANILEWITZ Editorial Page Editors Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS T he 2020 Democratic primary has been defined by a number of litmus tests. Many of the candidates in the progressive wing of the party, including Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris, former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke and others have been pushed to prove their progressive merits by stating their support for key progressive policies or process measures. Which policies constitute those litmus tests is important because they offer a signal about which issues Democrats will prioritize if they retake power in 2020. As of this writing, they are in support for some form of “Medicare for all” and the Green New Deal — the “superstar” policies. Different candidates are trying to add what they see as their unique contribution to that list. Booker introduced a baby bonds bill and Harris wants to expand the earned income tax credit through her LIFT the Middle Class Act. These candidates are trying to elevate the specific policy area they have expertise in to the level of “Medicare for all” and the Green New Deal. The policy most deserving of being promoted to superstar status is Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for universal child care and affordable preschool. Warren’s plan guarantees that every American making less than approximately twice the poverty line will be able to send their child to government-sponsored day care and preschool for free. Families making more than that amount would pay for the service on a sliding scale tied to income, maxing out at 7 percent for the wealthiest. Warren’s proposal is important and timely because child care costs are high and rising — the median annual price is $8,320, more than half the cost of in-state tuition at the University of Michigan — and takes up between, according to some estimates, 9 and 36 percent of annual household income. Warren’s plan would also establish quality standards that all programs receiving government support would have to meet to address the poor state of preschools in the United States right now. To meet that plan, Warren proposes paying daycare and preschool instructors more like the teachers they are. The proposal is also important because the United States lags behind other countries in child care and preschool attendance. According to a 2015 report, the United States ranks 31st in 3-year-old enrollment among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 36 mostly rich countries. The United States needs real and dramatic early childhood education reform. Democratic candidates are supportive of expansions of early childhood education, but besides Warren, none has supported making child care universal. All the other senators running for president have signed onto a long- running bill to double the number of children eligible for subsidized child care, but stop short of universality. Every Democratic 2020 candidate should pledge to fight for Warren’s plan or some expansion of child care and preschool if elected, but they have not felt the need to. Voters and the media have not considered universal child care a priority for progressive candidates for president, but they should. One reason Warren’s policy has not achieved superstar status is because the research seems to show that early childhood education is not actually helpful for students. However, this line of research takes too narrow an approach. Early child education proponents cite that academic differences between children who participated in programs and those who did not are negligible as early as first grade. But this line of research is fundamentally flawed because it does not fully consider the long-term impacts of these programs on families or students. Studies that look at how access to reliable day care impacts students long-term have consistently shown favorable tangible impacts — higher college attendance and graduation, lower drug use and arrest rates — as well as positive impacts on maturity. The research shows that the benefits of universal preschool, while negligible in the classroom, are significant in other areas of children’s lives, at least in the short- term. They allow parents to avoid child-care costs, such as hiring a babysitter, paying for expensive day care or the opportunity cost of a parent staying at home to take care of the child. With subsidized or free child care, traditional family income is more resilient because there will be more sources, creating a more stable home environment. But the benefits of child care extend beyond the children themselves. Universal child care and affordable preschool would serve to improve the gender pay gap. When children are not in school, women are far more likely to stay at home than men. Taking a break from work sets women back in the workplace and contributes to the gender pay gap. Both Booker’s baby bonds bill and Harris’ LIFT Act are trying to promote equity, but universal child care is a more comprehensive effort to promote equal opportunity. Progressives should support universal child care, and not just an expansion as most do, for moral and political reasons. Morally, every child should have access to early childcare’s long-term benefits and parents should not have to sabotage their careers due to expensive child care. Politically, pushing for ambitious solutions may make incremental progress more likely, as it has for health care coverage expansions. The litmus test dynamic of the Democratic primary is complicated and problematic, but voters and the media should brand the candidates that have not decisively supported universal child care as less progressive than those who have. TIMOTHY SPURLIN | COLUMN Reflections atop a dead mountain R ecently, I took a road trip down to West Virginia to learn more about mountaintop removal coal mining and tour the remains of a retired mine on Kayford Mountain, located in a rural area outside of Charleston, W.V. Mountaintop removal, as the name suggests, is a process of coal mining that involves rigging explosives to a mountaintop and blowing it up so coal companies can extract threads of coal hidden in the interior of the mountain. The results are devastating to the local ecology and topography, reducing the richly biodiverse area and leveling the mountain to a barren rocky landscape. My commitment to environmental activism guided my journey to see the horrible effects of coal mining firsthand, yet, my experience was not exactly what I had pictured it would be. In fact, while the lifeless remains of the mountain itself were enough to depress anyone, it was the interaction with the local community that moved me more. The environmental implications of mountaintop removal coal mining, and coal mining in general, are well documented, however, the more insidious effect is the economic burden placed on the people living in these communities. West Virginia is a state that is somewhat dependent on coal for its economy. Coal built the state and its ongoing slow demise has devastated rural communities. The trip highlighted just how influential coal is to the people of West Virginia. Growing up in Michigan, I felt strong parallels between the coal mines of West Virginia and the auto factories of Flint and Detroit. In both cases local communities are wholly dependent on a singular employer and eventually are left with no viable safety net. While on Kayford Mountain, my group encountered a local who lived on the mountain and coincidentally had a close personal tie to Michigan. After exchanging a few pleasantries, he told us in his thick Appalachian accent that he lived and worked in Flint for the better part of 25 years. He said that when he was young, the coal mine in his town shut down, so he packed up and headed north to work in the auto industry. He worked at a factory in Flint doing metal work until General Motors shut down some of its operations. He moved back to West Virginia and has been living on the mountain ever since. The connection between Appalachia and the Midwest runs deeper than I could have thought. Larry Gibson, founder of the nonprofit Keeper of the Mountains, responsible for giving tours of mountaintop removal on Kayford Mountain, actually spent most of his life in northern Ohio. When GM shut down its plant in the 1980s, Gibson decided to move back to West Virginia and live in an area that his family had owned for a generation. Gibson’s culture and heritage are rooted deeply in a mix of Midwestern and Appalachian values of hard, honest work. While on the tour, Bill DePaulo, an environmental lawyer and member of Keeper of the Mountains, told stories about what inspired Gibson to start the nonprofit. Back before mountaintop removal coal mining started, Kayford was the lowest point in the surrounding peaks of the Appalachian Mountains; however, coal companies stripped down the surrounding summits and the once beautiful and rich landscape became flat and dead. When coal companies tried to buy Gibson’s land, his charitable organization instead managed to designate his property as a public park via a land trust agreement, thus protecting it from further mountaintop removal and allowing public tours. As one might expect, this angered the coal companies operating in the area, and they did everything in their power to scare Gibson away. According to DePaulo, when Keeper of the Mountains first started operating on Kayford Mountain, coal companies would send people to intimidate tourists and environmentalists by shooting into the air or emptying a revolver clip into vacant trailers. While on the tour, I walked past a trailer that still had bullet holes scattered throughout the exterior. Sometimes the intimidation turned to actual violence. DePaulo told a story of how one morning, Gibson had woken up to find his dog had been killed and strung up on his front porch. While there was no note, the timing and circumstances heavily suggests that someone from the coal companies was responsible. While absolutely tragic, Gibson’s story is not an isolated incident. Coal and fossil fuel industries have a proven history of intimidation and violence, and have played an active role in spreading misinformation about their practices. In the 1920s, coal companies created an army to fight a movement of miners wanting to unionize, resulting in what historians have coined the coal wars. Their size and checkbooks give them absolute power over their workers, residents and politicians. When talking with DePaulo about the politics of the region, he stated aptly that “there is no Republican or Democratic Party in West Virginia — just the coal party.” A pillar of President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was saving coal. As things stand today, he has completely failed to do so. The coal industry likes to propagate the idea that renewables and environmental standards are responsible for the closure of mines, but this is a gross oversimplification of the problem. Natural gas is about 60 percent more efficient than the oldest coal plants in terms of electricity generation, and is far more cost effective, making it coal’s biggest remaining threat. As for the rapid loss of jobs in the region, coal companies themselves are also to blame. While miners’ employment has been rapidly decreasing, overall coal production has remained relatively constant primarily due to mechanization. It is evident that the coal industry and lobbyists want to frame environmentalists as the enemy of miners to cover up their own influence in their misfortune. The fact of the matter remains: Coal is a dying industry. Driving through the mountains and seeing the burdens firsthand reminded me that our rhetoric surrounding the transition away from coal should change as well. The negative effects of coal on human health, from both mining and burning, in addition to the environmental implications, are well-proven. If we are to seriously make any progress in limiting the effects of climate change, the transition away from coal and fossil fuels must be swift. Often we talk about environmental justice for the communities that are most affected but have the least power or capacity to do anything about it. This needs to apply to the forgotten coal miners of Appalachia as well. Can we blame unemployed miners for wanting to keep their jobs, put food on the table or send their kids to school? They too are victims and deserve justice in the fight against fossil fuel. The blame for their circumstances falls on the politicians, Republican and Democratic alike, who allow fossil fuel money to influence their decisions and who contribute to incendiary misinformation campaigns. Organizations, nonprofits and startups have opened in the region, dedicated to training coal miners in new, more applicable skills for a modern economy. The renewables sector has already been outpacing coal in total jobs as well as job growth, providing an opportunity to train unemployed coal miners in wind turbine and solar production, as well as installation. West Virginians have a deep-rooted cultural connection to energy — many talk proudly about Appalachia’s history of powering the nation just as Midwesterners talk about the automotive industry — and this provides an opportunity for them to hold onto that culture while helping the environment instead of harming it. While programs like these are beneficial, there is still much work to be done in order to help struggling communities. Most important among these is the need to keep big fossil fuel money out of the politicians’ pockets, at the local, state and national level, who actively work against the transition to renewables. Promising the coal industry will come back is deceitful and damaging, and only prolongs the inevitable. As long as politicians continue to accept lobbying money and influence from the fossil fuel industry, they are only going to continue to hurt the very people they are elected to represent. I t was with great disappointment that we read University President Mark Schlissel’s interview with The Michigan Daily, published on March 11 under the headline “Schlissel: ‘We are very much a confederation of three campuses.’” In his comments, Schlissel defended the University of Michigan’s failure to sustainably and equitably fund our Dearborn and Flint campuses. Unfortunately, he did not address the concerns of many students, faculty, non-instructional staff and community members whose very livelihoods are at stake. It’s impossible to overstate the severity of the funding gap between the Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn campuses. Despite the fact that Dearborn and Flint students pay about 80 percent of the tuition that Ann Arbor students pay, their per- student funding is drastically lower than that — 23 percent and 25 percent, according to our research. This means that their students receive about one quarter of the resources that Ann Arbor provides to its students for instructional support, financial aid, health services and more. Rates of student debt are similarly staggering. As a percentage of average family income, Flint students take on almost 3 times as much debt as Ann Arbor students, and Dearborn students take on twice as much. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiative and Go Blue Guarantee that this University rightfully champions exist only on the Ann Arbor campus. These disparities persist while the University sits on a massive surplus of funds. Every year since 2007, the University, according to data we’ve compiled, has had a surplus of more than $182 million – which is more than the entire General Funds of Flint or Dearborn. Schlissel has the power and funding to rectify these disparities. However, in his interview, he stated that addressing these inequities is impossible due to worries over campus autonomy and the different characters of each campus. We appreciate his considerations for preserving the unique missions of the Dearborn and Flint campuses. But without increased funding, those missions cannot be met effectively. We see no contradiction between respecting the autonomy of the three campuses and equitably funding each. We, the One University Coalition comprised of members from the Flint, Dearborn and Ann Arbor campus communities, are offering to sit down with Schlissel to discuss our needs, the platform we have proposed to address them and how we might achieve them while respecting the autonomy of each campus. Striving for equity in Dearborn and Flint will increase opportunities for Michigan’s residents and allow the University of Michigan to emerge as a national leader in enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education. By reallocating a relatively small portion of the Ann Arbor campus budget — or simply using a small part of the University’s multi-billion- dollar endowment — Schlissel and the Board of Regents have the opportunity to drastically transform the lives of students and faculty on the Dearborn and Flint campuses. Instead, the University is choosing to forgo that opportunity and silo the budgets of these campuses entirely. The University of Michigan cannot truly create an environment of diversity, equity and inclusion if it fails to support the Flint and Dearborn campuses it calls home. Like Schlissel, we believe that this university is home to the Leaders and the Best — and Leaders and the Best can do better than this. On behalf of the One University Campaign Steering Committee, -Ian Robinson, President of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization (AFT-Michigan Local 6244) -Daniel Birchok, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, U-M Flint -Austin Ogle, Undergraduate Student, U-M Flint -Jordan Yunker, Undergraduate Student, U-M Dearborn The Leaders and the Best can do better than this Timothy Spurlin can be reached at timrspur@umich.edu. SOLOMON MEDINTZ | COLUMN Solomon Medintz can be reached at smedintz@umich.edu. A new progressive litmus test? Universal child care IAN ROBINSON AND DANIEL BIRCHOCK | OP-ED TIMOTHY SPURLIN “It’s impossible to overstate the severity of the funding gap between the campuses”