 Historically, racism and economic equality have played a pivotal role in how education has been funded in the United States. In 1954, Brown versus the Board of Education made separate but equal, unconstitutional. Yet public education remains just that separate and unequal. This is because public education in many communities is funded in large measure through property taxes which are based on property values. With the devastation of black neighborhoods due to predatory lending foreclosures and other factors driving property values down, what solutions can you offer to bring equity to public education without resorting to the privatization of education and the commodification of children? Well, first of all, I am totally opposed to the privatization of education. If you check my record back in Vermont when I was mayor, I led the effort to some degree with some success in breaking our dependence on the property tax for precisely the reason that you indicated. This is an example where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. So if you have a wealthy suburban community, they have the tax base to adequately fund their schools. If you have a crumbling urban community where homes are boarded up, they're not going to raise the property tax they need to adequately fund their schools. Look, by and large, the property tax is a regressive form of taxation. And I believe that when you have massive income and wealth inequality, when the top 20 wealthiest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans, you know what, we need progressive taxation. We need to say to the wealthiest people in this country, sorry, you're going to have to start paying your fair share of taxes. And one of the things we do with that revenue is we rebuild communities and schools throughout this country. You know, what is at the heart of what this campaign is about? And again, I know not everybody may agree with me, but I really do think that it is immoral, unsustainable and un-American. When you see this country moving in many respects to an oligarchic form of society. You know what I mean by oligarchic? What I mean by that is you're seeing a handful of very, very wealthy people controlling the economy and controlling the political life of this country. We have got to change that. Don't tell me that we cannot provide good quality education for our kids. Don't tell me that we can't get wonderful teachers into low income areas throughout America. Of course we can do it if there is a political will to do that. So instead of worrying about tax breaks for multinational corporations who are going to China, maybe we should focus on a tax policy which can provide the necessary funding we need to educate all of our kids and rebuild distressed communities.