Madison In An Uproar (And My Solution)

I came home this afternoon having taken a mandatory course in CPR from my employer, only to find once I'd gotten home that it was our State government which had a cardiac arrest!

Apparently, disgusted that Walker is trying to balance a budget and break a union at the same time, all the Democrats in Madison decided that the only way to prevent a disaster was to make a run south of the border -- the Illinois state border, in this case.

What a circus! I haven't seen people this pissed off since the vote on the Miller Park too-small-to-even-notice-it sales tax hike. You might remember, the one that got Racine state congressman George Pitak tossed out on his ass in an impeachment recall? Anyway, nowlots of those Racine people are wearing Brewer shirts and lining up for tickets, but this item, the one that really matters, is on the current docket. And it's a confusing mess! The more I watch the news, the more I listen to the pundits, the more confused I get. I hear bitching and moaning on both sides, and when it's over, I'm no closer to learning the true substance of this debate than I was when I started. Shit, that's frustrating! I'm sure all of you out there are in the same situation.

But it occurred to me that this fight pertains directly to me. After all, I'm trying to become a science teacher, and that achieved goal is right around the corner. It just might be that I'll have fought so hard to direct a classroom, only to find that Gov. Walker yanked my paycheck away before I've even gotten there. As such, I thought I'd really research this one fully so that I know for damned sure whose side I should take on this one.

And, just to be generous, I thought I'd share what I discovered with you. But this is a multi-faceted debate, with lots of twists and turns. So forgive me if this blog takes a bit longer than my usual rants.

Since Republicans are insisting that this needs to be done because of a 137 million dollar shortfall. I started by trying to read Wisconsin's financial position reports. This 2011 budget deficit was one very unspecified bastard, because it was first reported to be 2.2 billion, then changed to 3.3 billion, then went mysteriously down to 530 million (that's million, with an "m", or half a billion), and is currently quoted at 137 million. What's going on here? And if Walker has done so nicely shrinking the budget already, why go after public salaries now? So, I went to the Wisconsin government website to get some budgetary answers. I wanted to know exact revenues vs. exact outlays for fiscal years 2009, 2010, and projections for 2011.

You know what? I couldn't find them! The URL of the website (for financial statements CAFR) is missing from the government web site! Now that's fucking interesting, isn't it? At this exact moment, when we need those numbers the most, they're removed. Gee, is someone in Madison trying to prevent someone coming up with an obviously alternate means of saving $137 million? Hmmmmm?

So, I read the Budget Repair Proposal, which is the source of all this commotion.

The bill deals with MERA, the Municipal Employment Relations Act, and SELRA, the State Employment Labor Relations Act. These previously enacted bills allow for collective bargaining with the state regarding pay and benefits. What this new bill of Walker's proposes about these prior arrangements is two things: One, that they'll be changed so that only collective bargaining for base wages is allowed. No negotiating changes to benefits. And two, that wages can only be bargained upwards to a maximum based upon a percentage increase of the consumer price index. In other words, no increasing wages faster than inflation or buying power.

Essentially, this renders the unions toothless. They can only bargain for what they'd likely get anyway. Does this break the unions? Essentially, yes. The unions themselves would still exist, for a little longer, anyway. But since they have no real power to increase wages or benefits, they'd wither away and die. After all, who wants to pay dues for nothing? Hence, the outrage.

Interestingly, police and firefighters are ruled out. That's not what the bill actually says, however. It says "public safety employees" are exempt. Wonder why it might be phrased that way? Oh, wait, maybe it's because a member of the National Guard might be considered "public safety!" After all, can't have a Guardsman called upon to defend a bill that will cut his salary and benefits, now can we? (Probably only some of said guardsman's salary comes from state sources, but still... interesting.)

So, with police, fire, and any state funds to guard members ruled out, the primary victim... er, I mean, subject, of the bill, is teachers. Mostly public school teachers, but also Tech schools and the UW system.

I get the issues at stake, here. We want a balanced budget. We also want to cut out the fat. And public schools and state-subsidized colleges are a nice, juicy target. After all, in Milwaukee Public Schools, for instance, enrollment has declined while the budget has increased for each and every year since 2001, causing a net increase in spending of about 50% per student, ending at over $16,000 spent on every student in MPS in 2010. Meanwhile, teacher salaries at MPS average at over $52,000 per year, while benefits weigh in at $49,000 per year, for a total compensation package of $101,000 annually, per teacher. And for this money spent? We get failing students, incompetent in math, reading and science. Clearly, throwing money at schools is not solving the problem.

So, here comes Walker, ready to bust the union and save the schools, right? Well, no. The union is a problem because it retains bad teachers and fails to adequately reward good ones, this is true. But the fundamental problem is deeper. After all, wouldn't you think for $52K per year and huge benefits, plus summers off, would be a perfect gig? I mean, you'd think people would be lining up outside the MPS offices for work, wouldn't you?

But, no. In fact, most people would rather eat broken glass than work for MPS. New teacher turnover at MPS is something like 15%! In spite of the sweet deal! Now why is that?

Well, we know the usual culprits: Drugs on the streets, parents who don't give a damn until the kid is killed in a gang-crossfire and then, when the camera comes on, the weeping, overweight mother cries and bawls, "He was such a good kid!" (Puh-LEEZE!) But there's an even deeper cause. It's the most evil, most pernicious, and most wasteful pisser-away of taxpayer money piece of bullshit ever invented. It's called:

Residency Requirement!

In a nutshell, it means this: If you want to work for MPS, you have to live in Milwaukee. After all, you can't have people working to educate the city's children and not be willing to live there, right? That wouldn't be fair!

Yeah, except for the part where your pool of potential teachers gets severely limited as a result. Then, it's simply supply and demand. Low supply of teachers plus high demand for them means really big salaries get forced onto the state! Bad teachers get to stick around, because they're less fireable than a pedophile Catholic priest. Good teachers can't stand the crap that gets heaped upon them from the bad teachers, compounded with the lack of parental support, get frustrated, and leave. And this system of rewarding teachers whose only skill is being able to show up and keep the kids from killing each other for eight hours a day gets stronger and stronger.

Shit, there are outstanding potential teachers in West Allis, Tosa, Greenfield and, heaven forbid, Whitefish Bay! We can tap into that great resource and improve test scores overnight! Besides, have you taken a look at a Milwaukee map? The city border is a joke! If a teacher lives in West Milwaukee, and thus lives right near the inner city, he can't get a job at MPS. But if someone lives up near Butler, or the sliver of Milwaukee territory located Northeast of Alverno College, then he can always get a job, even though he doesn't have any inner city issues. What a crock!

So, end the residency rule, and what happens? Why, suddenly, the supply of teachers is high, and the demand for teachers is low. Wages come down, and the state of Wisconsin saves at least 137 million, maybe lots more! Schools are stocked full of quality teachers who work collectively to pester slovenly parents, and education actually happens!

Now doesn't that make a whole lot more sense?

You know, they say that the problem is that kids can't do math. But I rather think it's the adults who can't do math instead. More money isn't the solution. But then, money was never the problem. The structure of the system was the problem! And unless that's fixed, then cutting teacher salaries is going to make our schools WAY worse!

Oh, and incidentally, the big benefits package I mentioned earlier is so very large because of a program which pays back tuition to those people who become teachers. This encourages people, specifically people like me, to complete a degree in math or science and enter a teaching career in mid-life. Of course, if that gets taken away, then Walker's pretty much sodomized me with a splintered broom-handle, financially speaking! Still, it's about what's best for everyone, and it's not just about me.

I have way more thoughts on this. Like dozens of ideas to save money in the UW system, for example. Or why MATC is really worth the money, in spite of past corruption and the recent bargaining agreement which was sped through to head-off Walker's bill at the pass. I'd like to mention how a teacher leaving school to protest is fine for a day but wrong for a week. I'd even like to say how I support school choice vouchers so long as the religious schools are left out of it. But I think I've made my case. All those other speeches can wait. If Walker really wants to break the Milwaukee Teachers Union, he can simply give MPS over to Tom Barrett, which is yet entirely possible.

In the meantime, I side with Labor. Walker's an idiot!

Eric

Tightening The Belt? Try Adding Some Green!

Well, we all knew it had to happen sometime. Our government is doing the necessary work of trimming the fat from the budget - by putting YOU on a diet, and tightening your belt for you. This, because we've excused the fat cat from the treadmill, at least for the time being. Still, we can't keep maxing out our credit card forever, can we? So here come the budget cuts. We all know about cutting discretionary spending. But no budget can be balanced unless we do one of four other things:

1. Cut Social Security

2. Cut Medicare/Medicaid

3. Cut Military Spending

4. Raise or levy a tax.

Any politician who tells you we can balance the budget without doing all four is lying. This is because our deficit is nearly 50% of our total tax revenue, and so eliminating that deficit means throwing away a full 1/3rd of the pie. That's one hell of a big cut! Even if all discretionary spending were tossed aside, the deficit still wouldn't be eliminated. That means some "entitlement" spending simply has to go, and some additional money has to be raised, and there's simply nothing else for it.

Yet I persistently hear politicians say that they can balance the budget by ruling out one of the above four items. On the right, they say that military spending is sacrosanct. On the left, that Social Security and Medicaire will not be tampered with. The right is screaming for tax cuts, and the left is screaming for infrastructure spending programs, as if we can afford to do either.

But wait! There is something that might, just might, make it possible to balance the budget and leave one of the four above items alone.

Really, you ask? What on earth could it be?

Simple. Stop wasting 18 billion dollars every year on a failed drug war, then legalize and tax cannabis, thus generating hundreds of billions in revenue!

I mean seriously, when our Little Boy Blue of a governor is blowing his horn about putting the National Guard on his own citizens' right to redress the government for grievances, was there ever a better time to stop lighting nearly 20 billion on fire every year? And for what? What does that 20 billion buy us? It buys the destruction of our inner cities and the strengthening of Mexican drug cartels, that's what!

The puritans who once burned witches have not gone away. They're still here, hiding amidst the DEA and the FCC, and still seemingly irrationally paranoid about toking kids who might try to end a war in Vietnam. If ever there was a time for inflexible old men to shake the cobwebs out of their skulls and get a clue, it's now!

Talk about reefer madness!

Eric

Stabilizing A Democracy. (No, THIS One.)

Just a quick thought, really. I was reflecting on my most recent post, and I realized I'd missed something. We all want the best for Egypt now that it's taken the important first step of giving its dictator the heave-ho, and we're all keen on Islamicists such as those in the Muslim Brotherhood not taking over. In short, we want a secular Egypt. Well, fair enough, but in essence, what we therefore want is a strong separation between church and state in that country. (Or, mosque and state, as the case may be.)

Isn't the best way to help achieve this to lead by example, by strengthening the church/state barrier in this country?

It just seems odd to me that the same conservative interests who want religious leaders shut out of the process in a foreign country are so very keen on letting religious interests run rampant within our own. Of course, they don't see the hypocrisy of this because they're batting for Team Christianity. I, on the other hand, am batting for Team Freedom, and so don't want undue favoritism given to either Christianity here, or Islamism in Egypt. Or Iraq. Or even Iran, where protests against that regime have started up again recently.

In our country, we committed wholesale slaughter against the Indians because we saw ourselves as a kind of New Israel, conquering the savage Promised Land for God. And today? We have the Wisconsin National Guard being ordered out upon its own citizens just to balance a budget, while behind this smoke screen women's reproductive rights are being taken away wholesale. We dare Puritanically censor the supposedly free airwaves if four-letter words like the ones Dick Cheney bluntly used on the Senate floor ever get uttered, and even put monotheistic endorsements loudly proclaiming the falsehood of time-honored religions like Hinduism and Buddhism upon our very money.

In short, we're so afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood over there. What about the Christian Brotherhood over here?

Any religion which is frightened of playing on a level playing field with other creeds is a weak religion, incapable of standing on its own without clutching, haplessly, to the crutch of government support.

I say, let's kick the damned crutch out from under 'em!

Benjamin Franklin said it best:

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."

(From a letter written to Richard Price, October 1790.)

We Americans put dictators like Mubarek, Hussein, and the Iranian Shaw in power because we, in our immature and irresponsible use of democracy, put the Cold War ahead of the Pan Arabian good. It is therefore wrong to cast their nations as too immature for the democratic process. Like us, Egypt will have its problems, and its atrocities. But they will be their challenges to overcome. Not ours.

Let's hope we can do a better job of leading by example in the future.

Eric

Glenn Beck On Egypt

I don't normally take time to deal with the inanity of Glenn Beck. If his own rants aren't enough to send his little cult of personality running for the hills and screaming, then there's nothing I can do or say that will snap them out of their trance. Yes, I'll admit that I've been tuning in to his television show just to see what he might have to say about the Egypt crisis, and one thing was immediately apparent to me: Beck is no longer a news commentator. He's a preacher. And so long as he remains a preacher, he will remain insulated inside his little cult.

But I do have a brilliant juxtaposition to make regarding what he's been saying recently, and so I will make it here. Apparently, Beck is deathly afraid that the revolution in Egypt will result in the Muslim Brotherhood's takeover of that country. From there, he says, a new Caliphate will arise, which will spearhead the effort to make the entire world Muslim. He is therefore warning people about it ahead of time, tacitly, if not implicitly, making the case that Egypt might be better off with a dictator who keeps the Islamic agenda at bay rather than a democracy which Jihadists might be able to take over.

Okay, I can't say it's wrong to be concerned. There is a very real possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood might take over, this is true. It is also very true that Islam does have an agenda of spreading Islamic law everywhere. (Christianity has a similar agenda, known as the Great Commission, which may be less militant but which still wants the whole world under one religion.) So Glenn does have legitimate grounds for worry. We'd be naive to think the removal of a dictator doesn't carry the risk that a worse regime might arise.

That's simply no excuse for opposing a dictator's removal!

Dangerous as the removal of a dictator might be, and as fickle as a democracy may get when a majority of its population belongs to an intrusive religion, the march towards human freedom demands that we must seize the chance at obtaining freedom over fascism wherever we can get it. Yes, there's danger, but that pales in comparison to the danger of doing nothing.

And here's my main point: Beck would clearly rather a dictatorship be in place in Egypt to prevent religious extremism from taking over. Fine. But isn't this exactly the same argument which was used by liberals about why we shouldn't have invaded Iraq? Didn't they argue, back in 2003 and 2004, that it was better to have a secular dictator like Hussein in power rather than risk Wahabi extremists gaining a foothold? Indeed they did!

This is why political polarization is so terrifying in its power to consign what would otherwise be a brilliant mind to stupidity. Glenn Beck's position is essentially the same as the Liberal position of only a decade ago. And this indicates that he's no longer thinking in terms of political sides. He's not seeing things as either Left or Right. He's seeing them as "us" vs. "them." It's no longer about political positions so much as it is about wanting "his team" to win!

That, my friends, is one serious level of crazy.

Beck says that if we think he's crazy for his neo-Caliphate fears, that we can go to hell. Yeah, well, if I, for one, end up going there, it won't be by the order of that guy!

The belief that the Arab world is too religiously extreme and immature to handle democracy is prevalent in our culture. But this is a form of fascism, pure and simple. The difference between it and traditional fascism is that it believes the fascism is better for other people, and not us. But we've seen a transformation in Arab attitudes. Arabs look at a tiny nation like Albania ascending to democracy and feel utterly ashamed that such a tiny nation gets the right to vote, while their nations languish under the jack-boots of dictators. (This, from a recent Slate article by Christopher Hitchens.) Arabs have been festering with this shame for some time, letting the hunger for democracy grow ever more steadily with each passing generation. When tiny Tunisia fell to democracy, the Arabs inhabiting the land of one of the oldest and proudest civilizations in history finally decided that they'd had quite enough. They want freedom! I say, give it to them!

Yes, they might not be ready for it. But neither were we! Yes, some religious nuts want to seize control of their democracy to advance their world-conquest agenda. But that's true here, too! Hell, Glenn Beck is one of them!

But then, it's not about Team Islam winning. He's more scared of Team Mormon losing, because he knows Islam is intolerant enough to give Mormonism a run for its money.

Of course BOTH sides fear the non-religious, a sect which is growing twice as fast as both those creeds combined! But that's the subject of a later blog post.

Eric

Michelle Obama Wears Commie Red Dress

It's official: Michelle Obama has betrayed the Obama family's Communist leanings by wearing a red dress at the state dinner held for the Chinese president. This, according to Matt Drudge, who called the First Lady's dress "China Red," which was a theme picked up on and echoed by numerous right-wing pundits and bloggers. By the time the dust settled, Michelle's dress was a veritable confession as to her Commie leanings.

Well, what can I say? They got us fair and square on this one. The First Lady wearing a red dress is absolutely an indication of her husband's political leanings, and tantamount to wearing litmus paper for her political party. Want to know what the Pres. is thinking? Don't look at him, look at his wife's wardrobe. There's a dead giveaway, there! You know, we were doing a pretty good job of masking our President being a Communist, but those clever Republicans have sniffed us out by looking, not at the President, but at his wife. For that matter, look at the President's tie, or the trim on his sportcoat. If his tie happens to be red, you've got him! No true-blue American President would ever wear a red tie! Yet Mr. Obama has been seen in a red tie on several occasions, recently. It's as clear as crystal just how Communist this means our President is.

Those Republicans are so very clever!

Eric

What A Wonderful World

It's 11:00, and all's mostly well. At least, it is from my vantage-point.

Egypt is falling to democracy. Bill O'Reilly got exposed as a disrespectful hack, by our president, on national TV. I'm acing calculus. The Green Bay Packers are Superbowl Champions again. And Keith Olbermann is coming back to TV.

Yes, Current TV (channel 226 on Time Warner Cable), the network co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, is bringing Keith Olbermann back for a new news and commentary program, to be revealed later this year. You knew he'd get scooped up by a small network, which suddenly becomes a major network as a result. I hope MSNBC feels the fool for it.

But boy, Current TV needs Olbermann! Have you seen the lineup? Oh, sure, Current TV does have some cool stuff, like the documentary series, Vanguard. They also have The 50 Greatest Viral Videos, and Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews. But other than that? It's pretty much NPR television. And no Garrison Keillor! Some plot-driven thing called Bar Karma is supposed to magic-TV people into watching. There's a show called (I'm not making this up) Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, where the ones who eat the bacon actually butcher it themselves first. (Where's PETA when you need 'em?) They actually broadcast a television version of This American Life. This American Life! The radio program that has driven away more donors during pledge week than poverty, and it has its own television program!

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot!

That does it. We demand a new Star Trek franchise! We demand the return of Firefly! We want all the programs that made Discovery and the Science Channel great back on the air! More Desmond Morris! More James Burke! Bring back Paleoworld!

I'm so sick of ghost-hunting, chopper-building, architectural, dirty-job, cash-taxicabbed, Stargated, cooking-show, deadly-catch, baby-bringing, truck-driving, Bear Grylls-pretending-he's-an-outdoorsman, pitch-men BULLSHIT on my television!

This American Life! Honestly! Craptacular on a cuestick!

If it wasn't for Mythbusters, I'd say raze the whole thing and start over!

Oh, wait, there's Brewmasters. I forgot. And some new show coming called Curiosity, which sounds good. There's hope yet!

Okay, I'm done ranting. Sorry about that.

So what else is going on? Well, in the midst of the pro-democracy Egyptian protests, while Muslims in Cairo prayed, they enjoyed the protection of a Christian-Coptic-Jewish bodyguard. And while Christians held mass, and Jews held synagogue, the Muslims, in turn, protected them. Prayer in the square! Egypt is so ready for democracy!

Now, if religion could only be like that all of the time. It would be a much happier world, wouldn't it?

Bill O'Reilly? Jeezus, he gave more respect to Jon Stewart than he gave to our president. Why is the non-serious guy taken seriously, while the serious guy is not taken seriously in O'Reilly's world? It could only be because he's the partisan-blinded fool we always knew him to be. And now, he's stepped in it.

During the WONDERFUL Superbowl victory, I got into it a little bit with some fool at the bar. Remember the KIA commercial? No, me neither. But it sparked this particular asshole giving a rant about foreign cars.

"Hang on," I said, "there's somebody in Kentucky who has a job building those cars,"

"Yeah," he yelled back, "But they sell us cars, and they refuse to buy any of our goods!"

I started to say that I wasn't too sure about that, but he interrupted me. "No! When Mr. Asshole went over there to do his treaty with South Korea, he gave away the store! They keep all the profits for themselves!"

I backed off, saying I hadn't researched it. "First I do the research, then I argue," I told him.

But what grated me was the "Mr. Asshole." part.

Look, when George W. was president, I hated his ass. Still do. But I respected him, and the Presidential office. Why? Because he was FUCKING PRESIDENT, that's why! Now it's the conservative's turn to give the respect absolutely due the office, and our president isn't being given the respect due a first-year state congressman.

Know what? FUCK that! I'm willing to call it the black-man-hating racist bullshit it is. It's time to call a spade-hater a spade-hater.

Take that, O'Reilly.

By the way, the guy was dead wrong. South Korea is one of our top buyers of grain and beef. Only China and the E.U. buy more. So they sell us the cars they pay American workers to build, while we sell them food. I like this deal.

Okay, speaking of cars, notice that a government commission found that nothing was wrong with Toyota after all? So what was the deal with all those Toyota cars going haywire with their accelerators?

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I find it an odd coincidence that this Toyota crisis just happened to take place just in time to save GM's ass, and that GM's ass got saved just in time to save the government's investment. Maybe I'm crazy, but there might be a connection, here. Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it might be worth looking into.

That's it for now. I'm done!

Eric

The criminal truth