Since Dan’s been good enough to Open a nice new thread for the week-end I’ll take advantage of the opportunity to try and initiate a discussion that fell on deaf ears last week. I issued this challenge to all of our union busting readers who enjoy ragging on the teachers of our children. Only Coberly replied and that not even to answer the challenge, but to make a side comment. Please, take the bait. Tell me how the logic of Randi Weingarten, teacher union honcho, as described recently is off base.
From five days ago: Since we’re talking about the so called disadvantages of having union represented teachers in our public schools, here’s a bit of logical thinking from a union friendly perspective. I’d like someone to refute the logic of this observation which appeared recently in The Nation authored by Randi Weingarten and Pedro Noguera.
“Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted, but there is no evidence that the presence of unions impedes academic success in American schools. Consider this: in states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, where public schools are heavily unionized, students earn the highest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized exam known as the nation’s report card. In contrast, students in states such as Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, which have few if any teachers union members and virtually no union contracts, have the lowest NAEP scores. What’s more, in almost all the nations that outperform the United States in education, teachers are unionized and teaching is a respected profession.”
Please, if the logic of that statement is wrong point out how so. The worst performing schools in the nation have generally been in the south-east states where teacher’s unions don’t generally exist. All of the best school systems in the country are staffed with union organized teachers. Here’s a clue to the puzzle. The big difference between high performance and its opposite in public education is socio-economic status of the students and level of funding of their schools. It’s just so much easier to focus blame on teachers and the unions than it is to pay for a good quality educational system.
Jack, you answered yoir own question with: “The big difference between high performance and its opposite in public education is socio-economic status of the students and level of funding of their schools.” Not much more to add, if you just want to relate teacher/student performance with unions. Even you seem to disgree with the correlation.
After spending about a $1Billion since 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has fired Boeing and started a new path for defending the border with Mexico.
“This new strategy is tailored to the unique needs of each border region, providing faster deployment of technology, better coverage, and a more effective balance between cost and capability,” she said in a statement.”
Seems Boeing thought this was a regular DoD project where they could take their time spend the money reap the fixed profit margin and get several do over.
Defending Arizona is not like building C-17 or F-35’s where they can get away with the waste and abuse fo the taxpayers’ money and trust.
Time to gut the 40% of USG spending going to the boeing of the federal/corporate welfare cartel.
I was hoping the military industrial complex business development outside the five sided wind tunnel might be more useful.
“The budget deficit for fiscal 2010 narrowed to $1.294 trillion from last year’s record $1.416 trillion as tax collections started to recover and bailout spending fell sharply.” From here: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69E54M20101016
So as I have been saying, we are/will be borrowing ~36.5% of our annual budget. (This year!)
The breakout of the proposed 2010 budget is: Mandatory spending: $2.184 trillion andDiscretionary spending: $1.368 trillion. There is only a difference of $0.076T left for discretionary spending after we pay for our mandatory budget items.
US militarism reduced to 7% of federal outlay total: $.57T reduction per year: end perpetual war ~ $180B for just Afghanistan and Iraq, cut rest of war machine by ~ $290B in 2011. Easy half trillion in cuts and no impact on productivity!
Suspend interest payments on US debt instruments (the biggest entitlement program in US.)
If you can cut ‘entitlements’ that leave people hungry and sick you can cut other ‘entitlements’ that pay interest on money that should have been taxed.
Pay down debt, end farm subsidies, close NASA and increase FAA taxes on airline tickets and air transport servcies.
Increase taxes on motor fuels, and over road trucks.
Tax all wealth accumulated by congress critters at 100% of the gain since being sworn.
Round up K St bagmen and send them to Gitmo.
Cut 70% of military positions and 75% of federal servants in 100 mi radius of GW Monument.
Shutter 3 of 4 office buildings along DC beltway.
Heck at this rate I could belong to the tea party.
I would say the logic is fine as far as it goes. It’s an empirical question and Weingarten presents (some) empirical evidence. That’s not to say the evidence is conclusive or that it lacks confounding elements. For example, my guess is that Missippi, Louisana and Arkansas have low per-capita incomes and lower levels of school funding and that Massachusetts and Minnesota have high incomes and funding. Also, it is possible that Weingarten cherry-picked his examples.
Having said that, the burden of proof should be on those who are making the claim that unionization has any negative impact on educational achievement. It would strengthen Weingarten’s case if he emphasized that and if could point to examples where critics did not meet that burden of proof. It’s somewhat precarious to present evidence for the defence when the prosecution hasn’t made its case because that gives the prosecution the option of changing the subject to make the issue seem like whether or not the evidence for the defense is conclusive.
ILSM, TARP is not the problem. Geithener said: “Geithner said he thinks the final cost will be below the CBO’s estimate. “I think it’s a little high,” he said about the $25 billion projection. … The bulk of the remaining cost of TARP stems from the bailout of insurance giant AIG and the auto industry, as well as efforts to prevent foreclosures, according to CBO. Those programs cost about $45 billion, while other transactions resulted in a net gain of $20 billion for taxpayers.”
You are also triple counting the DoD budget, overseas actions, and Cut 70% of military positions. Total DoD budget for 2010 is: $663.7 billion. You are proposing an ~86% cut in the DoD budget.
Instead of supending interest payments, just don’t raise the debt ceiling. Because it will result in nearly the same effect as if you chose not to pay interest. No one will want to buy our offerings. Oh, BTW, you might as well brace for run away inflation. Oh, BTW(2), when you say “Pay down debt,” how is that done without paying interest? It is afterall part of it.
So try again when you get serious about answering the question.
Just as you are obsessed with the DoD budget, many conservatives feel the same way about, EPA, Dept of Energy, and the Dept of Education. We both agree on the Ag. subsidies.
Yep historically there have been no socio-economically challenged minorities in Roxbury Mass. Everyone knows that northern urban centers with heavy union influence have always been wealthy and lily-white.
Gosh good to know that Harlem and the East Bronx never actually had poor people to deal with.
Perhaps we should relabel the South the “Right to Have Crappy Teachers Work States”. At worst you could argue that bad northern union teachers had the clout to organize for more money for their schools than good non-union teachers in the South and the NAEP improvements are simply a coincidental result of that extra funding. But that stretches the logic of the correlation pretty damn narrow, those northern kids not actually collecting a stipend when they enter the school door.
Tax the rich like St. Ronnie did after his first round of tax cuts.
We can reach a renewed compromise of 50% top rates, which per Reagan hagiography served to make the sun rise and deliver Morning in America.
Good enough for Reagan, good enough for CoRev wouldn’t ya’ think.
Or we could even compromise further. As long as capital gains were taxed as regular income we could strike a deal on Reagan’s 1987 rate of 38.5% I mean even conservatives can’t be looking back at 1988 to 1992 as an economic high point. Clearly we were on the wrong slope of the Laffer Curve when pundits solemnly agreed we were facing “Deficits as far as the eye can see”.
CoRev why exclude the autos? The real return on that investment looks to be a lot better than the fake return the banks are giving us by exploiting the float between the zero percent loans they got from the Fed and what they were able to invest it at.
And AIG wouldn’t be the albatross if is if Geithner and others hadn’t insisted they honored what both parties knew was fraudulent credit insurance to the big investment banks. It is not like some execs at AiG don’t belong in jail but maybe should get some time off for the raping Geitner and Paulson subjected them to to bail out the bankstas.
CoRev once you exclude the actual military component of DOE (those big bombs that go boom and the weapons’ labs) the combination of DOE and EPA aren’t a pimple on the butt of defense spending. And big chunks of federal education spending either go to subsidize university research that has defense applications (ARPA/DARPA anyone?) or are offsets for local districts educating military kids. Oh plus they subsidize some grants and loans to the next generation of scientists and engineers. It is not like the Lit Crit professors are dragging down the billions of benjamins being passed out via those agencies.
If we abolished the Dept of Education tomorrow we would just have to redirect the bulk of its spending via other agencies. We had a Bureau of Education and an Office of Education decades before those functions were wrapped into first HEW and then standalone Dept of Education, In fact the Federal role in education precedes the Constitution, the original legislation requiring new territories and states to set aside one section per township for school purposes actually put in place under the Articles of Confederation. Plus i don’t know where you went to college but you might want to take a brief glimpse at the history of “Land Grant Universities” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university The idea that the federal role in education was a product of the Great Society fails pretty miserably in the face of something I like to call ‘history’. And not the alternate version they teach at Glenn Beck U.
“Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted”
Right there is the “canard”. America is one fucked up society, placed off balance by the onslaught of Rupert Murdoch. Never has this country faced an animal like this one, like the grizzly, seeking domain from the park.
Somehow, Michael Powell, allowed this POS to monopolize the media. Yes the son of Colin Powell, fighting for a cause they could not possibly have believed in.
Before we began fucking with the system, American education was just fine. Of course George Bush Jr., the dumb, repaired it, it has become really bad under the rubric of “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.” Why would we want to try and force an education on the future guests of the Private Prison System ? Get them the Hell out of our classrooms.
What we really need is more fucking administration. Less money for the teachers, more crowded classrooms and higher pay for the dipshits from the district.
“Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted”
Right there is the “canard”. America is one fucked up society, placed off balance by the onslaught of Rupert Murdoch. Never has this country faced an animal like this one, like the grizzly, seeking domain from the park.
Somehow, Michael Powell, allowed this POS to monopolize the media. Yes the son of Colin Powell, fighting for a cause they could not possibly have believed in.
Before we began fucking with the system, American education was just fine. Of course George Bush Jr., the dumb, repaired it, it has become really bad under the rubric of “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.” Why would we want to try and force an education on the future guests of the Private Prison System ? Get them the Hell out of our classrooms.
What we really need is more fucking administration. Less money for the teachers, more crowded classrooms and higher pay for the dipshits from the district.
“Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted”
Right there is the “canard”. America is one fucked up society, placed off balance by the onslaught of Rupert Murdoch. Never has this country faced an animal like this one, like the grizzly, seeking domain from the park.
Somehow, Michael Powell, allowed this POS to monopolize the media. Yes the son of Colin Powell, fighting for a cause they could not possibly have believed in.
Before we began fucking with the system, American education was just fine. Of course George Bush Jr., the dumb, repaired it, it has become really bad under the rubric of “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.” Why would we want to try and force an education on the future guests of the Private Prison System ? Get them the Hell out of our classrooms.
What we really need is more fucking administration. Less money for the teachers, more crowded classrooms and higher pay for the dipshits from the district.
i can’t remember what side issue i opened, but just for your peace of mind, i think teachers need unions just like all workers. otherwise the bosses will manipulate and abuse them. i doubt very much if teachers unions hurt education by protecting bad teachers. from what i have seen it is school boards and principles who hurt education by sandbagging the teachers and requiring adherence to some political or simply faddish agenda.
it would help if parents and kids had the option to walk out on bad teachers. or bad schools.
i am not sure we even know what high performance is. sure, kids who can’t read and are otherwise alienated and poorly prepared for life are bad performance. but what about harvard graduates who are so brilliant they can advise presidents without bothering to know what they are talking about or care about the effect of their advice on the lives of people?
or… i actually got some use out of my science education, but i can’t see much evidence that the great majority of americans even remember that they took high school chemistry, much less learned anything from it.
this may be what jack calls opening a side issue, but it seems to me we won’t get very far talking about “good education” if we don’t have any idea what that means.
raise the tax rate 3% on incomes over 100k. That’s not so much to tax the rich as to collect the tax needed to pay down the deficit from those who benefitted by increasing the deficit.
then, i would raise the payroll tax rate by about one half of one tenth of one percent per year so that the people who will collect Social Security will have paid for it. this of course has nothing to do with “the deficit.”
i would go further and establish a national medical insurance paid for by those who will need the medical care… using Social Security as the model.
retirement and medical care are major factors of our lives.. they should not be paid for by welfare. but the country needs to create and maintain a way that ordinary people can pay for their own needs without being forced to gamble, or pay “your money or your life” what the traffic will bear.
finally, i would require that taxes be collected to pay for what we tell congress we need, this is different from setting tax policy to “maximize growth” or whatever snake oil your favorite economists can sell. this does not rule out deficit spending, but only requires that such deficit spending by justified by ordinary “investment” logic, and not by hand waving pie in the sky economic theories.
Dale, same question as Bruce. Your 3% tax increase, IIRC you have described in the past, is just for recovery of the funds owed the SSTF. Using terms like “pay down the deficit” are confusing. We can pay down the debt, but only lower the annual deficit. Which did you mean?
Dale, same question as Bruce. Your 3% tax increase, IIRC you have described in the past, is just for recovery of the funds owed the SSTF. Using terms like “pay down the deficit” are confusing. We can pay down the debt, but only lower the annual deficit. Which did you mean?
Otherwise your remaining proposals would work to lower the annual deficits. Did you do the math to determine how much deficit would remain?
Bruce, I didn’t exclude the auto payback to TARP, Geithner did. Even if the return is better then… it is as you said a pimple on the butt of the deficit. Moreover, it will result in just a short term/one time gain.
Some one should have gone to jail and or been removed from office for this past bubble.
Bruce, your on to something here: “If we abolished the Dept of Education tomorrow we would just have to redirect the bulk of its spending via other agencies.” That is why Congress, and the Prez, cut in salami slice mode.
The republican proposal is to go back to 200X (pick your favorite year here) levels of funding. What happens all the levels of the adminstration are forced to reprioritize spending. In reality this happens several times, usually quarterly, every year inside the Executive Branch. Repetitive annual salami slice budget cuts would cut spending in the best possible apolitical way. Those programs/efforts of highest priority and impact rise to the top.
Bruce, your on to something here: “If we abolished the Dept of Education tomorrow we would just have to redirect the bulk of its spending via other agencies.” That is why Congress, and the Prez, cut in salami slice mode.
The republican proposal is to go back to 200X (pick your favorite year here) levels of funding. What happens all the levels of the adminstration are forced to reprioritize spending. In reality this happens several times, usually quarterly, every year inside the Executive Branch. Repetitive annual salami slice budget cuts would cut spending in the best possible apolitical way. Those programs/efforts of highest priority and impact rise to the top.
That forces annual reviews on their value/benefit to society those portions of each Federal Agency. Eventually and naturally, staffing is reduced as lower benefit functions disappear.
What about firing the Military Industrial Complex incompetents, war profiteers who are waiting to skim more profits on the back of the Peoples’ Liberation Army’s blunder into a not so stealthy, shoddy F-22 clone?
If the PLA is so avaricious to match the USAF’s expensive, marginal airplane with Russian engines let them……………..
Yes, US can deal with 2010 budgets since the continuing resolution ends 4 Mar we can do a large cut. My numbers were on 2011.
A 86% cut would have US war machine about equal to the 2009 Wehrmacht, relative to the size of German outlays.
Yes, the military industrial complex is super inefficient spending their 20% of outlays on war that we are more unsafe at those levels.
So shutter the entire thing.
I fully agree with letting the debt ceiling stay.
Then you can watch the buildings empty along the beltway. Maybe the Chinese will send CARE packages to DC.
Shuttering the beltway and huge cuts to war profiteering, I can be there with the Tea Party!
CoRev–The socioeconomic status of parents and students doesn’t just come out of the air! Unions had a large part in building the wage bases and compensation levels of workers in the large coastal cities in the East where, surprise! public education is doing well.
The South is a perfect example of what happens when the planter class hands out the money for schools and other public services in thimble-fulls. Education suffers because only “those people” go to public schools. The good prosperous citizens of the South send their kids to private schools (also known as “segregation academies”) where the children of “those people” can’t afford to go. School subjects are taught “from a Biblical perspective.” And, average incomes and wages are less than half of those in the big Union towns in the NE and Midwest.
So, if you want a cheap labor force which is well versed in Bible studies, you can come here. If you want better educated people and are willing to pay a good wage, go to the big towns. Unions don’t drag down education. Cheap politicians do.
This is like saying that track coaches in Jamaica, are better then track coaches in Peurto Rico, because Jamaica dominates the 100 meter sprint.
It is a fact demonstrated in olympic records that athletes in the western Caribbean can run faster then athletes from the eastern Caribbean or Africa. Athletes from the western Caribbean are the fastest in the world. These athletes do well under coaches from there own countries as well as the US and Canada which recruit them to run for on there olympic teams. It really does not matter much who coaches these kids, what matters is the specific genotype that allows these guys to fly.
When you get down into the deep South there is a genotype that makes third grade math hard. There is no real way of suger coating it. Your arguement is a false equivalence. With out regaurd as to whether we unionize teachers in the deep south, schools will always have a heavy cross to bear.
Is the German army unionized, like the Belgium Army?
j20 is twin engine, low maneuver, from quick look at picture. Looks like a funky old airplane with putty coating smoothing sharp edges.
Engines are likely Russian, if as reliable as tradition then………………. no worries there!
It is in my opinion an effort for the PLA to derail the PRC economy similar to the Red Army and US MIC.
USAF already retired the F-117, a mission oriented attack aircraft. The PLA new bird is an interceptor, against what I don’t know, there are not that many air breathing targets that suggest an expensive response. Better solution is to keep the US carriers away with mix of subs, missiles and attack aircraft, maybe a dozen or so zodiacs, already shown in recent US operations keeping carriers away from land threats. Low return on air defenses, see how many interceptors US kept in later part of cold war.
J20 may be looking at Indian Air Force, who recently whooped the USAF using their old Red jets against F-22’s. Then the J20 is grossly inadequate.
The real deal is not in “Dawn Patrol” knights tilting in the stratosphere.
I did not. But it seemed to me that paying the Trillions owed to SS would be a good start. And after the SS debt was paid, that 3% might go some way toward reducing the debt to “sustainable” levels.
But that was before the recent 4 Trillion dollars added to the debt by your friends and Our President. Can’t keep up with those boys.
Is the German army unionized, like the Belgium Army?
In this gambit you hope to demonstrate youpocess knowledge I do not, and therefore I should roll over to your superior wisdom. I will not
The images conjured by Wehrmacht are entirely different then that of the Bundeswehr, and you know it. It plays on emotions and obscures facts.
When you say bobby lee had a von scheifen plan, you not only besmerch one the finest men the American military ever produced, but you make a false association. “bobby lee” campaign’s bore absolutely no ressemblence to Scheiffens.
i think ilsm’s point was just that if Lee had fought a guerilla war the South would have won. As it turns out, it’s beginning to look like the south has won after all.
only in the hundred fifty years since the formal end of the war between the states, the planters have learned that it’s cheaper to rent than to own, and white is as good as black.
Dale, as MG pointed out earlier, you have a serious lack of knowledge when it comes to Fed budget/revenue functions.
You said: “But it seemed to me that paying the Trillions owed to SS would be a good start.” Just how would that happen? More special treasuries? Replacing one set of special treasuries for cash revenue? Replacing any conversion of special treasuries with GF revenue? None actually reduce the debt to the SSTF.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, any added revenues just get spent.
“As it turns out, it’s beginning to look like the south has won after all”
The South lost it’s finest sons. An aristocratic honor society was destroyed so that Abe Lincoln could save his lousy political hide.
Linclon claimed he wanted to preserve the Union, but remember his election was hotly contested with no clear winner. Salomon P Chase or Stewart would have been acceptable to South Carolina. Had Lincoln steped aside for the good of the Union trajedy could have been averted.
Lincoln fired timid generals and gave the drunken buther Grant athority wage total war against the civilain population of the South, because Lincoln knew that if he did not produce results he would rapidly loose support.
The great emancipator would have created an amendent to the consitution which would help preserve and legitimize slavery in the South if he could ensure that new states admitted to the union be admited as free states. Honest Abe’s angle was that if Slavery was permited in new states then the electorial balance would shift against the Republicans because the planter class would be democratic and there numbers would be multiplyed the the 3/5 apportionment of there slaves.
Well, that’s more like it. I was not suggesting that unions make schools any better. I was only asking for proof of some negative effect on unionization in public education. Unions work to improve the incomes and working conditions of their memebers. That should indirectly improve an educational sywtem by assuring a better level of teacher educatin and performance through assurance of a better job environment.
Of course there are many other factors inn the performance of schools and the performance of students. That was not my point. In all the usefull and knowledgeable replys to my “challenge” I am pleased to see that no one seriously challenges Weingarten’s basic thesis. I rest my case.
Since Dan’s been good enough to Open a nice new thread for the week-end I’ll take advantage of the opportunity to try and initiate a discussion that fell on deaf ears last week. I issued this challenge to all of our union busting readers who enjoy ragging on the teachers of our children. Only Coberly replied and that not even to answer the challenge, but to make a side comment. Please, take the bait. Tell me how the logic of Randi Weingarten, teacher union honcho, as described recently is off base.
From five days ago:
Since we’re talking about the so called disadvantages of having union represented teachers in our public schools, here’s a bit of logical thinking from a union friendly perspective. I’d like someone to refute the logic of this observation which appeared recently in The Nation authored by Randi Weingarten and Pedro Noguera.
“Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted, but there is no evidence that the presence of unions impedes academic success in American schools. Consider this: in states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, where public schools are heavily unionized, students earn the highest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized exam known as the nation’s report card. In contrast, students in states such as Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, which have few if any teachers union members and virtually no union contracts, have the lowest NAEP scores. What’s more, in almost all the nations that outperform the United States in education, teachers are unionized and teaching is a respected profession.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/157284/beyond-silver-bullets-american-education
Please, if the logic of that statement is wrong point out how so. The worst performing schools in the nation have generally been in the south-east states where teacher’s unions don’t generally exist. All of the best school systems in the country are staffed with union organized teachers. Here’s a clue to the puzzle. The big difference between high performance and its opposite in public education is socio-economic status of the students and level of funding of their schools. It’s just so much easier to focus blame on teachers and the unions than it is to pay for a good quality educational system.
Jack, you answered yoir own question with: “The big difference between high performance and its opposite in public education is socio-economic status of the students and level of funding of their schools.” Not much more to add, if you just want to relate teacher/student performance with unions. Even you seem to disgree with the correlation.
After spending about a $1Billion since 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has fired Boeing and started a new path for defending the border with Mexico.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110114/us_nm/us_usa_security_fence
“This new strategy is tailored to the unique needs of each border region, providing faster deployment of technology, better coverage, and a more effective balance between cost and capability,” she said in a statement.”
Seems Boeing thought this was a regular DoD project where they could take their time spend the money reap the fixed profit margin and get several do over.
Defending Arizona is not like building C-17 or F-35’s where they can get away with the waste and abuse fo the taxpayers’ money and trust.
Time to gut the 40% of USG spending going to the boeing of the federal/corporate welfare cartel.
I was hoping the military industrial complex business development outside the five sided wind tunnel might be more useful.
Still useless, it is corporate welfare.
With this deficit what would you do to reduce it?
“The budget deficit for fiscal 2010 narrowed to $1.294 trillion from last year’s record $1.416 trillion as tax collections started to recover and bailout spending fell sharply.”
From here: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69E54M20101016
We also have this about the 2010 budget: “The President’s budget for 2010 totals $3.55 trillion.” From Wiki here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
So as I have been saying, we are/will be borrowing ~36.5% of our annual budget. (This year!)
The breakout of the proposed 2010 budget is: Mandatory spending: $2.184 trillion and Discretionary spending: $1.368 trillion. There is only a difference of $0.076T left for discretionary spending after we pay for our mandatory budget items.
How would you fix it?
Federal surplus in 2011:
Take back TARP ~ $1T. Let them fail.
US militarism reduced to 7% of federal outlay total: $.57T reduction per year: end perpetual war ~ $180B for just Afghanistan and Iraq, cut rest of war machine by ~ $290B in 2011. Easy half trillion in cuts and no impact on productivity!
Suspend interest payments on US debt instruments (the biggest entitlement program in US.)
If you can cut ‘entitlements’ that leave people hungry and sick you can cut other ‘entitlements’ that pay interest on money that should have been taxed.
Pay down debt, end farm subsidies, close NASA and increase FAA taxes on airline tickets and air transport servcies.
Increase taxes on motor fuels, and over road trucks.
Tax all wealth accumulated by congress critters at 100% of the gain since being sworn.
Round up K St bagmen and send them to Gitmo.
Cut 70% of military positions and 75% of federal servants in 100 mi radius of GW Monument.
Shutter 3 of 4 office buildings along DC beltway.
Heck at this rate I could belong to the tea party.
I would say the logic is fine as far as it goes. It’s an empirical question and Weingarten presents (some) empirical evidence. That’s not to say the evidence is conclusive or that it lacks confounding elements. For example, my guess is that Missippi, Louisana and Arkansas have low per-capita incomes and lower levels of school funding and that Massachusetts and Minnesota have high incomes and funding. Also, it is possible that Weingarten cherry-picked his examples.
Having said that, the burden of proof should be on those who are making the claim that unionization has any negative impact on educational achievement. It would strengthen Weingarten’s case if he emphasized that and if could point to examples where critics did not meet that burden of proof. It’s somewhat precarious to present evidence for the defence when the prosecution hasn’t made its case because that gives the prosecution the option of changing the subject to make the issue seem like whether or not the evidence for the defense is conclusive.
ILSM, TARP is not the problem. Geithener said: “Geithner said he thinks the final cost will be below the CBO’s estimate. “I think it’s a little high,” he said about the $25 billion projection.
…
The bulk of the remaining cost of TARP stems from the bailout of insurance giant AIG and the auto industry, as well as efforts to prevent foreclosures, according to CBO. Those programs cost about $45 billion, while other transactions resulted in a net gain of $20 billion for taxpayers.”
You are also triple counting the DoD budget, overseas actions, and Cut 70% of military positions. Total DoD budget for 2010 is: $663.7 billion. You are proposing an ~86% cut in the DoD budget.
Instead of supending interest payments, just don’t raise the debt ceiling. Because it will result in nearly the same effect as if you chose not to pay interest. No one will want to buy our offerings. Oh, BTW, you might as well brace for run away inflation. Oh, BTW(2), when you say “Pay down debt,” how is that done without paying interest? It is afterall part of it.
So try again when you get serious about answering the question.
Just as you are obsessed with the DoD budget, many conservatives feel the same way about, EPA, Dept of Energy, and the Dept of Education. We both agree on the Ag. subsidies.
Yep historically there have been no socio-economically challenged minorities in Roxbury Mass. Everyone knows that northern urban centers with heavy union influence have always been wealthy and lily-white.
Gosh good to know that Harlem and the East Bronx never actually had poor people to deal with.
Perhaps we should relabel the South the “Right to Have Crappy Teachers Work States”. At worst you could argue that bad northern union teachers had the clout to organize for more money for their schools than good non-union teachers in the South and the NAEP improvements are simply a coincidental result of that extra funding. But that stretches the logic of the correlation pretty damn narrow, those northern kids not actually collecting a stipend when they enter the school door.
Tax the rich like St. Ronnie did after his first round of tax cuts.
We can reach a renewed compromise of 50% top rates, which per Reagan hagiography served to make the sun rise and deliver Morning in America.
Good enough for Reagan, good enough for CoRev wouldn’t ya’ think.
Or we could even compromise further. As long as capital gains were taxed as regular income we could strike a deal on Reagan’s 1987 rate of 38.5% I mean even conservatives can’t be looking back at 1988 to 1992 as an economic high point. Clearly we were on the wrong slope of the Laffer Curve when pundits solemnly agreed we were facing “Deficits as far as the eye can see”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States.
CoRev why exclude the autos? The real return on that investment looks to be a lot better than the fake return the banks are giving us by exploiting the float between the zero percent loans they got from the Fed and what they were able to invest it at.
And AIG wouldn’t be the albatross if is if Geithner and others hadn’t insisted they honored what both parties knew was fraudulent credit insurance to the big investment banks. It is not like some execs at AiG don’t belong in jail but maybe should get some time off for the raping Geitner and Paulson subjected them to to bail out the bankstas.
CoRev once you exclude the actual military component of DOE (those big bombs that go boom and the weapons’ labs) the combination of DOE and EPA aren’t a pimple on the butt of defense spending. And big chunks of federal education spending either go to subsidize university research that has defense applications (ARPA/DARPA anyone?) or are offsets for local districts educating military kids. Oh plus they subsidize some grants and loans to the next generation of scientists and engineers. It is not like the Lit Crit professors are dragging down the billions of benjamins being passed out via those agencies.
If we abolished the Dept of Education tomorrow we would just have to redirect the bulk of its spending via other agencies. We had a Bureau of Education and an Office of Education decades before those functions were wrapped into first HEW and then standalone Dept of Education, In fact the Federal role in education precedes the Constitution, the original legislation requiring new territories and states to set aside one section per township for school purposes actually put in place under the Articles of Confederation. Plus i don’t know where you went to college but you might want to take a brief glimpse at the history of “Land Grant Universities” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university
The idea that the federal role in education was a product of the Great Society fails pretty miserably in the face of something I like to call ‘history’. And not the alternate version they teach at Glenn Beck U.
“Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted”
Right there is the “canard”. America is one fucked up society, placed off balance by the onslaught of Rupert Murdoch. Never has this country faced an animal like this one, like the grizzly, seeking domain from the park.
Somehow, Michael Powell, allowed this POS to monopolize the media. Yes the son of Colin Powell, fighting for a cause they could not possibly have believed in.
Before we began fucking with the system, American education was just fine. Of course George Bush Jr., the dumb, repaired it, it has become really bad under the rubric of “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.” Why would we want to try and force an education on the future guests of the Private Prison System ? Get them the Hell out of our classrooms.
What we really need is more fucking administration. Less money for the teachers, more crowded classrooms and higher pay for the dipshits from the district.
What we really need: Less Ivy League.
“Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted”
Right there is the “canard”. America is one fucked up society, placed off balance by the onslaught of Rupert Murdoch. Never has this country faced an animal like this one, like the grizzly, seeking domain from the park.
Somehow, Michael Powell, allowed this POS to monopolize the media. Yes the son of Colin Powell, fighting for a cause they could not possibly have believed in.
Before we began fucking with the system, American education was just fine. Of course George Bush Jr., the dumb, repaired it, it has become really bad under the rubric of “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.” Why would we want to try and force an education on the future guests of the Private Prison System ? Get them the Hell out of our classrooms.
What we really need is more fucking administration. Less money for the teachers, more crowded classrooms and higher pay for the dipshits from the district.
What we really need: Less Ivy League.
“Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted”
Right there is the “canard”. America is one fucked up society, placed off balance by the onslaught of Rupert Murdoch. Never has this country faced an animal like this one, like the grizzly, seeking domain from the park.
Somehow, Michael Powell, allowed this POS to monopolize the media. Yes the son of Colin Powell, fighting for a cause they could not possibly have believed in.
Before we began fucking with the system, American education was just fine. Of course George Bush Jr., the dumb, repaired it, it has become really bad under the rubric of “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.” Why would we want to try and force an education on the future guests of the Private Prison System ? Get them the Hell out of our classrooms.
What we really need is more fucking administration. Less money for the teachers, more crowded classrooms and higher pay for the dipshits from the district.
What we really need: Less Ivy League.
jack
i can’t remember what side issue i opened, but just for your peace of mind, i think teachers need unions just like all workers. otherwise the bosses will manipulate and abuse them. i doubt very much if teachers unions hurt education by protecting bad teachers. from what i have seen it is school boards and principles who hurt education by sandbagging the teachers and requiring adherence to some political or simply faddish agenda.
it would help if parents and kids had the option to walk out on bad teachers. or bad schools.
CoRev
i am not sure we even know what high performance is. sure, kids who can’t read and are otherwise alienated and poorly prepared for life are bad performance. but what about harvard graduates who are so brilliant they can advise presidents without bothering to know what they are talking about or care about the effect of their advice on the lives of people?
or… i actually got some use out of my science education, but i can’t see much evidence that the great majority of americans even remember that they took high school chemistry, much less learned anything from it.
this may be what jack calls opening a side issue, but it seems to me we won’t get very far talking about “good education” if we don’t have any idea what that means.
CoRev
raise the tax rate 3% on incomes over 100k. That’s not so much to tax the rich as to collect the tax needed to pay down the deficit from those who benefitted by increasing the deficit.
then, i would raise the payroll tax rate by about one half of one tenth of one percent per year so that the people who will collect Social Security will have paid for it. this of course has nothing to do with “the deficit.”
i would go further and establish a national medical insurance paid for by those who will need the medical care… using Social Security as the model.
retirement and medical care are major factors of our lives.. they should not be paid for by welfare. but the country needs to create and maintain a way that ordinary people can pay for their own needs without being forced to gamble, or pay “your money or your life” what the traffic will bear.
finally, i would require that taxes be collected to pay for what we tell congress we need, this is different from setting tax policy to “maximize growth” or whatever snake oil your favorite economists can sell. this does not rule out deficit spending, but only requires that such deficit spending by justified by ordinary “investment” logic, and not by hand waving pie in the sky economic theories.
Bruce, what amount of the $1.294T deficit does your proposal reduce?
Dale, same question as Bruce. Your 3% tax increase, IIRC you have described in the past, is just for recovery of the funds owed the SSTF. Using terms like “pay down the deficit” are confusing. We can pay down the debt, but only lower the annual deficit. Which did you mean?
Dale, same question as Bruce. Your 3% tax increase, IIRC you have described in the past, is just for recovery of the funds owed the SSTF. Using terms like “pay down the deficit” are confusing. We can pay down the debt, but only lower the annual deficit. Which did you mean?
Otherwise your remaining proposals would work to lower the annual deficits. Did you do the math to determine how much deficit would remain?
Bruce, I didn’t exclude the auto payback to TARP, Geithner did. Even if the return is better then… it is as you said a pimple on the butt of the deficit. Moreover, it will result in just a short term/one time gain.
Some one should have gone to jail and or been removed from office for this past bubble.
Bruce, your on to something here: “If we abolished the Dept of Education tomorrow we would just have to redirect the bulk of its spending via other agencies.” That is why Congress, and the Prez, cut in salami slice mode.
The republican proposal is to go back to 200X (pick your favorite year here) levels of funding. What happens all the levels of the adminstration are forced to reprioritize spending. In reality this happens several times, usually quarterly, every year inside the Executive Branch. Repetitive annual salami slice budget cuts would cut spending in the best possible apolitical way. Those programs/efforts of highest priority and impact rise to the top.
Bruce, your on to something here: “If we abolished the Dept of Education tomorrow we would just have to redirect the bulk of its spending via other agencies.” That is why Congress, and the Prez, cut in salami slice mode.
The republican proposal is to go back to 200X (pick your favorite year here) levels of funding. What happens all the levels of the adminstration are forced to reprioritize spending. In reality this happens several times, usually quarterly, every year inside the Executive Branch. Repetitive annual salami slice budget cuts would cut spending in the best possible apolitical way. Those programs/efforts of highest priority and impact rise to the top.
That forces annual reviews on their value/benefit to society those portions of each Federal Agency. Eventually and naturally, staffing is reduced as lower benefit functions disappear.
CoRev,
Think outside the empire box.
What about firing the Military Industrial Complex incompetents, war profiteers who are waiting to skim more profits on the back of the Peoples’ Liberation Army’s blunder into a not so stealthy, shoddy F-22 clone?
If the PLA is so avaricious to match the USAF’s expensive, marginal airplane with Russian engines let them……………..
Yes, US can deal with 2010 budgets since the continuing resolution ends 4 Mar we can do a large cut. My numbers were on 2011.
A 86% cut would have US war machine about equal to the 2009 Wehrmacht, relative to the size of German outlays.
Yes, the military industrial complex is super inefficient spending their 20% of outlays on war that we are more unsafe at those levels.
So shutter the entire thing.
I fully agree with letting the debt ceiling stay.
Then you can watch the buildings empty along the beltway. Maybe the Chinese will send CARE packages to DC.
Shuttering the beltway and huge cuts to war profiteering, I can be there with the Tea Party!
CoRev–The socioeconomic status of parents and students doesn’t just come out of the air! Unions had a large part in building the wage bases and compensation levels of workers in the large coastal cities in the East where, surprise! public education is doing well.
The South is a perfect example of what happens when the planter class hands out the money for schools and other public services in thimble-fulls. Education suffers because only “those people” go to public schools. The good prosperous citizens of the South send their kids to private schools (also known as “segregation academies”) where the children of “those people” can’t afford to go. School subjects are taught “from a Biblical perspective.” And, average incomes and wages are less than half of those in the big Union towns in the NE and Midwest.
So, if you want a cheap labor force which is well versed in Bible studies, you can come here. If you want better educated people and are willing to pay a good wage, go to the big towns. Unions don’t drag down education. Cheap politicians do.
This is like saying that track coaches in Jamaica, are better then track coaches in Peurto Rico, because Jamaica dominates the 100 meter sprint.
It is a fact demonstrated in olympic records that athletes in the western Caribbean can run faster then athletes from the eastern Caribbean or Africa. Athletes from the western Caribbean are the fastest in the world. These athletes do well under coaches from there own countries as well as the US and Canada which recruit them to run for on there olympic teams. It really does not matter much who coaches these kids, what matters is the specific genotype that allows these guys to fly.
When you get down into the deep South there is a genotype that makes third grade math hard. There is no real way of suger coating it. Your arguement is a false equivalence. With out regaurd as to whether we unionize teachers in the deep south, schools will always have a heavy cross to bear.
Bruce, Dale, NO please read or reread the offending comment. It was a quote from Jack to which you are objecting. Not mine.
Another example of liberal group think and attack.
The new generation Russian T-50 and the Chinese J-20 jets look to be the real deal,
The Wehrmacht got nuetered in 45 and became the Bundeswehr. Macht which means power, has been subsituted for Bund which means union.
Cursed,
Is the German army unionized, like the Belgium Army?
j20 is twin engine, low maneuver, from quick look at picture. Looks like a funky old airplane with putty coating smoothing sharp edges.
Engines are likely Russian, if as reliable as tradition then………………. no worries there!
It is in my opinion an effort for the PLA to derail the PRC economy similar to the Red Army and US MIC.
USAF already retired the F-117, a mission oriented attack aircraft. The PLA new bird is an interceptor, against what I don’t know, there are not that many air breathing targets that suggest an expensive response. Better solution is to keep the US carriers away with mix of subs, missiles and attack aircraft, maybe a dozen or so zodiacs, already shown in recent US operations keeping carriers away from land threats. Low return on air defenses, see how many interceptors US kept in later part of cold war.
J20 may be looking at Indian Air Force, who recently whooped the USAF using their old Red jets against F-22’s. Then the J20 is grossly inadequate.
The real deal is not in “Dawn Patrol” knights tilting in the stratosphere.
But the US spends a lot of money for Dawn Patrols
cursed
i am disposed to agree with you. but the logic jack was asking about was “is there evidence that unions hurt education?”
answer appears to be no. and yes, you can make an entire population stupid, whatever their genes, by controlling their education and their “news.”
CoRev
you need to make your point a little more clear. otherwise i am apt to think it is just another example of CoRev think and attack.
CoRev
I did not. But it seemed to me that paying the Trillions owed to SS would be a good start. And after the SS debt was paid, that 3% might go some way toward reducing the debt to “sustainable” levels.
But that was before the recent 4 Trillion dollars added to the debt by your friends and Our President.
Can’t keep up with those boys.
Is the German army unionized, like the Belgium Army?
In this gambit you hope to demonstrate youpocess knowledge I do not, and therefore I should roll over to your superior wisdom. I will not
The images conjured by Wehrmacht are entirely different then that of the Bundeswehr, and you know it. It plays on emotions and obscures facts.
When you say bobby lee had a von scheifen plan, you not only besmerch one the finest men the American military ever produced, but you make a false association. “bobby lee” campaign’s bore absolutely no ressemblence to Scheiffens.
If you want to play athority. Tighten it up.
cursed
i think ilsm’s point was just that if Lee had fought a guerilla war the South would have won. As it turns out, it’s beginning to look like the south has won after all.
only in the hundred fifty years since the formal end of the war between the states, the planters have learned that it’s cheaper to rent than to own, and white is as good as black.
Dale, as MG pointed out earlier, you have a serious lack of knowledge when it comes to Fed budget/revenue functions.
You said: “But it seemed to me that paying the Trillions owed to SS would be a good start.” Just how would that happen? More special treasuries? Replacing one set of special treasuries for cash revenue? Replacing any conversion of special treasuries with GF revenue? None actually reduce the debt to the SSTF.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, any added revenues just get spent.
“by controlling their education and their “news.””
By controlling news you can make a stupid phenotype.
cursed,
It was not my intent to besmerch Robert E Lee.
“As it turns out, it’s beginning to look like the south has won after all”
The South lost it’s finest sons. An aristocratic honor society was destroyed so that Abe Lincoln could save his lousy political hide.
Linclon claimed he wanted to preserve the Union, but remember his election was hotly contested with no clear winner. Salomon P Chase or Stewart would have been acceptable to South Carolina. Had Lincoln steped aside for the good of the Union trajedy could have been averted.
Lincoln fired timid generals and gave the drunken buther Grant athority wage total war against the civilain population of the South, because Lincoln knew that if he did not produce results he would rapidly loose support.
The great emancipator would have created an amendent to the consitution which would help preserve and legitimize slavery in the South if he could ensure that new states admitted to the union be admited as free states. Honest Abe’s angle was that if Slavery was permited in new states then the electorial balance would shift against the Republicans because the planter class would be democratic and there numbers would be multiplyed the the 3/5 apportionment of there slaves.
Well, that’s more like it. I was not suggesting that unions make schools any better. I was only asking for proof of some negative effect on unionization in public education. Unions work to improve the incomes and working conditions of their memebers. That should indirectly improve an educational sywtem by assuring a better level of teacher educatin and performance through assurance of a better job environment.
Of course there are many other factors inn the performance of schools and the performance of students. That was not my point. In all the usefull and knowledgeable replys to my “challenge” I am pleased to see that no one seriously challenges Weingarten’s basic thesis. I rest my case.
Or Detroit, Chicago, Peoria, Columbus, . . .
Not all unionized northern cities have great schools
I am sorry that I adressed you in a manner not befitting my level of respect for you.
There are ladies in attendence Mr Rubinspan
Agreed.
I agree with ilsm about our ridiculous levels of military spending.
Pardon, but that should read “negative effect of unionization on public education,” third line down, above.