Really this is a Big Deal?

If this is a shocker to you, you are not paying attention. The million dollar Stupidintendent retirement package is not that uncommon, it is happening all across the United States.



Quote of the Day -"It's for the kids!"

The following story appeared on IndyStar.com.

Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Wayne superintendent's $1M retirement package creates storm

In 2007, the Wayne Township School Board and then-Superintendent Terry Thompson agreed to a renegotiated contract that provided a generous retirement package for whenever Thompson decided to step down.

But it wasn't until this month that board members realized just how lucrative that deal was, to the tune of more than $1 million.

Thompson, 64, who retired in December after 15 years with the district, already has received more than $800,000 of his retirement deal, which included a year's base pay at more than $225,000, as well as contract provisions that kicked in hundreds of thousands more.

But that's not all.

The contract also created the position of superintendent emeritus -- a position that has been paying Thompson $1,352 a day since his retirement to advise his successor, among other duties. That amount, over the 150 days laid out in the contract, would pay him more than $200,000 -- bringing the total to more than $1 million.

In addition, the contract called for one other perk -- a onetime $15,000 stipend for "retirement planning."

On Thursday, the board issued a statement asking Thompson to resign from the superintendent emeritus position, but it's unclear whether the board can force him to do so -- or reclaim any of the money in the contract.

"It's just a terribly difficult time because Terry Thompson did terrifically wonderful things for Wayne Township," said board member Shirley Deckard, who was not on the board in 2007.

Five of her colleagues, however, were on the board at the time. They either were not able to be reached for comment Thursday or deferred comment to the district spokeswoman.

Thompson did not return calls made to his home Thursday.

A call placed to Jon Bailey -- the school district's attorney at the time the contract was renegotiated -- was met with a recording that his voice mailbox was full.

Mary McDermott-Lang, the district's spokeswoman, said board members signed off on the provisions of the contract when it was reopened at Thompson's request in 2007. But she said they did so without full knowledge of the information tucked into lengthy documents that she said Thompson asked them to approve at several different meetings.

Visit the IndyStar.com website to view the rest of the story.

Pension Tsunami is Starting to Hit

Jim and I have been saying for years that pensions are bankrupting the States, you know the problem must be completely out of hand if the New York Times is reporting the crisis. These pensions were unsustainable from the getgo and should have never been negoiated in the first place. One way to solve both the public pension problem and the social security problem at once is to transfer all public pensions funds to social security and have everyone recieve social security. Be sure to visit the New York Times for links associated with the story.

Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

PAYBACK TIME
In Budget Crisis, States Take Aim at Pension Costs
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
Published: June 19, 2010


Many states are acknowledging this year that they have promised pensions they cannot afford and are cutting once-sacrosanct benefits, to appease taxpayers and attack budget deficits.
Enlarge This Image

Seth Perlman/Associated Press
Gov. Pat Quinn said an overhaul would save Illinois’s pension system $300 million in its first year. But the fund is weakened.
Payback Time

Untouchable Benefits

Articles in this series are examining the consequences of, and efforts to deal with, growing public and private debts.
Previous Articles in the Series »
Illinois raised its retirement age to 67, the highest of any state, and capped public pensions at $106,800 a year. Arizona, New York, Missouri and Mississippi will make people work more years to earn pensions. Virginia is requiring employees to pay into the state pension fund for the first time. New Jersey will not give anyone pension credit unless they work at least 32 hours a week.

“We can’t afford to deny reality or delay action any longer,” said Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois, adding that his state’s pension cuts, enacted in March, will save some $300 million in the first year alone.

But there is a catch: Nearly all of the cuts so far apply only to workers not yet hired. Though heralded as breakthrough reforms by state officials, the cuts phase in so slowly they are unlikely to save the weakest funds and keep them from running out of money. Some new rules may even hasten the demise of the funds they were meant to protect.

Lawmakers wanted to avoid legal battles or fights with unions, whose members can be influential voters. So they are allowing most public workers across the country to keep building up their pensions at the same rate as ever. The tens of thousands of workers now on Illinois’s payrolls, for instance, will still get to retire at 60 — and some will as young as 55.

One striking exception is Colorado, which has imposed cuts on its current workers, not just future hires, and even on people who have already retired. The retirees have sued to block the reduction.

Other states with shrinking funds and deep fiscal distress may be pushed in this direction and tempted to follow Colorado’s example in the coming years. Though most state officials believe they are legally bound to shield current workers from pension cuts, a Colorado victory could embolden them to be more aggressive.



Colorado pruned a 3.5 percent annual pension increase to 2 percent, concluding that was the fastest way to revive its pension fund, which was projected to run out of money by 2029. The cut may sound small, but it produces big results because it goes into effect immediately. State plans vary widely, but many have other costly features, like subsidized early-retirement benefits, which could likewise be trimmed for existing workers.

Despite its pension reform, Illinois is still in deep trouble. That vaunted $300 million in immediate savings? The state produced it by giving itself credit now for the much smaller checks it will send retirees many years in the future — people who must first be hired and then, for full benefits, work until age 67.

By recognizing those far-off savings right away, Illinois is letting itself put less money into its pension fund now, starting with $300 million this year.

That saves the state money, but it also weakens the pension fund, actually a family of funds, raising the risk of a collapse long before the real savings start to materialize.

“We’re within a few years of having some of the pension funds run out of money,” said R. Eden Martin, president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a business group that has been warning of a “financial implosion” for several years. “Funding for the schools is going to be cut radically. Funding for Medicaid. As these things all mount up, there’s going to be a lot of outrage.”

Joshua D. Rauh, an associate professor of finance at Northwestern University who studies public pension funds, predicts that at the current rate, Illinois’s pension system could run out of money by 2018. He believes the funds of other troubled states — including New Jersey, Indiana and Connecticut — are also on track to run out of money in less than a decade, unless they make meaningful changes.

If a state pension fund ran out of money, the state would be legally bound to make good on retirees’ benefits. But paying public pensions straight out of general revenue would be ruinous. In Illinois’s case, it would consume about half the state’s cash every year, bringing other vital state services to a standstill.

Mr. Rauh said he thinks any state caught in that trap would have little choice but to seek a federal bailout. Bigger pension contributions and higher taxes can go only so far.

Many state officials, hoping for a huge recovery in the markets, say that such projections are too pessimistic, and that cutting benefits for future workers must suffice, given laws and provisions in state constitutions that make membership in a state pension fund a contractual relationship that cannot be breached.

Lawyers, though, are raising the possibility that those laws are being misinterpreted.

“It makes no sense to suggest that an employee who works for the state for a single day has acquired a right to have future pension benefits calculated for the next 20 to 40 years under whatever method was in effect on that single first day of service,” states a legal memorandum prepared for the Commercial Club of Chicago, which is concerned that a public pension collapse would badly damage the city’s business climate.

The club’s members include senior executives of big companies, like Boeing, Aon, Kraft, Motorola and I.B.M., that have frozen pensions or slowed the rates at which their workers build up benefits.

Some of those cuts set off titanic battles. The most famous was at I.B.M., which changed its pension plan just when many of its older workers were about to earn sharply higher retirement benefits. Aggrieved workers sued, but after a long battle, a federal appellate court found that the cuts were legal.

“An employer is free to move from one legal plan to another legal plan, provided that it does not diminish vested interests,” or the benefits workers have already earned, wrote Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. He did not distinguish between corporate employers and states.

Colorado is basing its legal defense, in part, on a 1961 state supreme court ruling that said pension cuts for current workers were allowed if “actuarially necessary,” and will argue that it applies to retirees as well. Other states may not have such legal tools.

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has gone a different route, bargaining with the 12 unions that represent public employees. Last week four of them agreed to let the state cut its own contributions by requiring current workers to pay sharply more for the same pensions. The workers will contribute 10 percent of their pay, in some cases double the previous rate, to the state pension fund. Some other states are raising employee contributions as well, though less sharply.

In New Jersey, the administration of Gov. Christopher J. Christie recently imposed pension cuts on future hires, but has been quietly looking into whether it could also reduce the benefits that current employees expect to accumulate in the coming years.

“Can they change the benefit formula going forward? Sure. It’s not etched in stone,” said Edward Thomson III, an actuary and trustee of the New Jersey pension system who was asked to offer an opinion on whether New Jersey could adopt the federal pension law — the one that covers companies — as its governing statute.

A state assemblyman, Declan J. O’Scanlon Jr., recently introduced a bill to ratchet back a 9 percent pension increase that the state gave most workers in 2001.

“I think this will pass constitutional muster,” Mr. O’Scanlon said. “Otherwise, I fear the whole system will fall apart. Nine years — we’re out of money.”


Amy Schoenfeld contributed reporting.

The Slow Awakening

When Jim and I started fighting for education reform and education spending reform in Harvard many people did not like us or trust us but people eventually came around. We know the tax eaters, those living off the taxpayer teat and socialist will never like us and that is okay. In Illinois eventually more people came around to our side, hopefully someday more people will come around to our side in Croydon as well.


The following piece appeared on the Northwest Herald.

Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left an exercise for my readers.

Education reform

To the Editor:

I can’t even begin to tell you how much it warmed my heart to read the comments to Tony Casalino’s letter to the editor entitled “Supports tax increase” (May 1).

My husband, Jim, and I fought for education reform and education spending reform for four years before we decided not enough people were on board and Illinois was on a nonstop train to bankruptcy due to its spending problems and pension problems.

Good luck to you all, but you must do more than just respond to letters to the editors in newspapers. You must educate your friends and family, start tax-fighting groups, run for public office and, most importantly, support and vote for people who will be fiscally responsible and fight for true education reform.

Do not vote for any candidate who is funded with teachers union dollars. These are just your own education dollars working against you and your children’s futures.

Cathy Peschke

Co-founder Citizens for Reasonable And Fair Taxes, Croydon, N.H.



johnqpublic wrote on May 7, 2010 5:32 a.m.
"Think the NWH just published this letter to show their extensive reach? Not much going on in New Hampshire, huh?"

taxpayer wrote on May 7, 2010 7:20 a.m.
"Well said, Cathy. Finally the people are being made painfully aware of the situation."

kenbob wrote on May 7, 2010 7:23 a.m.
"This letter makes a lot of sense. Money doesn't solve education issues, true reform and a solid family values is what will make education work again. The astro-turf idiots in Springfield demanding to "raise my taxes" are nothing but a bunch of union goons. Throw money at the problem (while taxing everyone at higher rates) is their answer. Not in these days and not in any days is that the right answer."

Wake up America wrote on May 7, 2010 7:37 a.m.
"Hi Cathy....Yes, things have changed in the last few years....people have realized they've been massively ripped off by the schools....BOE's, Administrators and Teachers are now .....on the run.... Thanks to you and Jim for getting the facts out there...it was the start of today's movement..."

50 caliber wrote on May 7, 2010 10:56 a.m.
"John Q Public (Employee) caught RED HANDED! Take you anger out on your union. Thank you Cathy & Jim! The corrupted CRAZY TRAIN.... ALLLLLLL ABOARD, HA, HA, HA, HA, has crashed and burned like "so" many predicted. Your seminar's were damaging to the establishment and the liar's sitting on these school board's. Thank you very much. You are ALWAYS welcome back. "

Curmudgeonman wrote on May 7, 2010 11:30 a.m.
"So, Jim & Cathy, just what sort of reform did you fight for? From what I have read of your cybersquats, the only thing you fought for was to abolish public education. Is that the "reform" you speak of - get rid of schools? No wonder you couldn't find a following: you had no real, tangible ideas of reform. Go back to your maple trees in NH and continue grinding your one-room school district into the ground. "

Mr. Schneebly wrote on May 7, 2010 1:11 p.m.
"Cathy... you had me till the last sentence. Basically ou just used the vehicle of "school reform" to tout your anti-union hatred. Any reform to education should directly involve teachers. Oh and by the way they happen to belong to the union. If you are suggesting any sort of reform happes WITHOUT input from teachers you need to really look at your priorities. Instead of trying to use all parties to fix the problem you just want tos hove whatever concept of education reform you have down our throats. Sorry, anyone with half a brain won't support that!"

Mr. Schneebly wrote on May 7, 2010 1:14 p.m.
"You're talking about labor reform, not education reform. Figure out what your issue is and then try to deal with it. Stop concealing your real agenda with "education reform" and stay the heck away from decisions that effect MY children!"

GoodCitizen wrote on May 7, 2010 1:28 p.m.
"Schneebly, I think Cathy's term of Education Reform is fine in the context of the big picture. Teachers appear to support the Union's policies. Those policies have been shown to be not in the best interest of our children. Teachers have gone from being underpaid, to now being grossly overpaid. I'm not letting administrators off the hook with that statement. Administrators are nothing more than highway robbers. These costly teachers contracts get approved because parents can't take off work while a teachers strike. It's all out of control."

juschill wrote on May 7, 2010 1:30 p.m.
"Mr. Schneebly, what do you say we stay away from desisions that affect your kids and you agree to educate your kids and stay away from our wallets? Or are we supposed to give you our money, but not our input? "

pryan1967 wrote on May 7, 2010 3:57 p.m.
"Curmudgeonman-Where did Jim or Cathy EVER say "do away with public education"? On the other hand...where did the teacher's union (and, by extension, the teachers themselves) ever say "Let's do what's best for the KIDS, rather than what will fatten our wallets"?"

warmfuzzy wrote on May 7, 2010 4:12 p.m.
"Shneeb-You’re wrong! Education Reform will enable LABOR reform. Do this first. Start with getting rid of TENURE. Let the good ones stay and the bad ones get FIRED. The Education System is broken because of a decision that put the needs of workers ahead of the needs of children. Other states that surround Illinois don't have TENURE. Get rid of it and you will see great leaps in education reform. Labor won't like it, but it will take a bite out of Labor's strength. Remove Labor from ALL Public Sectors-You will see HUGE changes and REAL Gov’t reform. Do you get it? Unions are the PROBLEM."

imhotep wrote on May 7, 2010 5:26 p.m.
"Poster Poll, Question 1. The purpose of a public education system is: a.to provide quality education for our children, b.to provide well paying jobs and pensions to "education workers" (teachers & bureaucrats)? 2. If Government mismanagement has bankrupted our Public Education system, the brunt of austerity measures should be borne by: 1."education workers/bureaucrats", or 2. children? "

+froggy+ wrote on May 7, 2010 6:49 p.m.
"nobody wants to takes your poster poll nancy"


IL Tax Payer wrote on May 8, 2010 7:59 p.m.
"Cathy-your letter is right on the mark. I believe MOST Illinoisians are finally getting it. Thanks to YOU and JIM for getting the REAL financial story out there and getting the education of the tax payer ball rolling - e.g., out of line salaries, benefits, 100% of TRS being paid by the tax payer, sick days, more vacation days than anyother sector, and on and on. For years we all believed the "woe is me poor educator" story - we all now know the real story."

When They Don't Get Their Way They Act Like Spoiled Brats

The following piece appeared on the San Francisco Examiner.com website. Educators in the past were always expecting the taxpayer to give more until recently they were never willing to give taxpayers a break. Unfortunately New Jersey teachers will probably learn this lesson after they receive pink slips.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

NJ teachers unions ratchet up the vitriol on Gov. Chris Christie
By: MARK HEMINGWAY
Commentary Staff Writer
04/21/10 8:28 AM PDT
If a politician is making teachers unions mad, most likely he's doing something right. And Chris Christie has made teachers unions, very, very angry:

They're the kind of obscenity-laced schoolyard taunts that could get a student suspended.

But the target of this tirade is New Jersey's Gov. Chris Christie — and the perpetrators are the state's teachers, irate over his calls for salary freezes and funding cuts for schools.

In Facebook messages visible to the world — not to mention their students — the teachers have called Christie fat, compared him to a genocidal dictator and wished he was dead. The postings are often riddled with bad grammar and misspellings.

"Never trust a fat f...," read one profane post on the Facebook page, "New Jersey Teachers United Against Governor Chris Christie's Pay Freeze," which has some 69,000 fans, many of them teachers.

"How do you spell A-- hole? C-H-R-I-S C-H-R-I-S-T-I-E," read another.

But my favorite bit of criticism is this:




The acrimony intensified last month when Christie proposed cutting state and federal aid to districts by 11 percent, calling it a way to share sacrifice as the state tries to rein in spending.

That's when the Facebook attacks really took off.

One educator, a librarian with a Master's degree, described the cuts as "rediculous."

Yeah, why don't these people deserve higher pay! Good on the Associated Press for reporting this.

What Happens When Teachers' Unions Get too Greedy

The following piece appeared in the Northwest Herald. The article speaks for itself. It is refreshing to see the editorial staff of the Northwest Herald come to our side and so strongly too. Seven years ago you would never see an article like this in the Northwest Herald, they would be more likely to speak out against Jim and I.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

D-26 union 
must do part to pare losses

If there ever was any doubt, Monday night’s District 26 school board meeting put the debate to rest.

We now know that, for the District 26 teachers’ union, it’s not about the kids.

Maybe it was before. It certainly isn’t now.

Greed?

Yes, it’s about that.

An unwillingness to spare some of their colleagues from the unemployment line?

Yes, that’s part of it, too.

But the kids? No. Not even close.



District 26 is faced with cutting $5.4 million from its budget next fiscal year.

More than 70 teaching positions are on the chopping block.

The school board revealed during Monday night’s meeting that it twice had asked the teachers’ union to re-open its contract.

Twice it asked the union to offer concessions in an effort to save some of these 70 jobs.

Twice, the union said no thank you.

The school board asked again Monday night, and presented three options.

Option one involves a simple salary freeze, saving the district $527,599.

It would allow the district to save five teachers – one art teacher, one music teacher, one physical education teacher, and two classroom teachers.

Option two freezes teacher salaries and would require teachers to pay 20 percent of their single medical coverage, resulting in $739,149 in savings. In addition to the teachers saved in option one, three more would be spared – in music, physical education and a classroom.

Option three includes everything in option two plus a rollback of the 2010 salary increase, resulting in $1.36 million in savings. The eight teachers spared in option two would be joined by nine classroom teachers.

Any of these options would be better for the students of District 26 than eliminating the full slate of teacher positions now on the table.

So were members of the the teachers’ union willing to discuss these options, to consider making a slight sacrifice for the sake of the children?

Not hardly. At least not the union’s leadership.

“I don’t know how you can sleep at night,” a member of the union’s impact bargaining board told school board members, followed by, “You have made [this] extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

Impossible how?

The fact is, tens of millions of Americans have had to give plenty back in the midst of one of the worst economic periods of a generation. And with the state of Illinois in such dire financial straits, all public employees should expect to give something back.

We implore the District 26 teachers’ union to stop its posturing.

We implore the union’s leadership and membership to do the right thing here.

In the end, it should be about the kids.

A Time for Pay Cuts

The town of Croydon does a great job keeping salaries of our public employees in check, not so much in the Newport schools. Last year at the Town Hall Meeting we were told the salary increases at Newport would result in 10 teachers being laid off they were not, we were also told that the pay increases would not increase Croydon tuition but our taxes are expected to go up 20%. Are these lies, lies and more lies? Newport School employees get excellent pay, benefits and retirement and Croydon taxpayers must always give yet we who work in the public sector continue to see pay cuts, job losses and reduced benefits. Why should we continue a relationship with Newport when they look at Croydon as a cash cow? Further the thought that Newport employees want to close Croydon School and send all of our children there because their student population is declining is not only just plain greedy on their part but appalling.



Quote of the Day -
"Forcing one person to bear the burden of health care costs for another is not only a moral question but a major threat to personal liberty" -- economist Walter Williams.

The following piece appeared on City Watch.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers

Mr. Cortines, Tear Down This Wall!
SICK AND TIRED
By Ken Alpern

Just because the old Soviet Union is now confined to the history books, it doesn’t mean we don’t have any “Evil Empires” right here at home that victimize us on a daily basis. I’d say that the public unions, the LAUSD, and their enabling elected politicians just as effectively keep us “Comrades” suppressed, with our taxes misspent and any dissenting voices stifled. As the debate goes on whether to lay off good, hard-working City workers and good, hard-working LAUSD teachers, I remind you all that it’s just a simple matter of math: we either make a pay cut for City workers (ditto for the LAUSD, county, state and federal work forces) or we have to make layoffs.

As the proud son of a Los Angeles civil servant and of a teacher, I very much prefer the former, and NOT the latter, with a broadening of options for motivated public sector individuals to work more than a single job to make more money and help balance the City and LAUSD budgets.

I’ve been through rounds of pay cuts, and I now work six days a week and volunteer countless unpaid hours in my neighborhood council and in grassroots organizations (as do many of you reading this), so I think I’ve earned the right to ask the public unions and elected officials to Do The Obvious and agree to pay cuts…especially because these pay cuts reverse years of salary and pension pay hikes that never, ever EVER could have fit into any reasonable City or LAUSD budget.

Furthermore, I’m sick and tired of walking past fenced-off schools and seeing my children and their friends robbed of the same easily accessible, taxpayer-funded and public school playgrounds and fields that I once enjoyed daily usage when I was a child.



I’m sick and tired of public libraries and parks having to have budgets, staff and hours trimmed while other “Sacred Cows” such as Police and Fire declare themselves off limits to any cuts...while hinting they might not protect us, and guilting/bullying us into submission by suggesting we don’t appreciate their services, if we don’t give them more money.

I’m sick and tired of a LAUSD bureaucracy and the endless whining of the bullies and thugs at the teachers unions tell the taxpayers they have to pay MORE while we get less for our hard-earned dollars. Ditto for the LADWP.

What kind of socialist, statist hell have we gotten ourselves into?

But enough about whining—we need to have ideas, and the discussion needs to have occurred years ago, but to start NOW is better late than never:

1) While a few departments and positions can be streamlined, combined or eliminated, layoffs can be avoided--however, the public sector union leadership needs to have its collective shirt grabbed by the lapel and "get it" that a 5% pay reduction can keep all necessary City, LAUSD and LADWP workers on board and make Los Angeles a great place to live.

2) It's my contention that parks, libraries and neighborhood councils do better with their limited budgets than most of City Hall and other departments do with theirs—cuts have to be across the board, but nailing a few departments because they’re easy targets won’t get the job done

3) Library and parks hours and services need to be extended. With a shortage of open space and educational opportunities, the time is truly ripe for the LAUSD to do a much better job of partnering with the City and County of Los Angeles to fund and provide educational and recreational services.

4) There are too many turf wars between the LAUSD and the City of Los Angeles, and now more than ever we need to have schools and parks and libraries work together to support each other, and not rival each other with duplicated services and facilities.

5) Most importantly, the need to open more evening and weekend hours for schools, with their publicly-funded green spaces and playgrounds, is paramount to restoring the quality of life, trust and connection of taxpayers to the schools they’ve shelled out billions for over the past decade

Whether it’s with a fee and a legal waiver to allow kids and their parents to enjoy these facilities, and to pay for supervisors and security guards to make sure that all legal and security issues are addressed, it’s time to open up the wonderful facilities to the taxpayers who paid for them.

I’ve heard the arguments against this idea, and I’ve also heard the arguments against better coordination and joint funding between City and LAUSD park and library services, and I reject them all—as do, probably, most taxpaying parents who have to put up with this inefficient, taxpayer-hostile way of doing things.

LAUSD Superintendent Ray Cortines is, in my opinion, one of the good guys—and I think that his relationship with Mayor Villaraigosa is one that bodes well for better coordination between the City and the LAUSD. I also think that Mayor Villaraigosa’s idea of a joint LAUSD/City of Los Angeles relationship to improve the education and quality of life for children and their families was, is and will always be an idea that merits a great deal of attention and discussion.

More than ever, we need leaders who are brave and are willing to break the boxes around which we’ve walled ourselves and different layers of government into. We need the decency to tear down the barriers between LAUSD facilities in a park-poor City of Los Angeles, and we need the wisdom to tear down the blockades between rival City and LAUSD departments who provide the same services, and we need the courage to tear down the stifling obstruction between the public sector unions and the taxpayers who provide their salaries.

Mr. Cortines, please tear down this wall!

(Ken Alpern is a Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) and is both co-chair of the MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee and past co-chair of the MVCC Planning/Land Use Management Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and also chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at Alpern@MarVista.org. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.) -cw



CityWatch
Vol 8 Issue 15
Pub: Feb 23, 2010

Are Teachers Underpaid?

You decide. No wonder Illinois' Pension System is a Trillion dollars underfunded. Any teachers worth the paper their diploma is written on knows you can not pay teachers like this and not bankrupt a State.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.


Top 100 paid Teachers in Illinois.

Homeschoolers are Heros and they save Taxpayers Billions to Boot

The following piece appeared on Foundation for Economic Education.org and speaks for itself.


Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.



Home School Heroes

By Lawrence W. Reed
President, Foundation for Economic Education--www.fee.org

(The following essay first appeared in FEE’s journal, “The Freeman,” in February 1997. In the years since, the author’s estimation of the importance of the homeschool option has only increased. Though the numbers cited in the essay are now dated, the principles expressed herein are as valid as ever.)

Of all the ingredients in the recipe for education, which one has the greatest potential to improve student performance?

No doubt the teachers unions would put higher salaries for their members at the top of the list, to which almost every reformer might reply, “Been there, done that.” Teacher compensation has soared in recent decades at the same time every indicator of student performance has plummeted.

Other answers include smaller class size, a longer school year, more money for computers, or simply more money for fill-in-the- blank. The consensus of hundreds of studies over the past several years is that these factors exhibit either no positive correlation with better student performance or show only a weak connection. On this important question, the verdict is in and it is definitive: The one ingredient that makes the most difference in how well and how much children learn is parental involvement.



When parents take a personal interest in the education of their children, several things happen. The child gets a strong message that education is important to success in life; it isn’t something that parents dump in someone else’s lap. Caring, involved parents usually instill a love of learning in their children—a love that translates into a sense of pride and achievement as knowledge is accumulated and put to good use. Time spent with books goes up and time wasted in the streets goes down.

American parents were once responsible for educating their children. Until the late nineteenth century, the home, the church, and a small nearby school were the primary centers of learning for the great majority of Americans.

In more recent times, many American parents have largely abdicated this responsibility, in favor of the experts in the compulsory public school system. According to a 1996 report from Temple University in Pennsylvania, nearly one in three parents is seriously disengaged from their children’s education. The Temple researchers found that about one-sixth of all students believe their parents don’t care whether they earn good grades and nearly one-third say their parents have no idea how they are doing in school.

Amid the sorry state of American education today are heroes who are rescuing children in a profoundly personal way. They are the home schoolers—parents who sacrifice time and income to teach their children themselves. Home schooling is the ultimate in parental involvement.

Teaching children at home isn’t for everyone and no one advocates that every parent try it. There are plenty of good schools—many private and some public—that are doing a better job than some parents could do for their own children. But the fact is that home schooling is working—and working surprisingly well—for the growing number of parents and children who choose it. That fact is all the more remarkable when one considers that these dedicated parents must juggle teaching with all the other demands and chores of modern life. Also, they get little or nothing back from what they pay in taxes for an appallingly expensive public system they don’t patronize.

While about 46 million children attend public schools and more than 5 million attend private schools, estimates of the number of children in home schools nationwide range from 900,000 to 1.2 million. That’s a comparatively small number, but it’s up from a mere 15,000 in the early 1980s. In fact, home school enrollment has been growing by an astounding 25 percent annually for several years.

Parents who home school do so for a variety of reasons. Some want a strong moral or religious emphasis in their children’s education. Others are fleeing unsafe public schools or schools where discipline and academics have taken a backseat to fuzzy feel-good or politically correct dogma. Many home school parents complain about the pervasiveness in public schools of trendy instructional methods that border on pedagogical malpractice.

Home school parents are fiercely protective of their constitutional right to educate their children. In early 1994, the House of Representatives voted to mandate that all teachers—including parents in the home—acquire state certification in the subjects they teach. A massive campaign of letters, phone calls, and faxes from home schoolers produced one of the most stunning turnabouts in legislative history: By a vote of 424 to 1, the House reversed itself and then approved an amendment that affirmed the rights and independence of home school parents.

Critics have long harbored a jaundiced view of parents who educate children at home. They argue that children need the guidance of professionals and the social interaction that come from being with a class of others. Home schooled children, these critics say, will be socially and academically stunted by the confines of the home. But the facts suggest otherwise.

A 1990 report by the National Home Education Research Institute showed that home schooled children score in the 80th percentile or higher, meaning that they scored better than 80 percent of other students in math, reading, science, language, and social studies. Reports from state after state show home schoolers scoring significantly better than the norm on college entrance examinations. Prestigious universities, including Harvard and Yale, accept home-schooled children eagerly and often. And there’s simply no evidence that home-schooled children (with a rare exception) make anything but fine, solid citizens who respect others and work hard as adults.

Home school parents approach their task in a variety of ways. While some discover texts and methods as they go, others plan their work well before they start, often assisted by other home schoolers or associations that have sprung up to aid those who choose this option. Common to every home school parent is the belief that the education of their children is too important to hand over to someone else. (My personal belief is that many inner-city government schools are so rotten to the core, so riddled with corruption, incompetence, waste, indoctrination, union goonism and nonsense curriculum that trusting a child to such an environment is nothing less than child abuse. My heart goes out to the many parents and children who have no option but to be captives.)

Writing in the July 1996 issue of Reason magazine, Britton Manasco argues that the growth of CD-ROMs, Internet services, and computerized educational networks is likely to make homeschooling even more attractive to parents. For a tiny fraction of what a printed version might cost, one software publisher is offering a classic books program that incorporates more than 3,500 unabridged literary works, complete with hundreds of video clips and illustrations. A support group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, provides inexpensive on-line help, resources, and evaluations for thousands of home school children worldwide. Another organization links first-rate instructors and home school students from all over the country via computer in a college preparatory program that includes a core curriculum for about $250 per course.

In every other walk of life, Americans traditionally regard as heroes the men and women who meet challenges head-on, who go against the grain and persevere to bring a dream to fruition. At a time when more troubles and shortcomings plague education and educational heroes are too few in number, recognizing the home school heroes in our midst may be both long overdue and highly instructive.

W.A.S.P. Never Cease to Amaze

Fantabulous I hope to see more of this in the future.


Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

The following piece appears at Business Insider.com.




Unionized Rhode Island Teachers Refuse To Work 25 Minutes More Per Day, So Town Fires All Of Them
Henry Blodget

Go ahead and sleep. I make way more than your Dad.
A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.
Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers' union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.



The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000. This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).

The school superintendent has responded to the union's stubbornness by firing every teacher and administrator at the school.

A sign of things to come?

Mish Shedlock has the details at Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis:

Central Falls Rhode Island Fires Every High School Teacher
Here is an interesting email from "Jason" regarding high schools in Central Falls Rhode Island. Jason writes:

Hi Mish,

As I'm sure you're aware, Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.

Central Falls is one of the poorest towns in the state. It looks like the pictures everyone's seen of Detroit or Flint. There are lots of boarded up windows, abandoned buildings, decrepit factories with broken windows, etc. It's an absolutely depressed community. According to Wikipedia, the median income in the town is $22k.

Teacher salaries at the high school average $72-78k. Apparently 50% of the students at the school are failing all of their classes, and the graduation rate is also under 50%. In an effort to turn the school around, the superintendent requested some changes be made whereby the school day would be slightly extended, teachers would perform some extra tutoring, etc.

The union balked and refused the terms, so now she is firing the entire teaching staff of the high school and replacing them. This is yet another example of unions digging their own graves by refusing to negotiate or accept reasonable terms. Sentiment is on the side of the superintendent, at least among the folks I have discussed the issue with.

Jason
With that backdrop, please consider Central Falls to fire every high school teacher.

The teachers didn’t blink.

Under threat of losing their jobs if they didn’t go along with extra work for not a lot of extra pay, the Central Falls Teachers’ Union refused Friday morning to accept a reform plan for one of the worst-performing high schools in the state.

The superintendent didn’t blink either.

After learning of the union’s position, School Supt. Frances Gallo notified the state that she was switching to an alternative she was hoping to avoid: firing the entire staff at Central Falls High School. In total, about 100 teachers, administrators and assistants will lose their jobs.

Gallo blamed the union’s “callous disregard” for the situation, saying union leaders “knew full well what would happen” if they rejected the six conditions Gallo said were crucial to improving the school. The conditions are adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer.

Those Who Voted for the Children are Suckers

It was never for the children and those who voted for the children are suckers and took the intelligent voters down with them. Public schools were hijacked long ago by the people who work in them, they have hijacked them and made them their own entitlement programs. The following piece appears on the American Thinker.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.


Taxpayers: Eat your hearts out, suckers
By Ed Lasky


A looming problem has received far too little coverage from a liberal-dominated media: the power of public pensions to destroy our nation's finances and ransack our wallets.

For many years, government workers have enjoyed munificent benefits: relatively high salaries for lenient work demands; gold-plated retirement benefits that allow most of them to "retire" at a young age with very high pensions and generous health care benefits. Days off for holidays that few of us would even recognize.

All courtesy of us: the lowly taxpayer toiling away at jobs that may vanish at a moment's notice and that certainly don't guarantee the value of any retirement package. Not true for the ever-expanding ranks of government workers.

A recent Forbes magazine article highlights the absurd benefits that public sector workers enjoy on the job and off the job when they retire. The article, describing the leisurely life of retired government employees, could be lifted from the pages of Travel and Leisure magazine. The poster boy for the problem? A retired 42 year old policeman lollygagging on a beach, comfortable with his $2 million pension.



But there are more tales from across our land: a fireman who can be "retired" at 55, collect a pension and still collect a salary while keeping the job he "retired" from (don't ask about the logic-this is the government); a thirty eight year old teacher in New Jersey earning twice the state ‘s average income who works 10 months a year and barely contributes to a pension that will allow early retirement with quite the golden nest egg; California prison guards earning $300,000 a year.

In my own area, the superintendent of a small, suburban school district earns -- well, makes -- over $400,000 a year and has a slew of benefits to boot (medical care during his retirement, 100% comped for him and his family) . Remember that story when teachers' unions decry low salaries.

These anecdotal stories of staggering benefits received by the government worker elites are companied by reams of statistics that display the ticking time bomb of government salaries and golden parachutes. Forbes notes:

In public-sector America things just get better and better. The common presumption is that public servants forgo high wages in exchange for safe jobs and benefits. The reality is they get all three. State and local government workers get paid an average of $25.30 an hour, which is 33% higher than the private sector's $19, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Throw in pensions and other benefits and the gap widens to 42%.


Four in five public-sector workers have lifetime pensions, versus only one in five in the private sector.

Those pensions are guaranteed by state law, regardless of how pension investments fare, because you, the taxpayer, guarantee them with your tax dollars. It is the law, made by our legislators or incorporated in state constitutions.

The problem is national in scope and severity. Often public sector employees claim early retirement for disabilities -- and sometimes find loopholes to claim disabilities when none in fact exist -- and they are able to work in other jobs. Pensions are often boosted by goosing final years' salaries that are used to determine lifetime pension levels. The practice is called "spiking" and recently prompted criticism of a California fire chief who, three days before announcing his retirement (at the grand old age of 51, no less), had his salary suddenly increased so as to boost his annual pension to $241,000. The practice is unfair because employees or employers contribute to pensions based on salaries. When a salary is boosted around retirement, a shortfall is created between what a pension system has collected for an employee and what it must pay out for his lifetime.

Cooking the books to goose public pensions? What astute fiscal management! This problem is exacerbated by the fact that politicians use faulty and overly optimistic projections about future investment returns to justify high pension payouts. Politicians can run but they cannot hide for too long even if they rely on Stupid Debt Tricks to disguise the problems.

Remember the scandals over welfare queens and executive salaries? These are dwarfed by the ticking time bomb of inflated government salaries and crippling pension obligations for us to pay off in our taxes.

Already, communities are declaring bankruptcy, done in by skyrocketing public employee salaries and pension costs. We have only glimpsed the future and it is colored red-in more ways than one. As government revenues sink and government obligations rise, the red ink will spread across the nation; as will steps by Democrats to take our savings. We are only at Act One of this tragedy to come.

How bad is the problem?

This "Hidden Pension Fiasco" will cost us over one trillion dollars. Barack Obama and fellow traveling Democrats will hoist this problem on our shoulders via tax hikes yet to come. This trillion will be to benefit government workers, a key Democrat constituency, who know who butter their bread at our expense. Forbes:

"The tax hikes you face [to fully fund public pensions] will have a much more tangible impact on your financial life than anything a Social Security fix will entail," says Alicia Munnell, who runs Boston College's retirement center..

Government employees could care less about how well the investments backing their pensions fare, since they are guaranteed. Nor do they care who invests them. But we should. Pension funds are often turned over to politically connected firms, who may know the right people, but not the right way to invest. Our once and former car czar, Steven Rattner, is embroiled in what looks like a classic pay-to-play scandal involving politically connected investment boutiques being rewarded by politicians with deals to invest government pensions.

Money can be spread around by the pension fund managers to help politicians win campaigns. If their returns come up short, well, who cares? The taxpayers pay the price.

Why do government workers enjoy such sweet deals? They determine their own benefit packages, for one. But another fact plays a role: their powerful union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which can devote its resources -- money, votes, volunteer labor during campaigns -- to help elect Democrats win elections. The quid pro quo is sweetheart contracts that reward union members, and punish us, for the rest of their lives.

This is disgraceful.

Our money should not fund dream retirement packages for government workers. Government workers should not lead lives insulated from the risks and travails most of the public must bear. Are politicians too in hock to public unions to care that we may go in hock to fulfill their absurd deals?

Who will stop them?

Some far-sighted people are responding to this crisis in the making. These include an activist group seeking to publicize the problem websites that publicize the problem; even apostates who feel they have unjustly benefited and are outraged at ways public employees milk taxpayers. .

Even a legendary auto union leader, Barry Bluestone, sees risks of taxpayer revulsion leading to taxpayer revolt. How fitting that his op-ed (A Future for Public Unions) ran in the Boston Globe, home of the original Tea Party. Bluestone warns that the future of public unions is in jeopardy should they follow the practices that helped wreck the American-owned auto industry. He looks back at how auto unions often:

... insisted on job classifications and work rules that undermined efficiency and compromised the industry's competitiveness.

He sees history repeating itself:

Will public-sector unions follow the same path? Nationwide, these unions represent over 35 percent of federal, state, and local employees, roughly the same as in 1980. Over the years, they have won improved wages and benefits for their members. Yet the leaders of many of these unions, particularly in Massachusetts, seem to be setting the stage for the same kind of deterioration we see in unions like the UAW.

Teachers unions refuse to make changes in work practices that could help improve the chances of children succeeding in school. Police unions fight against lowering the cost of details at construction sites. The MBTA union and others representing transport workers lobby vociferously against reforming the state's transportation system. Municipal unions refuse to permit their local communities to join the Group Insurance Commission that would save their towns millions without compromising the quality of their members' medical care.

As a result, between 2000 and 2008, the price of state and local public services has increased by 41 percent nationally compared with 27 percent in private services. Even in the face of the worst fiscal crisis in decades, many state and local union leaders refuse to consider a wage freeze that could help preserve more of their members' jobs.

Bluestone notes that citizens and ultimately their elected representatives, will object to tax increases to pay for bloated union contracts and poor public service. Bluestone does not address the public pension time bomb that will only make our problems worse.

Of course, the key point is the need to make our elected representatives themselves pay for the steps they have taken over the years to enrich public unions at our expense. That is the only type of payback they understand: our votes. They should not come as cheaply or carelessly as they have in the past. They have cost us too much already.

Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.

American Thinker - Taxpayers: Eat your hearts out, suckers

We could have not said it better ourselves. The following appeared on American Thinker.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Taxpayers: Eat your hearts out, suckers
By Ed Lasky

A looming problem has received far too little coverage from a liberal-dominated media: the power of public pensions to destroy our nation's finances and ransack our wallets.

For many years, government workers have enjoyed munificent benefits: relatively high salaries for lenient work demands; gold-plated retirement benefits that allow most of them to "retire" at a young age with very high pensions and generous health care benefits. Days off for holidays that few of us would even recognize.

All courtesy of us: the lowly taxpayer toiling away at jobs that may vanish at a moment's notice and that certainly don't guarantee the value of any retirement package. Not true for the ever-expanding ranks of government workers.

A recent Forbes magazine article highlights the absurd benefits that public sector workers enjoy on the job and off the job when they retire. The article, describing the leisurely life of retired government employees, could be lifted from the pages of Travel and Leisure magazine. The poster boy for the problem? A retired 42 year old policeman lollygagging on a beach, comfortable with his $2 million pension.



But there are more tales from across our land: a fireman who can be "retired" at 55, collect a pension and still collect a salary while keeping the job he "retired" from (don't ask about the logic-this is the government); a thirty eight year old teacher in New Jersey earning twice the state ‘s average income who works 10 months a year and barely contributes to a pension that will allow early retirement with quite the golden nest egg; California prison guards earning $300,000 a year.

In my own area, the superintendent of a small, suburban school district earns -- well, makes -- over $400,000 a year and has a slew of benefits to boot (medical care during his retirement, 100% comped for him and his family) . Remember that story when teachers' unions decry low salaries.

These anecdotal stories of staggering benefits received by the government worker elites are companied by reams of statistics that display the ticking time bomb of government salaries and golden parachutes. Forbes notes:

In public-sector America things just get better and better. The common presumption is that public servants forgo high wages in exchange for safe jobs and benefits. The reality is they get all three. State and local government workers get paid an average of $25.30 an hour, which is 33% higher than the private sector's $19, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Throw in pensions and other benefits and the gap widens to 42%.


Four in five public-sector workers have lifetime pensions, versus only one in five in the private sector.


Those pensions are guaranteed by state law, regardless of how pension investments fare, because you, the taxpayer, guarantee them with your tax dollars. It is the law, made by our legislators or incorporated in state constitutions.

The problem is national in scope and severity. Often public sector employees claim early retirement for disabilities -- and sometimes find loopholes to claim disabilities when none in fact exist -- and they are able to work in other jobs. Pensions are often boosted by goosing final years' salaries that are used to determine lifetime pension levels. The practice is called "spiking" and recently prompted criticism of a California fire chief who, three days before announcing his retirement (at the grand old age of 51, no less), had his salary suddenly increased so as to boost his annual pension to $241,000. The practice is unfair because employees or employers contribute to pensions based on salaries. When a salary is boosted around retirement, a shortfall is created between what a pension system has collected for an employee and what it must pay out for his lifetime.

Cooking the books to goose public pensions? What astute fiscal management! This problem is exacerbated by the fact that politicians use faulty and overly optimistic projections about future investment returns to justify high pension payouts. Politicians can run but they cannot hide for too long even if they rely on Stupid Debt Tricks to disguise the problems.

Remember the scandals over welfare queens and executive salaries? These are dwarfed by the ticking time bomb of inflated government salaries and crippling pension obligations for us to pay off in our taxes.

Already, communities are declaring bankruptcy, done in by skyrocketing public employee salaries and pension costs. We have only glimpsed the future and it is colored red-in more ways than one. As government revenues sink and government obligations rise, the red ink will spread across the nation; as will steps by Democrats to take our savings. We are only at Act One of this tragedy to come.

How bad is the problem?

This "Hidden Pension Fiasco" will cost us over one trillion dollars. Barack Obama and fellow traveling Democrats will hoist this problem on our shoulders via tax hikes yet to come. This trillion will be to benefit government workers, a key Democrat constituency, who know who butter their bread at our expense. Forbes:

"The tax hikes you face [to fully fund public pensions] will have a much more tangible impact on your financial life than anything a Social Security fix will entail," says Alicia Munnell, who runs Boston College's retirement center..


Government employees could care less about how well the investments backing their pensions fare, since they are guaranteed. Nor do they care who invests them. But we should. Pension funds are often turned over to politically connected firms, who may know the right people, but not the right way to invest. Our once and former car czar, Steven Rattner, is embroiled in what looks like a classic pay-to-play scandal involving politically connected investment boutiques being rewarded by politicians with deals to invest government pensions.

Money can be spread around by the pension fund managers to help politicians win campaigns. If their returns come up short, well, who cares? The taxpayers pay the price.

Why do government workers enjoy such sweet deals? They determine their own benefit packages, for one. But another fact plays a role: their powerful union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which can devote its resources -- money, votes, volunteer labor during campaigns -- to help elect Democrats win elections. The quid pro quo is sweetheart contracts that reward union members, and punish us, for the rest of their lives.

This is disgraceful.

Our money should not fund dream retirement packages for government workers. Government workers should not lead lives insulated from the risks and travails most of the public must bear. Are politicians too in hock to public unions to care that we may go in hock to fulfill their absurd deals?

Who will stop them?

Some far-sighted people are responding to this crisis in the making. These include an activist group seeking to publicize the problem websites that publicize the problem; even apostates who feel they have unjustly benefited and are outraged at ways public employees milk taxpayers. .

Even a legendary auto union leader, Barry Bluestone, sees risks of taxpayer revulsion leading to taxpayer revolt. How fitting that his op-ed (A Future for Public Unions) ran in the Boston Globe, home of the original Tea Party. Bluestone warns that the future of public unions is in jeopardy should they follow the practices that helped wreck the American-owned auto industry. He looks back at how auto unions often:

... insisted on job classifications and work rules that undermined efficiency and compromised the industry's competitiveness.


He sees history repeating itself:

Will public-sector unions follow the same path? Nationwide, these unions represent over 35 percent of federal, state, and local employees, roughly the same as in 1980. Over the years, they have won improved wages and benefits for their members. Yet the leaders of many of these unions, particularly in Massachusetts, seem to be setting the stage for the same kind of deterioration we see in unions like the UAW.

Teachers unions refuse to make changes in work practices that could help improve the chances of children succeeding in school. Police unions fight against lowering the cost of details at construction sites. The MBTA union and others representing transport workers lobby vociferously against reforming the state's transportation system. Municipal unions refuse to permit their local communities to join the Group Insurance Commission that would save their towns millions without compromising the quality of their members' medical care.

As a result, between 2000 and 2008, the price of state and local public services has increased by 41 percent nationally compared with 27 percent in private services. Even in the face of the worst fiscal crisis in decades, many state and local union leaders refuse to consider a wage freeze that could help preserve more of their members' jobs.


Bluestone notes that citizens and ultimately their elected representatives, will object to tax increases to pay for bloated union contracts and poor public service. Bluestone does not address the public pension time bomb that will only make our problems worse.

Of course, the key point is the need to make our elected representatives themselves pay for the steps they have taken over the years to enrich public unions at our expense. That is the only type of payback they understand: our votes. They should not come as cheaply or carelessly as they have in the past. They have cost us too much already.

Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.

Please be sure to go to the American Thinker website and checkout the links.

For the children?

The American Thinker has a great piece titled For the Children. Below is an excerpt from the piece.

"You know your poor, dedicated, underpaid teachers? They constituted the 6th highest-ranking industry in political contributions, and gave 88% of their money to Democrats. Of course you know Big Oil has to give more than your underpaid teachers, right? Wrong. The oil and gas industry ranked 19th; teachers contributed more than twice as much as Big Oil. Lawyers gave over seven times as much.?

The piece is a must read to be shared with friends, family, your children, liberals and democrats. I will caution that many Republicans as well have been taken away are rights. Make sure the next election that you are supporting individuals that support freedom and less government.

I posted the piece below but please click on the link to read the links in the story. The following American Thinker piece is titled For the Children.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.


For the Children
By Randall Hoven

Hey kids. I know you're not all that interested in politics, and you don't like to read too much. But, God bless you, you vote. That's understandable. It's hip to vote. P. Diddy urges you to do it. Most of the doors in your college dorm are adorned with Obama posters and news clippings. In 2008, the 18-29 age group voted 2-to-1 for Obama. And your college campus went wild the night he won.

But before you vote again, please consider reading the rest of this article. I'll try to make clear points and keep the paragraphs short. It's OK to listen to your iPod while you read.

Politics is actually kind of important. There are about 200 countries in the world; 200 different governments. In some countries, like North Korea, people have died by the millions due to starvation in just the last few years. In others, like the Congo, Sudan, Rwanda and others, people have died by the millions due to civil war or mass murder - again, in only the last few years, while you've been alive. Yet in other countries, like the US, obesity is considered one of our worst problems. Whether the worst problem you face is being overweight or hacked to death with machetes depends much on your country's politics.



No one has it figured out yet. Humans have been around for thousands of years, yet we still have hunger, poverty, disease, war, racism, hatred and all kinds of things that have made life miserable over thousands of years. So when some politician tells you he can get rid of all of these problems in the next 4 to 8 years, or they would go away if we could just get rid of his political opponents, he is being what is called "less than truthful."

But we're not totally stupid, either. We actually have made great progress in eliminating hunger, poverty, disease, etc. Do you know that from 1900 to 2000, for example, life expectancy went from 47 to 77 in the US? Yet in other countries, like Zimbabwe, the life expectancy today is just 46. You have to believe we did some things better in the US over our history, and we are doing some things better than Zimbabwe today.

Freedom is good. We actually have a good idea of what makes these kinds of differences among countries: freedom. Countries where people can own property and are free to buy and sell what they want, are the countries that are much better off. (Some people call this "capitalism", but it is really just freedom.) Countries where the government has more control over what you can have, buy and sell, do worse. For more reading on this, go here.

Communism is bad. Communism is not just another "ism." In the last 100 years, Communism killed about 100 million people. While I'm sure you heard of Nazism's Jewish Holocaust of 6 million, you probably haven't heard about this 17-times-bigger Communist holocaust. But it's documented in the Black Book of Communism, and the numbers are not really disputed, just ignored. Also, communist countries like North Korea and Cuba kill citizens who simply try to leave the country - today. Communism, along with Nazism and fascism, represent one end of the political spectrum -- the one where government makes most of the decisions, or the opposite of freedom. For more reading on this, go here.

What to fix? Many of us want to make the world a better place. Where would you start: in one of the richest countries on earth where people live fairly long, like the US, or in one of the poorest countries where people die fairly young, like Zimbabwe? It seems kind of dumb to me that the first place we would try to change the most would be the US. It seems to me we should try to change the places that are the most miserable, like North Korea, Zimbabwe and a bunch of other countries on earth. Also, in a place already doing pretty well, like the US, should we try changing everything at once, or try just a few things at a time and see if they work out before we try the next things?

The US is really pretty good. You can convince yourself of this by looking up data like wealth and income statistics, life expectancies, number of patents, etc., not to mention putting man on the moon. Or you could travel. Here are some tips for things to look for when you travel: can you drink the water without getting sick? Do they have toilets, and if so, where does the stuff go when you flush it? The biggest boosts to life expectancy are clean drinking water and a good sewage system. It ain't rocket science, but there are many places on earth where it would be a good idea to bring your own bottled water and TP.

Republicans aren't driven by racism.

Slavery started in the US colonies between 1619 and 1650. Abraham Lincoln, took office in 1861, or after more than 200 years of slavery in the US. The Republican Party originated as an anti-slavery party. And sure enough, Lincoln, the very first Republican President, did end slavery in the US. It took the Civil War and about 620,000 American lives, including Lincoln's own, but slavery ended.
When blacks were being lynched in the decades following the Civil War, it was Republicans in the US Congress who tried to pass anti-lynching laws. The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was sponsored by US Congressman L.C. Dyer, Republican of Missouri, in 1922. It was passed by the House of Representatives, majority Republican at the time. It was supported by President Warren G. Harding, Republican, as well as the NAACP. But it was defeated in the Senate by a filibuster from Democrats.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 won a higher percentage of Republican votes (about 4-to-1 in favor) than it did of Democrat votes (about 2-to-1 in favor). Al Gore's father, for example, was a Senator who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Republicans have been fairly consistent about race over the decades: they want the law to be blind to race. When government forms have a box for you to check what race you are, that is not color-blind. When your college has different ACT/SAT/LSAT test score cutoffs for applicants of different races, that is not color-blind. And you know that.

Fat cats vs. the little guy. This is one of the best cases of "branding" and one of the biggest myths ever perpetrated by political public relations. But you can follow the money yourself, on web sites like OpenSecrets or Newsmeat.

For example, if we look at the top contributing industries in the 2007-8 Congressional cycle, all of the top ten gave most of their money to Democrats (in fact, the top 14 did). Here are some of those top industries and what percent of their political contributions went to Democrats.

Lawyers and law firms (78%)
Securities/Investment (65%)
Real Estate (57%)
Misc. Business (70%)
Business Services (73%)
Misc. Finance (54%).

You know your poor, dedicated, underpaid teachers? They constituted the 6th highest-ranking industry in political contributions, and gave 88% of their money to Democrats. Of course you know Big Oil has to give more than your underpaid teachers, right? Wrong. The oil and gas industry ranked 19th; teachers contributed more than twice as much as Big Oil. Lawyers gave over seven times as much.

It might be a rip-off. Maybe you've heard of Bernie Madoff or R. Allen Stanford. They were both investment fund managers, but arrested this past year for ripping off their customers for billions of dollars. Madoff was recently convicted. They both gave big to politicians, over a million dollars combined, with almost all of it going to Democrats.

Although the Bob Dylan song Like a Rolling Stone is old now it's still considered pretty cool. Ponder these lyrics from that song.

"Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal."

When someone says he can make wonderful things happen if you would just give him more of your money (including a tax hike), consider that he might be Bob Dylan's diplomat who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat. He's not really where it's at.

The rip-off, small or large, is an old, old game. The best test of whether someone is ripping you off is not how nice his smile is; it's whether he's asking you to give him something.

Conservative can be cool. You probably wouldn't know it, but the following people are either outright Republican or have expressed support for Republican candidates or conservative or libertarian ideas.

Stephen Baldwin (yes, Alec's brother)
Drew Carey
Jeff Foxworthy
Kelsey Grammer
Sammy Hagar
Angie Harmon
Patricia Heaton
Dennis Hopper
Kathy Ireland
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Larry the Cable Guy
Kid Rock
Gary Sinise
Lynn Swan
Jon Voight
Bruce Willis
James Woods
And a whole lot more

Even 50 Cent complimented, I think, President Bush.

Use your head. Virtually everything you've watched on TV or the movies in your lifetime, from the Care Bears to Oprah Winfrey and the latest Terminator movie, told you to follow your heart, not your head.

Tell me, the last time you got ripped off, was it because you followed your head too much? What about your friends who got pregnant or got someone else pregnant when they didn't want to -- was it their head that got them in trouble? Do you think Hitler's main fault was too much reason and rationality? When you really, really want to hit someone, does that urge come from your head, your heart or your gut?

I don't know about you, but my heart always told me to sleep late, skip school, tell my boss what I really think of this job, have another drink, and call the ex-girlfriend. My head, to my chagrin, said stay in school, keep my pants on, don't quit this job until I have another one, and apologize to my wife whether I did something wrong or not. In my experience, listening to my head paid off better.

You have a brain, and it's OK to use it. No one else can think for you. And now you have easier access to information than humans have ever had before. A few decent links to information-laden web sites are here. And my advice is to go for the raw data and not rely too much on someone else's analysis -- not Al Gore's, and not even mine.

That's enough for now, kids. And before you start thinking about how to "give back," try paying your own car insurance and cell phone bill.

Randall Hoven, the father of two 19-year-olds and a 25-year-old, can be contacted at randall.hoven@gmail.com or via his web site, kulak.worldbreak.com.

Teachers Are Not Suffering During This Economic Downtown

These are your tax dollars being used against you folks. Sure is a heck of a lot of money not being used in classrooms. The following information was sent to me via the Education Intelligence Agency.

"The budget was put together prior to reaching a tentative contract with NEA's staff union, but it already provided for salary/benefit expenditures of more than $118 million for a staff of 555.


The proposed 2009-10 NEA budget forecasts $355.8 million in revenue, an increase of $10 million over this year. The headlines warn us of massive teacher layoffs across the nation, but NEA modified its projection of new teacher members upward. Originally expecting an increase of 5,000 new teacher members for 2009-10, the latest proposed budget now predicts 7,000 new teacher members.

Nevertheless, virtually every NEA program will receive more funding, and spending on salaries and benefits for employees will increase 7.7%, even though the union is funding five fewer positions than in 2008-09."

Read more about it at the Education Intelligence Agency.

Cathy

Yet Another Reason Why We Do Not Need an Income Tax in New Hampshire.

When you have an income tax you lose whatever little local control over education you have as a taxpayer. When more tax dollars come from the state instead of the local communities, teacher unions can lobby the state for increased funds thus accelerating the spending race in public education.

If we get an income tax in New Hampshire you will see education salaries sky rocket to the levels they are in Illinois. An income tax will not guarantee lowered property taxes, budget deficits or an underfunded pension system. Illinois' pensions are currently underfunded by 27 billion dollars.

Interesting tidbits from the article below.

"More than 40,000 Illinois public school employees, or about 25 percent, have total compensation of more than $100,000 per year."

"Over the past five years, that totals about 75,000 unemployed teachers. What other profession has a 30 percent unemployment rate but growing numbers of $100,000 salaries?"

This ladies and gentlemen is why we must rip public education from the iron fisted grip of the unions and educrat associations.

Quote of the Day - "Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks." Current Communist Goals
Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES -
January 10, 1963

The following article appears at the Heartland Institute's website.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Illinois Public School Teachers Out-Earn Private Sector

Written By: Bill Zettler
Published In: School Reform News > April 2009
Publication date: 04/01/2009
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
While most of us struggle to make ends meet and put off our retirement plans in today’s contracting economy, Illinois school employees continue their unabated raid on public funds.

In fiscal year 2008, 11,254 Illinois public school employees had annual salaries exceeding $100,000, up from 9,591 in 2007. When pensions, retirement health insurance, and employee insurance are added, public school employees’ total compensation is about 30 percent more than their salary. That means more than 40,000 Illinois public school employees, or about 25 percent, have total compensation of more than $100,000 per year.

And that $100,000 does not include the value of tenure or a nine-month work year.




Comparing Compensation

As the accompanying table indicates, many subjects being taught by very highly compensated public employees could easily be outsourced to the private sector for much less.

Another point of comparison is how much these public employees could make in the private sector with their education and experience. For example, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for the Chicago area, salaries for non-teachers with bachelor’s degrees in fine art range from $24,000 for floral designers to $58,000 for painters, sculptors, and commercial designers working 12 months a year. Yet the state’s taxpayers give 71 public school teachers statewide, employed just nine months a year, between $100,000 and $161,000 a year in total compensation for those same skills.

In addition, taxpayers must guarantee the teachers their jobs (tenure) and pensions, whereas the private sector guarantees neither.

The same dynamic applies to other subjects, such as music, dance, and physical education. It seems unlikely, for example, that many experts in Latin and Hebrew make $137,000 plus tenure and pension in the private sector. To my knowledge, neither priests nor rabbis make nearly that much.


High Hourly Rates

The hourly rate calculation shows teaching jobs in Illinois compare favorably to the billing rate for professional services such as lawyers—except a lawyer’s hourly rate would include overhead such as cars, phones, computers, office space, and secretaries. What the lawyer takes home is a fraction of the hourly rate, whereas Illinois teachers are taking all of it home. And of course, no one guarantees a lawyer’s job or pension.

Thus the state could save the taxpayers some money by hiring a lawyer to teach driver’s ed or, better yet, to teach Latin, pro bono.

Teachers and their unions frequently argue they need to be paid more, or otherwise fewer qualified people will enter the profession. But substitute teachers are available for about $150 per day. Why not hire one to replace that $1,400 per day art teacher?

Also, according to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), Illinois districts outside the Chicago area pay much less yet seem to be able to fill their positions without a problem. For example, Cairo District 1 has a driver’s ed teacher with 19 years of experience working for a salary of $41,000 and an art teacher with 28 years of experience working for $52,000 a year.

Even allowing for a substantial cost-of-living adjustment, those public employee positions are filled at a fraction of the cost suburban Chicago schools pay.


Replacements Waiting

Most importantly, ISBE reports in 2007 there were at least 18,000 more newly certified teachers in Illinois than available teaching jobs. Over the past five years, that totals about 75,000 unemployed teachers. What other profession has a 30 percent unemployment rate but growing numbers of $100,000 salaries?

Clearly it’s wrong to say school districts won’t be able to hire teachers without paying six-figure salaries. The only thing making taxpayers liable for the outlandish compensation plans seen in the Chicago area is collusion between politicians and the teacher unions.

Taxpayers should not be forced to pay more for a given service than it should cost if purchased from the private sector. Taxes are exacted from the citizenry for the common good, and no good is served by overpaying for public services.

Why New Hampshire Does Not Need An Income Tax Again.

The following piece appears at LoHud.com. If New Hampshire gets an income tax it will tax away what little local control of our education tax dollars we have as taxpayers. The below piece eloquently points out the problems with strong teachers unions.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.


Teacher's union won't cooperate

Re Jo Rein's March 20 Community View ("A call for compromise on Mamaroneck school budget"): I agree with everything except asking the teachers' union for voluntary concessions. The chance of getting any meaningful concessions from any New York teachers' unions are zero, simply because they don't have to.



The writer asks, please, for concessions. Where have you ever heard the organization paying out money, allowing the recipient to dictate terms?

The 600,000-member teachers unions in New York are the most powerful special interest group in Albany - in 2008 they were the No. 1 spender in lobbying money, and among the top three in contributions to political candidates. Last year the union beat back attempts by the Assembly to pass laws allowing the firing of incompetent teachers (based on test scores), and capping annual increases in property taxes.

Our teachers are well paid, have gold-plated health and retirement benefits, up to 16 weeks off per year, and virtually 100 percent job security. I'd guess of their 600,000 members, as close to zero percent as mathematically possible were fired for incompetence.

You have to distinguish between the teachers with whom you interact all year, and their union. One has the best interests of our children at heart, the other has only one interest, and that is power.

So avoid any attempts at meaningful discussions with the union and concentrate on what we can control - elimination of courses and services. There is always the problem of unfunded state mandates - I wonder what group is lobbying for that.

Joe Gorman

Larchmont

Commentary by Marcus Winters - School funding doesn't add up

The following piece appeared in the Washington Times. Marcus Winters has worked on a number of pieces with Jay P. Greene the author of Education Myths: What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About our Schools—and Why It Isn’t So

Cathy



WINTERS: School funding doesn't add up
Marcus Winters
Friday, March 20, 2009

COMMENTARY:

Though $53.6 billion in "stabilization" funds has dramatically softened the blow, several states and public school districts still need to cut teacher payrolls to make ends meet.

California, for one, intends to cut about 20,000 teachers - about 6 percent of public school teachers in the state - of which 5,500 are in the struggling Los Angeles public schools. School districts in Arizona, Michigan, New Hampshire and other states are also planning layoffs. If the economy doesn't get better, all school systems will face even tougher circumstances when those federal supplements run out, a time not so far from now.

It's unfortunate that any teachers at all are losing their jobs for no other reason than the financial situation, but it's outrageous that the cuts will come without any thought given to which teachers would be least missed.

The powerful collective-bargaining agreements that govern teacher employment in just about every public school system in the United States leave little to no discretion to these systems in deciding which teachers should get the axe when times are tough. Public school layoffs occur by seniority. Teacher classroom success plays no role in determining who stays or who goes.

That's too bad for kids, because who teaches them makes an enormous difference in how much they learn. Empirical research finds that teacher quality is the single most important educational input within a school's control. The best estimates are that the difference in effectiveness between a good teacher and a bad one, judged in terms of student performance, is equivalent to a year's worth of academic work.

An even wider body of research shows that the number of years that a teacher has been employed in a classroom is simply unrelated to her ability to advance student proficiency. We now know that a teacher is at her worst her first year in the classroom, she gets a little better during the next two years, and she never really improves after that.

If there is no reason to believe that their experience makes them more effective, why does the public school system favor more senior teachers? Because it is designed for the adults who work in it, not the students it is supposed to serve. Teachers' unions plead that their members must be treated like their counterparts in the medical and legal professions, but they demand to be protected as if they worked on a factory floor and to be paid as uniformly.

Not even teachers unions' mouthpieces argue that classroom effectiveness is directly related to seniority. Instead, they say seniority is the only "fair" way to distribute layoffs because we don't have accurate ways of measuring teacher ability. But that's like saying we can't build entirely earthquake-proof homes so we may as well build them out of straw. No organization has a perfect measure of employee effectiveness. Therefore firms use a variety of tools to judge the quality of their workers. Public schools can and should do the same.

The unions get the most squeamish when standardized test scores of their students are used to assess teacher quality. It's true that test scores are imperfect measures of student proficiency. Even when researchers focus on "value-added" performance - that is, the gains that students make in a year, rather than their overall score, which is strongly influenced by factors outside of the school's or the teacher's control - they must grapple with a host of statistical issues. Consequently, it would be irresponsible to use test scores alone in making staffing cuts or allocating pay.

But test scores are certainly reliable enough to inform such decisions. While it is true some students might not make test-score gains for any number of reasons outside of a teacher's control, low standardized-test results can at least put up a warning flag.

Principals' observations are another underrated means of evaluating teacher quality. Recent research by Brian Jacob and Lars Lefgren finds that principals are in fact very good at identifying both the most effective and the least effective teachers, though understandably less good at ranking those closer to the average. The most reliable system, of course, would employ a combination of both qualitative and quantitative measures.

In his important speech on education policy the other day, President Obama challenged school systems to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom. But as California and other school systems are finding, they can't do that unless they dramatically change teachers' terms of employment. Doing so should in fact elevate the profession as a whole by protecting and rewarding its most shining examples.

Marcus Winters is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.