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5/10/2010
No surprise. WI union leaders want federal bailouts

This weekend public employee union leaders began begging “our leaders in Washington – including Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold – to prevent this looming economic catastrophe and help states like ours get back on track.” That’s Mary Goulding, president of AFSCME Council 40, “representing more than 33,000 public service, health care and child care employees in 71 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties” in a Sunday op-ed piece in the Green Bay Press Gazette.

The current state of the Wisconsin budget makes a few things clear: there are hundreds of elementary, middle, and high school teachers that may not have jobs next fall.

There are schools that will have to go without counselors, librarians and teaching aides. There are neighborhoods that will lose police, firefighters, crossing guards and other public safety officials. There are families who will lose child care, streets that won't be repaired, and crumbling structures that will remain that way after the city employees assigned to remove them are laid off.

Is it a coincidence that the president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association offers a similar plea via a piece in Sunday’s Journal Sentinel?

The first thing we can do is call on U.S. Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin to support the Keep Our Educators Working bill. The bill would give states immediate resources to prevent mass layoffs, drastic cuts in school services and larger class sizes.

It’s all for the kids, right? Of course, the article wants more licensed teachers, more art and music teachers and the continuous lament, smaller class sizes,

Instead of working with the city's teachers to obtain sustainable funding for our schools, which would help close the opportunity gap, MPS officials and the Journal Sentinel repeatedly attack teacher health benefit costs for the district's funding problems.

The truth is that taking away the health insurance plan that more than 80% of the city's teachers have chosen for their families is bad public policy. It will make attracting and retaining highly qualified educators even more difficult.

Benefits at MPS are 74% of salaries. And it costs over $14,000 per year to ‘educate’ each child in MPS.

Perhaps union employees could help the kids by simply chipping in for their pension funds, like most Americans do these days. Or will Wisconsin go the way of Greece and California?

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class…. The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct….

Some employee groups get it. Imagine. Taking a pay cut so fellow employees don’t lose their jobs and community members don’t lose services. Imagine, taking a pay cut (or increasing your health insurance and/or pension contributions??) … for our kids.

Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net

COMMENTS

No number of teachers and teacher aides can surrogate for parents. No matter how much you pay them, teachers cannot and will not carry the influence of parents. We need to expect less of teachers and pay them accordingly. They cannot reliably be who they softly assure us they are – academic muses. We must stop buying curricular legerdemain.

timbeaux (Mon May 10 07:05:30 2010)

It's real easy to blame the unions, and clearly they helped get us to where we are. But parents are struggling just to get and keep jobs and put food on the table. Like it or not it is difficult for them to also contribute to their kid's education.

All of this is part of the trashing of America that the massive transfer of wealth has brought on.

We must find ways that help encourage parents to become more involved, but also recognize their problems when they cannot.

Jack Lohman (Mon May 10 07:15:24 2010)

First make them poor them make then stupid. That is the clarion call of the rich who have, as a result of republican pandering, increased their wealth at the expense of the middle class. I never though I would see the day when the result of hard work would be the demise of the American middle class.

billie (Mon May 10 07:49:52 2010)

Greece is the word.

Unions want the feds to send more money - never mind that the contracts they have negotiated are fiscally unsustainable. So we're supposed to pay MORE AND MORE for promises that cannot be kept.

Maybe I don't recall correctly, but I thought the President said we were ALL supposed to "have some skin in the game" ... wouldn't that mean that those of us not in the 'protected class' (unions) pay a bit more to help us get through the mess AND those IN the 'protected class' make some concessions?

More money may be needed, but we ALSO need to be realistic about what we can afford and some sacrifices must be made by those holding the luxurious benefit packages.

Jeff (Mon May 10 08:13:05 2010)

Billie, we would not have trashed the middle class had our politicians not been on the take. But they allowed campaign contributions to influence their removal of good-sense regulations and to foster an unfettered, free-for-all marketplace.

Jack Lohman (Mon May 10 08:13:52 2010)

I've got an idea.

How about parents, instead of incessantly complaining about how the teachers tasked with raising their children can never hit the mark, forego their 3-stall garage, snowmobile, boat, Cable television, marble countertops, Escalades, gym memberships, Tommy Hilfiger attire, vacation home, timeshare, and everything else that is nothing more than a status symbol -and get down to the basics. Then return to a single-income household and raise and educate your children yourself!

That would open up all kind of employment opportunities for all those parents or single moms who truly CAN'T afford not to work.

"That's too hard." "That's unreasonable." "This is the 21st century." If that's what you're thinking, THAT's the problem - and it's YOUR problem. Things don't get this far out of hand without parents, and people in general, letting it happen.

I would like to know what imbecile concluded that education had anything to do with GOVERNment in the first place. Apparently parenthood ends at producing offspring. And we wonder at what has happened to The Family.

Andrew Ellis (Mon May 10 09:28:47 2010)

Jack, where there's a will there's a way. For years my spouse and I were not what could be called well-off; almost 50% of what we made went to housing. We have friends with 12 kids, and only one wage earner working for around $18/hr. Other friends have 9 kids, one wage-earner and he is self-employed with much fewer projects coming in due to the economy. Our kids are not all angels, but we do take an interest in them.

We all homeschool our children because it is important to us. It is a matter of priorities as I said. And yes, the unions ARE to blame, take Kiel school district as an example. Despite the fact that all the kids could tell he was "weird" (I know some who had gone to Kiel High), that he'd been fired from Green Bay (OK, they told him to resign), and despite previous allegations of sexual predation from 2006 in GB, Kiel hired Ryan Zellner. And all the teachers covered up for him. (As opposed to Hubby, who is "under investigation" at his school because he keeps a Bible on his desk!)

One former student says her aunt is a teacher at Kiel, and she questioned her aunt and said he was "creepy" (he is). Yet all her aunt did was to defend him. How could all the teachers be so "blind" and all the kids know!?

Zellner was asked to resign in GB by J. Wilson, who refused to say why he asked him to resign. C'mon, my husband lost a job in teaching once, and they said WHY--he was "too hard" gradewise. (He didn't believe in inflating grades.) Wilson knows very well why he fired Zellner! But he's too afraid to say--administrators are not in the NEA.

Just watch "Stupid in America" and see the reality. In some states they CANNOT fire sex predators! What the Belgians do for education, as elucidated in the film, makes eminent sense, and we should do the same. (The order in reality is FIRST make them stupid THEN make them poor--because they're unemployable.)

Billie, nobody in the US is poor considering the world situation. In other words, one could be receiving food stamps here yet (allowing for currency exchange rate), be in the super-tax bracket in another country. I know, as I also know people who'd lived in those two very scenarios. I also lived in Europe, and the US is STILL better off than they are, despite our high unemployment, etc. And remember, one of the goals of communists is to destroy the middle class, so you essentially end up with only two classes. Until you do destroy the middle class, it is there, acting as a buffer.

I agree, both GOP AND Dems have done their bit to grow the gov't until it's gargantuan, and to suck up as much in taxes as they can, to give to their "pets" who have lobbyists in BOTH camps. (Watch "Big Sugar"). But just remember, "the rich" are the ones who have enough money to hire us. Nobody ever got a job from a poor person yet!

As to the politicians taking money from lobbyists, this wouldn't even be a problem if the federal gov't weren't making "rewards" to states or special interests. Stop the handouts and the whiners will quit!

It all started with the Federal Reserve, which when it was set up, had a "safeguard" which would make the taxpayers pay, when the inevitable mess came crashing to the ground. It snowballed with FDR, who started the whole concept of payouts (to states, to programs, to institutions), and thus the lobbyists came swarming.

There's no point in asking for pork if you have no chance of getting it! STOP the federal redistribution of tax money to corporations like Cargill, Tyson, and ConAgra, or to states, and they won't come asking anymore. STOP the revolving door between the likes of Monsanto and federal appointments.

Once again, I say READ David Crockett's "Not Yours to Give"! When will the gov't ever learn to just say NO!?

emily matthews (Mon May 10 10:04:37 2010)

We need to have our WI public employees,teachers,county and city employees,state and university employees etc pay their own share of WI
Retirement System versus WE the taxpayers paying the employer and employee share of WRS plus the taxpayers are also paying the public employer's share of social security for
the public employee. I realize this unheard of and most generous benie is covered by most collective bargaining agreements....but hey let's change the collective bargaining agreement the next time its up for negotiation.We the taxpayer can no longer afford spending millions of scarce tax dollar across the state of WI for this double WRS payment for public employees. Is your private or nonprofit employer paying your share of a
retirement system payment and the employer share also??? I expect the answer is a big NO way! The tax dollars
saved could be utilized to retain teachers and other public servants from being laid off. I have discussed this double payment of WRS for public employees in WI by WE the taxpayers with both Reps & Dem legislators and nothing is done. Afterall, the Legislators are covered under WRS and they too are receiving the double payment to WRS. Let's change this double pay to WRS.....call or write your School Board,City officials, County Supervisors,State Legislators,
have public employees pay their own share of WRS!!!

Dave (Mon May 10 11:06:28 2010)

A recent research piece regarding degrees indicated that degrees in education both secondary and elementary education were not a good investment. Average starting salaries were 32K and mid-career salaries were 52K. Both professions ranked in the 10 worst degree catagories ranking 2nd and 4th worst. It is no wonder after the bloom is off the rose the best and brightest leave the profession for opportunities that compensate them for their education and skill. B

billie (Mon May 10 15:43:58 2010)

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