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Weekend Reading

U.S. Herd Immunity

Rush Limbaugh captivated dads like mine and created America's modern fascist aesthetic

Newsmax Host Attacks Biden’s 12-Year-Old Dog Champ: “Looks Like It’s From a Junkyard”

Donald Trump Jr. Rips Teachers Unions In Front Of A Gun Wall; Critics Go Ballistic
The Green New Deal Threatens Republicans’ Bread and Butter, it’s Not Just Competition in the Battle of Ideas
The Failure of the Media in Responding to the Lying Right

Born to Run: U.S cannabis enters the sweet spot

LESSONS FROM MY 4-MONTH SOCIAL MEDIA BREAK AND WHY DIGITAL DETOX IS NECESSARY

Utilities Offer Yield and a Way to Play Green Energy. And Their Stocks Are Cheap.

Weekend Reading

White Flights Returns, This Time From The Suburbs
Big Business Tax Breaks May Worsen Income Inequality
Big Coal Is Using This Small Oklahoma Town As A Toxic Waste Dump
Why Poverty Is Rising Faster In Suburbs Than Cities
Japan's Recovery Is The Greatest Economic Success Story Never Told
If The Economy Is So Great, Why Are 78 Million Hustling For Dimes?
The Financial Scandal No One Is Talking About
The Baby Boomer - Not Millennials - Screwed America
A New Genetic Clue To How Humans Got Such Big Brains
The Numbers That Explain Why Teachers Are In Revolt
No One Answers Their Phone Anymore
Why We Should Bulldoze The Business School
Mourning In America: What My Father, Ronald Reagan, Would Say

Walker Signs Vocational Education Teacher Measure

Walker Signs Vocational Education Teacher Measure

Gov. Scott Walker signed legislation Tuesday that will let districts hire vocational education teachers who do not hold traditional teachers licenses. ...

Critics, including the state Department of Public Instruction, the state's largest teachers union and university schools of education have raised concerns, saying the measure would lower the bar on teacher standards and create an uneven licensing system around the state.

How does lowering the bar for teacher licensing do anything to impact job growth in Wisconsin? So we can hire more under-qualified "teachers"? (But wouldn't this also imply that we'll be hiring less properly-licensed teachers?) Licensing standards are in place for a reason. We want teachers that have met certain requirements. 

Is this another Republican divide and conquer strategy aimed at the teachers union?

Through defunding and lowering qualification standards, Scott Walker is diminishing the quality of Wisconsin education.

Yet again, Wisconsin Republican policy choices seem to have nothing to do with moving Wisconsin forward. Rather, their legislation is a continual sludge of favors, paybacks, posturing and cronyism.

Wisconsin Reading

Scott Walker's Food Stamp Cuts Are Coming To A State Near You
In Wisconsin, Little Conserved By Radical Conservatives
Fewer Teachers, Less Experienced Teachers Mean Challenges for Wisconsin's Public Schools
Wisconsin's Public Sector is Leanest in Two Decades
Wisconsin Has Far Fewer State Employees Than Most States
Scott Walker Signs Bill Limiting Doe Probes As Records Are Released
The Use and Disclosure of Personal Email in the Walker Administration
"Wisconsin is Moving in the Right Direction"
Wisconsin Government Revenue is Not Out of Line
Slay The Wisconsin Gerrymander
Wisconsin Not High in Taxes, Spending
WEDC May Have Illegally Awarded $21 Million in Tax Credits
Wisconsin's Position Again Inflated in a Tax Ranking
Discovery of Census Flub Tempers State's Tax Hell Status

The Journal Sentinel's Fake Reality

Leave it to the Journal Sentinel to add in their usual big bowl of wrong following Tuesday's election.

Since Walker and the Republicans were victorious, it's up to the Democrats to "reach out and find common ground."

Yes, because the Democrats have been so unwilling to cooperate up until now? This false equivalency bullshit is so tired.

The idea that Democrats haven't been trying, forever, to negotiate on policy with the Republicans is ridiculous.

The Journal rants:

Pouting and stomping their feet doesn't work and will only drive them farther from state voters. That's a lesson they should have learned during the Act 10 days of protest when state senators fled for Illinois to delay a vote on the measure that effectively killed public sector unions in Wisconsin. Fist-shaking and name-calling wasn't effective then and isn't going to be very effective in the months ahead.

Has the Journal been paying attention to Republican politics for the last 40 years? The Republicans have been the party of pouting, stomping their feet, fist-shaking and name-calling.

The Democrats' claims against the Republicans for fraud, lying, deception, favoritism, cronyism, etc. have all been true.

The Republicans have manufactured a false reality for their constituents and the media has been a willing accessory.

The Journal continues:

Walker won, and not just because he ran a better campaign than Burke. At least 52% of voters like the governor and like his message better than they liked Burke's. They like balanced budgets. They like a healthier economy. And they think Walker and his fellow Republicans can deliver on those issues better than the Democrats can.

A balanced budget? A healthier economy? Republicans deliver [on these issues] better than the Democrats?

WTF?!

These claims are all demonstrably false! How can the Journal write such easily disproven drivel?

The Journal then attempts more revisionism:

Some of Walker's opponents argue that he has demonized public sector employees and teachers. He did not, although some of his supporters have.

So, it wasn't Scott Walker claiming unions [not Wall Street] destroyed the economy and teachers [not CEOs] are overpaid?

They continue with a 'Democrats are meanies' meme, "Many of Walker's opponents have demonized the governor and his supporters, comparing him to past dictators, for example, or charging that he is a puppet of the evil Koch brothers and big mining companies."

I guess the Journal would just like to ignore the fact that both of these claims are true. It seems their form of journalism has a real problem with calling it like it is.

Until Republicans and the Journal Sentinel can come to grips with reality, it looks like we will be faced with a continual string of false equivalencies and manufactured narratives.

Weekend Reading

As Divider-In-Chief, Gov. Scott Walker Is A Roaring Success
Everything You Think You Know About The News Is Probably Wrong

Around the world, people have a pretty good sense of the life expectancy of their country’s inhabitants. 

When it comes to most other social statistics, they have no idea. 

That’s the conclusion to be drawn from a study of public perception in 14 countries by Ipsos MORI, a UK-based market research firm. Ipsos polled over 11,000 residents in total about a range of social factors—from immigration to teen pregnancy to religious demographics. Here is the overall “Index of Ignorance,” from least to most informed: 

1. Italy
2. US
3. South Korea
4. Poland
5. Hungary
6. France
7. Canada
8. Belgium
9. Australia
10. Great Britain
11. Spain
12. Japan
13. Germany
14. Sweden

Southwest Airlines Transforms Air Service In Milwaukee

The Blame The Teachers Game: Has Any One Heard Of The South
Tax Foundation Ranks Wisconsin's Tax Climate 43rd In U.S.

Increase Wisconsin's Minimum Wage
Is The Affordable Care Act Working?
State Moving Forward On Hill Farms Land Sale, Redevelopment
Hill Farms Redevelopment Called Potential 'Backroom Deal'
The 10 Most Expensive State Programs
Car Dealers Are Awful. It's Time To Kill The Dumb Law That Keep Them In Business
7 Mental Biases That Could Impact How You Invest
Are 401(K) Plans Setting Up Millennials For Pain?
Economists Say We Should Tax The Rich At 90 Percent
10 Facts You May Not Know About The Federal Budget

All The Wealth The Middle Class Accumulated After 1940 Is Gone

Exploding Wealth Inequality In United States
Obama Is A Republican

Sunday Funnies With Stephen Colbert

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

It's The Teachers' Fault...

that Wisconsin students are performing so well.

Wisconsin's teachers are successful. The anti-union, right-wing, pro-business crowd always talks about rewarding success or, as they phrase it, "Not punishing success."

Shouldn't they be defending teacher compensation as a rightful outcome of the teachers' success?

Teachable Moment

Mike Konczal has a good post clarifying the wildly inaccurate Wisconsin teacher compensation myths that are being recklessly thrown about by anti-union cranks.

"The average teacher in Wisconsin has a smaller salary than the median Wisconsin household...The 2009 average salary across all [Wisconsin] districts is $48,267. The Census Bureau has the median [Wisconsin] household income at $51,237."

Is Our Children Learning?*

The Maciver Institute's "average" salary of over $100,000 for MPS teachers is making the rounds. Those damn educated bastards, with 16 years of experience, earning a decent wage. (It's actually around $50,000 per year on average.)

Luckily WEAC can correct the record an add some perspective:

"The average salary, which includes annual step increases for longevity and lane changes for educational attainment, was $51,264. Fifty-two percent of Wisconsin teachers hold master’s degrees and the average teacher has 16 years experience.

Once ranked 15th, teacher pay was capped in 1993 and has fallen ever since. Where teachers once received 103 percent of the national average in pay, they now receive only 93 percent.

In the last decade, real earnings for Wisconsin teachers declined by 2.3 percent. Teachers earn less today than they did a decade ago. Wisconsin ranked 46th nationally in salary change, with 45 states experiencing larger increases in income. "

How about some freakin' respect for teachers?! They not only have the responsibility of molding these young minds to compete, innovate, and grow, they have to babysit these brats daily and defend against never-ending public attacks from half-wits.

*

Ill-Advised

Some of the Journal Sentinel's Reader Advisory Committee reflect the uninformed and imbalanced portion of Wisconsin. Many of the Committee members, based on their writings, seem to believe in the various and numerous myths about our economy and society, primarily spread by self-interested right-wingers. I find it strange that people who read the newspaper and are aware of the internet are unable to fact-check their own drivel and the lies they seem to accept and repeat.

Susan Burkee thinks, regarding the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission, "Restoring fiscal sanity will require shared sacrifice, and everything needs to be on the table." The problem with such a statement regarding the Commission is that the recommendations call for the majority of the sacrifices to be made by everyday workers. Shared? Amongst everyone except the rich...which has been par for the course for the last four decades. A better idea would be taking back the ill-gotten gains of the uber wealthy over the past few decades, rather than continuing to punish laborers.

Jay Miller feels, "WEAC needs to be a better partner." Most Wisconsin communities have good teachers and good schools. Where are the "problem" areas? In areas with high concentrations of poverty. But somehow teachers in Wisconsin, who average $46,000 per year (ranking 21st in the country), are to blame for the economic conditions of the communities where they teach. Teachers have seen yearly increases of 2.15 percent over the past ten years. When adjusted for inflation, they have lost money. So, what do some think is the solution? Pay our teachers less and funnel more money from public to charter schools. Teacher salaries account for roughly thirty-percent of education expenditures. Yet somehow this is too much. Police account for over fifty percent of budgets in most areas, yet we never hear anyone talking about cutting their compensation, which would actually help budgeting much more. (Not to mention the fact that there is still crime no matter how many police we hire. Which is analogous because certain people want to blame every failing student on teachers, and therefore teachers must continually suffer the consequences. Well then, likewise, since police are not stopping all crime, they too should see a pay decrease.) I'm not for lowering the pay of either of these public servants. But some context and data has to be included in the framing of these discussions, and some of these red herrings need to be discarded altogether.

And, finally, Mabel Wong chimes in with a rant against the "Nanny State". She's upset that San Francisco will ban toys from fast-food meals unless they meet certain nutritional standards. Not a bad idea - encourage good eating with rewards for eating good. Mabel bellows, "Thanks, Nanny State. We couldn’t have made any sound choices without you." But rather than being sarcastic, as intended, she should be serious. We, as a nation, have shown we do not make sound choices. Hence, continued problems and some elevations in diabetes, obesity, drunken driving, tobacco usage, STDs, drug (street and prescription) abuse, etc. Also, around half of the population votes Republican. Yet only 1.5 percent of the population makes over $250,000 per year. Which means 48 percent or so vote against their own economic interests. I just wish the "Nanny State" would look out for the lower 98 percent more often and stop making policies intended for the top two percent, and hoping they trickle-down to the rest of us.