F. Jim in person

F. Jim Sensenbrener's town hall schedule:

Saturday, October 15: 9:00am Thiensville Village Hall

Saturday, October 15: 1:00pm Glendale North Shore Public Library

Sunday, October 16: 7:00pm Delafield Town Hall

Saturday, October 29: 9:00am West Allis Public Library

Saturday, October 29: 1:00pm Hartland Village Hall

Sunday, October 30: 7:00pm Germantown Village Hall

Friday, November 11: 1:00pm Slinger Village Hall

Saturday, November 12: 9:00am Mequon Public Safety Bldg

Saturday, November 12: 1:00pm Brown Deer Public Library

Sunday, November 13: 7:00pm Pewaukee City Hall

WISN changes "Talk Star" Rules

Some of you may remember that local Clear Channel radio station WISN held a "Talk Star" contest--kind of an American Idol for yakkers--to fill an empty morning drive-time slot. I thought about trying out, until I read the local paper's media guy say that the implication was that they would not hire someone who deviates from their conservative tone that the rest of the station's talkers have.

Well, as it turns out, largely through the efforts of former contributor here Tim Schilke and the readers of the Daily Kos, the liberal contestant, Nicole Devlin, actually won. (Yay us!) However, as Tim notes, WISN is changing the rules:

In the spirit of "fair and balanced" airtime, ClearChannel management has hijacked the Milwaukee Talk Star competition out from under us. Instead of fulfilling the original contest rules ("That person will be offered a two-year contract to be the morning drive talk show host on News-Talk 1130 WISN"), they are putting Nicole on the morning show with a raving lunatic wingnut, Dan Deibert. He's been the temporary fill in on this morning show for a few months now, and he's earned the permanent gig as "Talk Over Man", doing his best company man impression as he fulfills his role as ClearChannel thought policeman.

This guy is so far right he makes Jerry Falwell look like Michael Moore. And he's loud. Certainly louder than Nicole, and louder than most of his callers. His voice is loud, his opinions are loud, and most of all, he's ignorant. His suburban bubble is so evident, so transparent, that he may as well be playing trivial pursuit against George Castanza from Seinfeld. His ignorance shines through on a daily basis, highlighted by his giddy laughter when a caller in the wake of Hurricane Katrina suggested that the hurricane might be simply "culling the herd".

Nicole's first show is this Monday from 5:30-8:30 a.m. I think WISN needs a call-in campaign. "What contest did this guy win?" is a good question.

Friday Random Ten

The you'd better come to the Coffee House tonight for the food pantry benefit where I am playing the music of Pink Floyd along with several other highly talented folk and acoustic performers or I will come over to your house and beat you with a stick Edition

1. "Stay (Wasting Time)" Dave Matthews Band from Before These Crowded Streets
2. "The Weather" Richard Shindell from Reunion Hill
3. "Floating Bridge" Eric Clapton from Another Ticket
4. "Montpelier" Girlyman from Remember Who I Am
5. "I Told Him That My Dog Wouldn't Run" Patty Larkin from À Gogo
6. "Only One Shoe" Carrie Newcomer from An Angel at My Shoulder
7. "What's He Building" Tom Waits from Mule Variations
8. "Comin' Around" Steve Earle from The Revolution Starts Now
9. "Desolation Row" Bill Camplin from Bob Dylan Project One
10. "Freedom Rider" Traffic from Feelin' Alright: The Best Of

For those keeping score

in the trials concerning Milwaukee voter fraud, the current total is Fraud 1, not Fraud 2. Geez, even the Brewers did better than that this year.

Burke's probably going to jail; Scooter's still in the Assembly

Former State Sen. Brian Burke pleaded guilty yesterday to misconduct:

For the crimes, [Burke] could serve jail time and be ordered to reimburse the state tens of thousands of dollars--funds that could come from his still-open campaign account. [. . .]

The plea deal comes less than a month before [Former Democratic State Sen. Chuck] Chvala is slated to go on trial on allegations of exchanging action on bills for campaign contributions and illegally controlling an independent political committee.

Three Republicans are scheduled to go to trial early next year on charges of having aides campaign on state time. They are Rep. Scott Jensen of the Town of Brookfield, former Rep. Steven Foti of Oconomowoc and former Rep. Bonnie Ladwig of Racine. Jensen's lawyer, Stephen Meyer, said there had been no plea bargain talks on behalf of Jensen, who faces three felonies and one misdemeanor charge of having Capitol aides campaign on state time. Earlier this week, Foti's attorney said he was trying to negotiate a plea deal for the former Assembly majority leader who faces one felony of having aides campaign on state time.

Chvala and the three Republicans were in leadership positions at the time of the charges. Jensen stepped down as Assembly speaker but unlike the others, ran for re-election.

All of these charges stemmed from the same investigation of the same kinds of practices by all those in power in Madison at the time. In fact, there was speculation that before Burke reached his deal, he was going to go with an "everybody was doing it" defense. With Foti likely to plead, too, and things looking ugly for Chvala (and probably Ladwig) after Burke's deal, one has to wonder about Scottt Jensen. It's possible he was caught by accident in the investigation that netted the others in conduct that will likely send them to jail, but I bet Scooter was one of the everybodies doing it when they all got caught. So why is he still in office? The others had the sense to hang it up in the face of these charges, while Scooter's still writing law and sitting on the powerful Joint Finance Committee. How is that right?

"And if you're alive in two thousand and five . . ."

You'll want to come out to the Coffee House Friday night for a Food Pantry benefit featuring the music of Pink Floyd as interpreted by your humble folkbum, among others. $3 and a couple of cans of food is all it takes to get in. My set includes "Fearless," "Wot's . . . uh, the Deal?," "Coming Back to Life," "If," and a medley of "Point Me at the Sky" (from which the title of this post is taken) and "Learning to Fly."

Details here.

Sure, let's "lift the cap" so we get more of this

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has withheld initial payments to ten of 115 schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice voucher program:

In most cases, the schools did not submit required financial reports by the deadline. [. . .]

Schools that did not submit a financial report by the deadline were: DJ Perkins Academy of Excellence, Excel Learning Academy, Family Montessori School, Howard's Learning Academy, Ida B. Wells Academy, Kindergarten Plus, Malaika Early Learning Center and Veritas Academy.

Officials at the state Department of Public Instruction, which oversees the voucher program, said they received a report from Kindergarten Plus Tuesday, but have not yet released the checks.

Two other schools, Bridge of Hope Christian Academy and Loving A Generation Preschool, did not submit required student lists. Ida B. Wells submitted neither the student list nor the financial report, according to department officials.

While you may be tempted to dismiss the problems here as a few pieces of missed paperwork, let's remember that DPI is authorized to shut down voucher schools for only two reasons--if the school is physically unsafe, or if the school is financially mismanaged. The thinking, apparently, is that mismanagement of the checkbook is a red flag for mismanagement in the curriculum, and that's why we don't need academic standards. The administrators at these schools, then, know how critical these deadlines and pieces of paper are; any schools that can't handle it shouldn't be trusted with students. This guy, for example, should never have been allowed to run a school. Now he's in jail.

This is the problem with an ever-expanding system of virtually unregulated voucher schools--more and more storefront, fly-by-night operations will open with the hopes of scoring some of your tax dollars, and more and more of them will be unable to meet even the state's embarassingly loose criteria for success. Last year, the first year DPI could stop payments in this fashion, only four schools missed the deadline, compared to this year's ten. And what makes this worse is that not all of this year's problem schools are even of the storefront variety--some, like Veritas, are established schools with people who should know what they're doing at the helm.

So, what happens if these schools never get it together? And what of students in schools who could meet the paperwork deadline, but would fail any objective measure of academic quality? (Check this this directory of schools for an eye-opening read about where your tax dollars go.) The students, in these cases, are the ones who truly lose out. They don't get back the time they lost in mismanaged, underperforming schools. Even if they make their way to an MPS school (with no money attached, since it's long past third Friday), they will be behind their peers; MPS schools and teachers will have to work doubly hard to make sure they don't get lost in the shuffle and can catch up by year's end. In the marketplace, there are always winners and losers, and it frustrates me to no end that some in this state want to keep funding loser schools.

Now, in the end, for many of these schools, it probably is just a missed deadline, and paperwork will eventually make its way to DPI. But this story should remind us just how little assurance we have in this city that there are standards of quality in place to make certain that our tax money is well spent, that this second taxpayer-supported school system is worth the cost. "Lift the cap," the other side says, so that what? More students enter the black hole that is the voucher program? More schools miss even these rundimentary deadlines? No thank you.

MPS Health Care Arbitration, beating the dead horse edition

Yes, yes, I've written about the Milwaukee Public Schools arbitration decision before--a lot. But I A) have yet to hear a coherent argument as to why I'm wrong (including in the arbitrator's decision (.pdf)), and B) have found someone who agrees with me but does so more eloquently.

To sum up: The Milwaukee Public Schools and the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association did not reach a voluntary settlement in contract talks for the 2003-2005 contract. The primary hold-up was health insurance, and the district's refusal to settle for anything less than exactly what they wanted. As the union made more good faith efforts at offering fair compromises, the district drew a line in the sand and then walked away.

On the first day teachers reported to work this school year, the arbitrator hearing the dispute, Jay Grenig, ruled in favor of the district. The decision meant that the administration's risky and dangerous proposal was accepted, and changes to health coverage begin in less than a month.

This process has hurt the taxpayers of Milwaukee in two ways: One, the district's refusal to reach a voluntary settlement meant more than a year under the old, more expensive system. We're talking millions of dollars down the drain, here. In rejecting every fair compromise offered by the union, the district pushed its tax levy to the maximum to make up for the costs of its own intransigence.

Secondly, as Dominique Paul Noth of the Milwaukee Labor Press explains (no link, sorry),

Rather than imposing out-of-pocket costs on emplyers, the [MTEA] proposed across-the-board salary contributions whether a member used health care or not [. . .]. The rejected union plan [. . .] would have enlarged the pool of contributors and guaranteed the finiancial reduction in the health costs to the school board. [. . .]

Grenig's final decision reads like an educated guess that, while the teachers' approach would save more money definitively for the first years, the MPS approach would work in the longer term.

It's worse than that. Yes, it's awful that the administration's solution is bad for taxpayers now. But, as I've said before, as long as MPS self-funds its health insurance, the divergence within the insurance plans prompted by the decision serves only to drive this district toward bankruptcy. A concentration of high-cost ill employees in the expensive plan will outweigh the payments from majorities of teachers in the inexpensive plan, upsetting the risk pool and sending us toward ruin. Why Grenig couldn't see that, I don't know. I guess he just assumed (and you can see it in language like "significant overutilization of many services") that teachers would just stop getting sick. I think I'm getting sick now.

And as I have also argued here, nobody knows this. The newspaper finally admitted, last week, that the union's proposal also called for teachers to pay for insurance. They said, though, that the administration's "method would give teachers incentives to control costs and thus help slow the soaring price of health care--a goal not achieved by the teachers' proposal." This, too, is deceptive: The MTEA put years of research into a plan that would do exactly what MPS planned to do with their risky scheme--control increasing costs. From an MTEA newsletter, behind a membership wall, sadly (MTEA members, it's here):

Throughout the intensive mediation process this May, the MTEA's teacher bargaining team has repeatedly offered the school board's team creative, long-term solutions to rising health care costs. Our health and productivity management (H&PM) proposal emphasizes education, wellness, and prevention - not shifting costs to employees. Research indicates that a jointly-developed, proactive H&PM program could save MPS an estimated total of $90,000,000 in just three years. The board's team excluded this approach in its most recent "final" offer on May 26.

Noth also lets the media have it for faulty coverage on the issue in the Milwaukee Labor Press:

Local media apparently didn't read the arbitrator's 76-page decision [. . .]. If they had, fairness would have required a different emphasis to the stories, editorials, and talk-show glee that followed--including a realization that the union plan would have saved taxpayers more money, immediately and guaranteed. [. . .]

You certainly didn't hear [from news coverage] that the MTEA plan would have been instantly more generous to the taxpayers and also showed a social conscience in making higher-paid members contribute more than low-income workers.

Remember what I said last week--if the union plan had been selected, I would be paying about $960 for family health care this year. Now, if I moved to the HMO and maxed it out, I'd pay only $450, plus co-pays and drug costs. On the Aetna plan, we have a worst-case max of $600, plus co-pays and drug costs--maybe $800, tops, which is less than 2% of my income. Consider, though, an educational assistant with more than two people in her family, earning just $16,000. She would max out Aetna at $900 plus co-pays and drug costs, which could easily top $1300 or $1500 depending on the health of her family. Nearly 10% of income for health care? Unacceptable.

Next time you feel like complaining about how we high-paid teachers aren't contributing to our health care, ask why the arbitrator selected the plan that keeps my costs low and screws the paraprofessionals (and taxpayers!) instead. That's the real crime.

So here's the deal: There are not enough hours in the day

Seriously. What's up with that?

Today, I spent more than an hour after school with the superintendent, who finally made the fourth of the his scheduled meetings with us since June. For those keeping score, we will not be going multiplex. There is something, though.

There is a ton of news out there, but I can't give it much attention now. I'll start with a link to the new Advocate Weekly.

Not good news first thing in the morning: SCOTUS

I'm lifting this comment wholesale:

David Frum at the National Review wrote the following about Harriet Miers just last Thursday:

In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.

Yikes.

Yikes, indeed. Of course, it makes me wonder if Plame indictments are coming this afternoon, that they had to get so far ahead of today's news cycle.

Your weekend read

Jim Horn has it. Drop everything for ten minutes and read The Education Reformation of NCLB and the Crusade to Kill Public Schools.

End of Quarter: Donate to Bryan Kennedy Today

His website is here.

That is all.

Friday Random Ten

The Blame Game Edition

1. "Wisteria" Richard Shindell from Courier Bonus CD
2. "Thinkin' Out Loud" Mulgrew Miller from Hand in Hand
3. "Borrowed Bride" Old 97s from Drag it Up
4. "You Stay Here" Willy Porter from High Wire Live
5. "Molly" Don Conoscenti from Extremely Live at Eddie's Attic
6. "What Kind of Live is This" Carrie Newcomer from My True Name
7. "Tower Song" Townes Van Zandt from Live at the Old Quarter
8. "I Know What Kind of Love This Is" The Nields from Live from Northampton
9. "Forty Thousand Headmen" Traffic from Feelin' Alright: The Best Of
10. "Say Something" Ellis Paul from Say Something

And remember: The food pantry needs your food, and I need your body, at the Coffee House next Friday, 10/07, at the Pink Floyd-themed tribute featuring me, Don Schiewer, Gary Kitchin, and Fred and Ethel.

Another victory!

A much littler one, but far more symbolic. When I started this little escapade, people sometimes found me by Googling "rants." I spent a long time in the 41-50 range for returned results in those searches.

Well, through no fault of my own, I have now finally broken the top ten hits. Woo-hoo!

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Longest day of the year. Except there are four of them. Anyway, the first one is tonight, which means I won't get to blogging--heck, I won't get home--until nigh on 8:00 tonight. Enjoy the links, including the new Carnival of the Badger at Fred's place.

I read banned books

It's Banned Books Week, and I'm playing the game. The underlined ones are ones I have read (bolded ones are ones I've taught):

Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What? by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Yes, it's true; I've neve read Slaughterhouse Five. But I think I've done pretty well, considering that many of these are children's books published long after I've been a child. Your turn!

-6.13, -5.95

Those are my results at the Political Compass. Some of you may have noticed that I added it to the top, just so any visitors know what they're getting. And, since everyone else is doing it, there's this one:

You are a Social Liberal (73% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (16% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test

I would not call myself a socialist--though the right half of the Cheddarsphere will love it!--but a Democrat. I'm kind of sad that this poll does not identify me as such. Oh well--something to discuss at Drinking Liberally tomorrow.

Drinking Liberally Tomorrow

Come by Club Garibaldi and hang out for a while.

Kennedy on TV

Nice guy and candidate for Congress in Wisconsin's 5th CD Bryan Kennedy has released what we believe to be the first TV ad for any Congressional campaign in the 2006 cycle, going after F. You and Your Mother Sensenbrenner's softer support based on F. Jim's vote against aid to Hurricane Katrina victims.

You can see the ad here, and contribute here to help keep it up on the air beyond just this week.

I think this is a good move, and a good sign. In 2004, Bryan was hampered by poor name recognition and a lack of funds to get much TV (if any; what with the TiVo, I don't really see the commercials). That he can afford a buy now speaks well of his fund-raising and bodes well for his chances next year.

You can also help to stop the rest of the Katrina 11, if you're so inclined!

The Squeaky Wheel? More on MPS, MTEA, and health care

I don't know if I can take credit for it or not, but after a number of posts here on the issue, letters to editors, and an email exchange with a reporter, I see that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an editorial up today that, for the first time since the arbitrator's decision--and the revised story, at that--admits in print that the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association's proposal asked teachers to pay for their health care, too:

Outside of prescription drugs, health care had been virtually cost-free for teachers, but not, of course, for taxpayers. And soaring health care costs had led to educational cutbacks. The administration proposed that teachers start picking up a share of the costs. The Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association eventually agreed to do so--a breakthrough that failed to go far enough. The union sought to peg the share teachers pay to their salaries. The administration sought to peg it to actual costs [of the Aetna plan only, not the HMO--ed.].

The administration argued, persuasively, that its method would give teachers incentives to control costs and thus help slow the soaring price of health care--a goal not achieved by the teachers' proposal.

I've been through this before: As long as MPS self-funds its health-care program, it is stupid and dangerous to divide employees into healthy teachers who pay little and ill teachers who pay more. It will not take long for the proportions to fall completely out of whack, to where the healthy teachers' contributions no longer cover a significant portion of the ill teachers' costs; this will cause the cost of the Aetna plan to keep skyrocketing, causing an even greater disparity, causing further increases, and so on until the district is bankrupted by its own health care plan.

The next post I write for the Superintendent Report Card Blog will be in part, I think, about how this district is caught in a crisis not of its own making--the debacle that is our national health care system. The "soaring price of health care" has naught to do with MPS teachers' taking care of themselves and their families, but rather an impotence among our national leadership to do something about the problem. However, MPS had an opportunity in this last contract to work collaboratively with its employees to find ways to fund its insurance program that were both fair and comprehensive. Instead, the superintendent and his labor relations lawyers dug their heels in and refused to compromise. After more than a year of obstruction on their part--a year in which taxpayers bore the costs of their refusal to settle!--the district won an arbitration doomed to push us toward bankruptcy, and now they get lauded as heroes.

Disgusting.