David Horowitz hates ME!!!!!

Woo-hoo! I have now made the scene, the big time. I am da man! I am right up there with, erm, Michael Berube!

Yes, lowly ol' me, lucky to get 50 hits a day on my meagre blog, I have achieved something only a select few can: I have been dissed by David Horowitz:

I was surfing the blogosphere the other day and came across an eye-catching sentence on a blog called “Folkbum’s Rambles and Rants,” which describes itself as being “A Small Squeaky Cog in the Vast Leftwing Conspiracy.” [ed. he can't even cut and paste right; I know that left-wing is a hyphenate] Actually it was two sentences that caught my eye and they went like this: “Do we also have to start rounding up the college professors and putting them in camps? David Horowitz is this close to being that explicit.”

In the course of my campaign for academic freedom on college campuses, I’ve grown used to malicious, mendacious and unprincipled attacks from leftists in general and Democrats in particular, people who generally like to preen themselves as “liberals” but haven’t had a tolerant impulse in years. [. . .]

Folkbum’s suggestion that I am out to put professors into camps certainly raises the bar a bit. This is the first time I believe that my modest proposal to hold academics to their own academic freedom guidelines while extending them to students has been called “Nazi.” Where could Folkbum have come up with this idea?

As it happens, the link from my name leads to a site created by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, and George Soros’ current point man at the Center for American Progress. Podesta’s site, called Think Progress is one of many that Podesta has launched from his 501©3 cum Political Action Committee. The link from my name on Folkbum takes the reader to a page on the Podesta site which is part of its regular feature “Radical Right-wing Agenda.”

First: "Surfing the blogosphere" my ass! The man was doing a Technorati search on his own name, the egotistical bastard. (I get little enough traffic, I know where most of it comes from.) Maybe not egotistical, exactly, but it seems clear from the way he wrote the article that he was trolling for someone saying bad things about him. I guess he has to earn that paycheck somehow.

Horowitz, since he's not one of my three or four regular readers, seemed to miss the fact that I use a lot of hyperbole. Let me give you the full context of the sentences he is quoting, found in a post titled, "Evolution vs. Creationism," and you decide if you think I'm being serious:

Recent weeks have brought us the Terri Schiavo debacle, in which prominent public Christians everywhere saw a train and rode it until the money stopped coming in; the death of the Pope and everyone who had ever once called him senile or wacko trying to say how much Bush was just as holy as he was; the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference, featuring conservative activists quoting Satlin ; and, tonight, "Justice Sunday," wherein the nation's Republican and Christian leaders gather to make the case on national television that Democrat=Godless Heathen. [. . .]

But the arguments for ID and against evolution have gotten more insidious. Take this guy: "But pastor and parent Ray Mummert, 54, explained their point. 'If we continue to indoctrinate our young people with non-religious principles, we're headed for an internal destruction of this society,' he said. [. . .] 'We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture,' he said."

It puts me in mind of the "Bart's Comet" episode of "The Simpsons." In order to make certain that another comet never threatens to destroy the town again, the good people of Springfield decide to destroy the observatory. When it becomes a problem for people to be educated, then you know we've gone too far. Is it not enough that we have people quoting Stalin? Do we also have to start rounding up the college professors and putting them in camps? David Horowitz is this close to being that explicit.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, in a paragraph where my most salient point is based on an episode of "The Simpsons," I am deathly earnest in my "suggestion that [Horowitz is] out to put professors into camps."

I'm not seriously suggesting any such thing, although, as others have noted before me, the efforts of Horowitz and his ilk to impose strict ideological restrictions on institutions of higher learning are pretty frightening. More frightening is Horowitz's "database" (that's a link to Salon; get the day pass and read the whole thing) which links nice guys like Barack Obama to terrorists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Sadly, I searched the database and found that I have not yet been added. (David, if you're reading this--and given your tendency to Technorati yourself, I bet you are!--let me know if you need a head shot, 'kay?)

At any rate, click through to the Think Progress link I originally used. Read up. Then Technorati Horowitz, and read more about him. He is the lunatic fringe. Me? I'm happy to just stay a small, squeaky cog.

Friday Random Ten

The 3000 songs and there's still a repeat artist in the mix edition

1. "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her" Simon and Garfunkle from The Best of Simon and Garfunkle
2. "Wasteland of the Free" Iris Dement from E-Town Live Two
3. "If I Were Made Of Metal" Patty Larkin from Step Into The Light
4. "Make Sure You're Sure" Joshua Redman from Wish
5. "Last Kisses" The Nields from Play
6. "Love Throws A Line" Patty Griffin from Impossible Dream
7. "Halfway Home" Darryl Purpose from Same River Twice
8. "Chief" Patty Griffin from 1000 Kisses
9. "Hey, Hey, Hey" Chris Smither from Chris Smither Live At McCabe's Guitar Shop
10. "Forever Nightshade Mary" Peter Mulvey from Deep Blue

Quickies

1. All that glitters is not gold Marquette has given up on calling themselves the gold. Apparently they'll do an on-line survey using names suggested back in 1994 when they picked the Golden Eagles.

Which is too bad, since I have lots of good ideas, like the Marquette Waffles, the Marquette Folders, the Waive, the Marquette Caves, or maybe the Marquette Whatevers.

2. Ouch. Just--ouch.

3. The first two warrants were issued following the Milwaukee voting irregularities investigation, both for people who faked names on registration forms in order to get more money in the pay-per-signature scheme. (Jim Doyle's proposed reforms would prohibit this. Republicans have stalled on it while pimping voter ID.)

All the folkbum fraud writing you need

in one package. That's the one you can send to your friends and neighbors.

Wisconsin Wednesday: Everybody's talking 'bout FRAUD

Especially the sore-losing Republicans. Really--go click through the list. Some of them are feeling unjustly vindicated; some are being pretty rude about it. Still, there's nothing in today's news that gives them anything to really crow over. (Even if you decide to skip the rest of this post, please click through that last link and take the poll!)

At any rate, I noticed in my third reading of the US Attorney's report (.pdf) something interesting:

The task force has individually reviewed hundreds of names and addresses associated with the various databases suggesting that thousands of people registered and voted using suspect names and/or addresses. To date, the investigation has concentrated on the 70,000+ same-day registrations. To date, we have found that a large majority of the reported errors were the result of data-entry errors, such as street address numbers being transposed. However, the investigation has found more than 100 instances where votes were cast in a manner suggesting fraud.

The report then lists the specifics. But what I bolded there is the key: In order to register at the polls--the task force only looked at these--you must show ID. That means every single one of these 100+ fraudsters showed some proof of identity when they got to the polls!

The major push on now from the right and Republicans is to require photo ID at the polls. I guess I should say it's the only push, given that in the four years since Florida 2000 and the three years since the Help America Vote Act, the single election reform offered by our state's Republican leaders has been the photo ID requirement. Yeah, yeah, there's a "Special Committee" in the legislature "investigating" election reform, but every time anyone else--the Milwaukee daily paper, for example--suggests we wait until we have a handle on the problems instead of legislating in haste, they are mocked repeatedly by bloggers, politicians, and right-wing media figures. (The acronym is IOKIYAR--it's okay if you're a Republican.)

But to me, the fact that the Republican legislature has passed photo ID twice without any evidence that it would prevent fraud--or at the very least, that its benefits would outweigh its disadvantages (more on that in a minute)--shows how photo ID is mere partisan politics, not good electoral reform.

What's worse, there is no way any sane person could possibly believe that the current flaws--exploited now by people already showing proof of identity--would not continue to exist were photo ID required. Right now, here's what you need to register at the polls:

Voters who miss the voter registration deadline may-on election day-go to the polling place that serves the election district or ward in which they've qualified to vote, and ask that they be allowed to register, then vote. Voters must provide proof of residence-for 10 days or more-in the election district or ward. Acceptable forms of identification include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Wisconsin Driver's license.
2. Residential lease that is effective for a period that includes election day.
3. A gas, electric or telephone bill for the period beginning not more than 90 days before the election day.
4. University, college or technical institute fee card.

Of course, the photo ID is optional; but if you're going to go to the trouble of faking a lease, stealing a utility bill, or knocking off a college ID, what's to stop you from getting the fake photo ID? Nothing! I will say it again (you can say it with me): The photo ID requirement will not stop those determined to break the law. It will, however, stop those who--because they are old, poor, transient, homeless, shut-ins, or paranoid--don't have or can't produce their IDs.

Let's put it another way. You've heard it said--I mean, even I have said it before--that if the photo-ID law were to go into effect, we would end up with voting laws as strict as South Carolina. (There's nothing like trying to scare us nice northern folk with threats of becoming good ol' boys, eh?) But there is something to be said against adopting a law that would make it harder to vote in Wisconsin than in two-thirds of the rest of the country.

But let's look at South Carolina: In 2004, Wisconsin's turnout was third highest among eligible voters (not just registered voters!) at 73.9%. South Carolina was third from the bottom, at 51.9%. Admittedly, SC beat the recent nation-wide trend of fewer than half of eligible voters voting, but in a year when turnout overall was up 6.4%, you'd expect that. By another set of numbers (there's a lot going around) that gives full data, Wisconsin is second in turnout, and South Carolina is last except for Hawaii--the state that votes last and always has the poorest turnout (and which, incidentally, requires photo ID). The photo ID states, in fact, rank 51 (HI), 50 (SC), 43 (GA), 30 (LA), 14 (FL) and, oddly, 8 (SD). States that require ID (not necessarily a photo) at the polls rank 49 (AR), 43 (AZ), 40 (AL), 39 (TN), 33 (KY), 29 (VA), 20 (MT), 18 (DE), 13 (MO), 9 (CO), and 6 (AK). In other words, the bottom half of states require ID far more often than the top.

By any set of data, Wisconsin had 22% more of its eligible citizens voting than SC did. Certainly, some of that is due in part to same-day registration--which can boost vote totals by up to 5%--but not all (the top five states all have either same-day registration or vote-by-mail). I also don't want to say that 22% of people will stay home on election day, either, if they have to show ID. But some will--some of the discrepancy between SC and WI must be the ID requirement. Not all 22%, of course, but something. So split the difference: What if 11% of Wisconsin's voters stopped voting due to the ID requirement? Using 2004 turnout numbers, that would be 330,000 people.

Here's my question: Are Republicans in this state really willing to cut 330,000 people out of the process? Even half that--150,000--is obscene. And this is all because there are maybe--maybe--150 people committing fraud? Are we really willing to trade five or ten percent of our electorate for a requirement that probably won't stop the .005% who are breaking the law?

Here's the bottom line: I've seen the conservative half of Wisconsin's bloggers seriously asking the question: Should it be easier for someone to vote than to buy beer? lease an apartment? rent a movie? get a fishing license? The answer, of course, is yes. Voting is not a privilege. Voting is not a right. Voting is a fundamental obligation for people living in a democracy, even a representative one like ours. Any obstacle--whether it be a poll tax or a draconian ID requirement--that keeps people away from the polls is unacceptable. Anyone who tells you that voting should be hard is out to suppress the will of the people. Remember when they finally got the state's biggest lobbyist to admit that more voting would "turn out the wrong people"? This is what the vote suppressors in Wisconsin want--to keep the "wrong people" (read: Democrats) from voting.

I am a big-D Democrat. I admit it; I'm even obtusely partisan at times. But more than that, I am a small-d democrat. I believe in the will of the people, the voice of the people. I believe that our goal must always and only be 100% voter participation. I will not abide those whose sole desire seems to be making it harder for people to vote, especially when the provisions they wish to enact will not stop or deter those determined to commit fraud in the first place. I am proud of Wisconsin's ranking as second only to Minnesota in voter turnout; anything less would be a tremendous black eye on the very face of our small-d democracy.

I think we can make a trade . . .

Assembly Speaker John Gard (R-Peshtigo [er, Sun Prairie--ed.]) said if Doyle again vetoes the [photo ID] requirement, he would move to make it part of the state constitution, a two-year process that requires a statewide referendum but does not require the approval of the governor.

"The next presidential election in Wisconsin, I guarantee you'll need a photo ID to vote," said Gard, who is running for the U.S. House. "I'll get this done if it is the last thing I do around here."

Throw in the elimination of the QEO and you got yourself a deal!

Teaching Tuesday: Big Brother runs your charter school

Alert reader SusanHu (okay, she doesn't read my blog, but she reads, and seems alert) caught a disturbing story about a Florida charter school:

Charter Schools USA is threatening legal action against parents who use an Internet discussion board to air grievances about Gateway Charter.

Parent Angela Reigelman, who created the virtual forum, received a letter via FedEx on Thursday ordering her to remove the forum. The company also warned other Web contributors Thursday. [. . .]

"CSUSA has reviewed the Web site and has determined that your and other parents' and other Web site participants' published accusations, comments and statements are unlawful, defamatory and libelous against CSUSA, Gateway Charter School and Dr. Nauss," attorney Lisa MacClugage stated in the letter to Reigelman.

"Accordingly, CSUSA hereby demands that you immediately cease and desist your continuous published libel and defamatory accusations, comments and statements."

First of all, I'm glad my name isn't MacClugage--makes me think of fast-food travel bags. Second, this is quite disturbing: Perhaps the single greatest selling point the charter school movement uses with the public is their line about parental involvement. CSUSA itself says, "All CSUSA educational advantages exceed public school standards, including small class size, integrated technology, parental involvement contracts, [etc.]." The list goes on from there; what the parents discussed on that website of theirs included all those things on the list (follow the first link above for examples).

At what point does somebody stand up and say that it's time to stop the corporate mentality in our schools? It's enronomics all over again. Worse, this school is playing George W. Bush with its parents. There was even "a May 3 letter to parents signed by the PTO's executive board stating: 'In light of the fact that various individuals and groups are trying to politicize the PTO, we have decided to cancel all further PTO meetings for the duration of the 2004-05 school year.' " That's like canceling the annual terrorism report because it shows that we're losing.

As long as we keep pushing our schools in this direction--a push that comes with far too many tax dollars--we are inviting this kind of abuse and corruption.

(Via shari, via Joe.)

Voter Fraud Investigation--Update

I'm just writing a new post, instead of updating the one below, as Blogger seems to be down for maintenance and I can't get in to update. I wrote that one in haste on my way out of school, and had not had a chance to hear any of the press conference. Luckily, I then spent an hour fifteen in construction and construction overflow traffic, and heard some snippets.

Several notes first about the Borowski article, which has been updated. Someone--the reporter or the editors--has softened the dig at state Republicans at the end of the article. That's intriguing, because I think it's perfectly reasonable to criticize state Republicans on this issue. They have advanced exactly one voting reform, the voter ID. Noting else has come from them about fixing obvious and systemic flaws in elections in Milwaukee and elsewhere. It's as if not a damn thing else matters to them. Yet, the voter ID is the one thing that would not have made a bit of difference in the activities outlined today.

Borowski's piece has been expanded, here's an interesting note:

[Bush-appointee U.S. Attorney Steve] Biskupic said there was no indication of a widespread conspiracy to commit voter fraud, or of any knowledge or involvement by poll workers or any other city officials.

Nevertheless, he and McCann said they remain troubled that three months after the investigation started city officials still have been unable to account for a gap of about 4,500, with more ballots counted than people listed as voting. [. . .]

Record-keeping problems by the city have meant investigators from the FBI and Milwaukee Police Department have logged more than 1,000 hours reviewing some 70,000 same-day registration cards, including 1,300 that could not be processed due to missing names, addresses and other information.

Indeed, about 100 cards described as "of interest to investigators" cannot be located, officials said. And within the past few weeks police found a different box of the cards at the Election Commission offices.

This will, I hope, put to rest the constant cries of "fraud!" among Wisconsin Republicans convinced that Kerry won Wisconsin only through malfeasance. There simply is no way that any wide-spread conspiracy--especially one involving up to 4600 overvotes--would go undetected for so long. The logistics would be murder.

The report also should confirm what Democrats have been admitting all along: Milwaukee's election system is more screwed up than (insert Paris Hilton joke here). I've long contended (do the Googling yourself) that it's only in elections this close that the kind of base incompetence and regular discrepancies come to light. Step one in cleaning up Milwaukee's election mess was getting rid of the deadwood at the top. Now it's a matter, as Tom Barrett has said, of adequately funding, training, and deploying election personnel.

I downloaded the preliminary report (you can, too, here in .pdf format) and read it, twice. In it, I still find no assertions of fraud that would have been stopped by voter ID. If there was more detail in this accusation that there were "more than 100 instances of suspected double-voting, voting in names of persons who likely did not vote, and/or voting in names believed to be fake," maybe there would be something to it. But these things--particularly the double-voting, as I noted in the post below--are easy to do with ID, as well. Double-voting is the fault of the poll workers, and a $20 fake ID can take care of the rest. Republicans are all about the "paper trail" that a voter ID would create, except that fake IDs leave no paper trail. As it is, I hope that they exhaust every resource available to them to bring anyone who did commit fraud--particularly those who falsified names on the registration rolls--so we can get to the bottom of it.

(An aside: One of the most disturbing things I've found about Wisconsin since moving here is that when you get a new driver's license, they give you the old license back. If I were unscrupulous, I could vote in my old Riverwest ward in addition to my current one. But I'm not that unscrupulous.)

The report is pretty scathing in its criticism of poll workers and city elections officials. This is my favorite part (and remember, when you register at the polls under current law, you must show proof of identity):

[I]n the November 2004 election, same-day registrations were accepted in which the [registration] card had incomplete information that would help establish identity. [. . .] There were part of approximately 1,300 same-day registrations for which votes were cast, but which election officials could not authenticate as proper voters within the City.

Included in this 1,300 were 141 same-day registrants from addresses outside the City of Milwaukee. In several instances, the voter explicitly listed municipality names other than Milwaukee on the registration cards. These included cards that listed "West Allis," "Oak Creek," "Ashland," "Reedsburg," and "Hayward."

My theory is that at least some of these were college students who did not vote at home but did not write their current addresses on the cards after showing proof of identity with their Milwaukee college address. The poll workers should have caught the discrepancy. But on November 2, most polling places were understaffed for how hopping they turned out to be--further evidence that we need more and better workers at the polls.

Asking for an ID will only inconvenience those there to vote legally, and will not dissuade anyone out to commit fraud. If anything, this report details exactly where the weaknesses are in Milwaukee's system and how to exploit them.

Stacie, Scott, and Bill Christofferson have more.

Voter Fraud Investigation--Press Conference

You can expect the other side to make a big deal about this:

Investigators today said they had found evidence of fraud in the Nov. 2 election in the City of Milwaukee, including cases of felons voting illegally and people who voted twice.

They found more than 100 instances of suspected double-voting and more than 200 felons who voted improperly in the city. They also found that at least six deputy registrars falsified 65 names in last year's voter registration drives, for which they were paid by the signature solicited. Authorities said there was no evidence those false names were used to cast ballots.

Widespread record-keeping failures will make it difficult to identify fraud and prosecute criminal cases, U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic and Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann said in a statement issued minutes before a 1 p.m. press conference. The two are leading the federal-local investigation that was launched in the wake of Journal Sentinel reports about election irregularities

Republicans in the state, stymied in their attempts to suppress votes with restrictive voter-ID legislation, will find plenty of ammo in here, and it will look good up until the point at which they realize it's all the equivalent of firing blanks.

First of all, even 300 cases of fraud is not anywhere near enough to change Kerry's margin of victory, let alone Russ Feingold's. Second, we have no idea whom the perpetrators voted for or, in the case of the felons, whether they knew they were not allowed to vote--a precondition to its being a crime.

And, third, I would like someone to explain to me how these examples of fraud would have been prevented by voter ID. If the poll workers are dim enough, missing the requisite steps to prevent someone from voting twice, how is that voter's flashing an ID going to make a difference?

In fact, every example of voting problems noted by the paper--and the Republican bloggers have heaped plenty of praise on Greg Borowski's reporting of the irregularities--is a problem that voter ID won't fix. Kind of makes you wonder how those Republicans feel when Borowski quite publicly disses them at the end of his article:

The newspaper's findings have also prompted a statewide audit of voting procedures. Republicans have cited the newspaper's reports in calling for reforms, including a photo ID requirement for voters. The photo ID measure passed the Legislature, but was vetoed by Gov. Jim Doyle.

Doyle, a Democrat, has issued his own package of election reforms, many of which target problems highlighted by the newspaper. Those have not been acted on by the Legislature, which has a task force looking into various reforms.

Makes you wonder whether the fraud isn't Republican in nature, with a concerted effort by them to keep real reform off the map . . .

Teaching Tuesday: How do I get on this Gravy Train?

There are those who complain that Congress does not care about the concerns of the little guy. But those people do not attend Alaska Christian College.

The school, founded five years ago and affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church, has 37 students. It is not accredited and does not grant degrees. It offers, instead, certificates in biblical studies at the end of a student's first year and certificates in biblical and general studies to those who complete a second. Over the past two years, Congress has given the school more than $1 million. [. . .]

[T]he school's most important critics these days are 3,600 miles away in Wisconsin, where the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing the Education Department to rescind the funding.

The advocacy group, which supports maintaining a strict separation between church and state, contends in a lawsuit filed last month that the subsidies amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of a religion. The government is allowed to give money to schools with religious affiliations. But the money must be used for secular purposes--which, the group contends, the Alaska school does not have.

"It has no purpose except to proselytize. It is not, truly, a college. It doesn't even offer math or English," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, the group's co-president. [. . .] ACC President Keith Hamilton rejected those complaints, pointing to the school's course offerings--choir, physical education, a class in leadership--that he said have little to do with religion

Your tax dollars at work, people.

So, do you think I should get about 40 kids, run them around a track (for Jesus!) and give them bibles, and start raking in the money? That has to be easier than my current 60-hour weeks at low pay trying to teach, you know, English to the kids who haven't been arrested yet for fighting . . .

My Music Monday: I Am

I also played this song at the show the other night. It stems from an assignment given to me to address my greatest weakness, which is brevity. Or, rather, lack thereof. So I was told I had to write a song in 100 words or less. And, if you count the refrain in this song only once, then I made it. Barely.

I Am
© 2004 Jay Bullock

I am the August sun burning through the trees
I am October’s rain, January’s freeze
I am the April mist that leaves behind the dew
I am everywhere, watching over you

I am “The Wasteland,” I am “Let it Be”
I am Mona Lisa, Psalm 23
I am the Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower too
I am everywhere, watching over you

Black and white, wrong and right
Earth, water, fire, air
Man and wife, death and life
I am everywhere

I am the mountain, the valley deep and wide
I am the forest, the rocky riverside
I am the farthest stars and the brightest moon
I am everywhere, watching over you

There's a song to sing for this . . .

. . . somthing about "Ding-dong, the witch is dead!"

Not to gloat or anything. TABOR is bad law, and its death is a good thing.

McIlheran doesn't read the paper he works for

Last Sunday, I laid into Patrick McIlheran, who is allowed to befoul the Milwaukee paper's "Crossroads" section every Sunday, for being a liar in his column on Social Security. (Note that the paper did not print the letter I submitted.)

This week, I'm not going to call him a liar, since I cannot find any outright falsehoods in his column. (I will point out that he is being misleading when he says that Wisconsin's tax burden in the fifth highest nationally; see the IWF.) Instead, I'm going to call him hacktacularly stoopid--that's right, stoopid with two o's, so you know I'm serious.

Before I explain why, let me just cite a little bit of the column so you know where I'm coming from:

Wisconsin's taxes are high. [. . .] We didn't reach this condition solely or even primarily by waste, fraud and abuse. That's why Muskego-Norway, while interesting, is not the issue. Racine is.

On April 5, the Racine Unified School District asked voters whether it could take in more money than state law allows, $8.9 million more for two years. Voters said no [. . .. In this, we see several reasons our taxes are high.

One is ceaseless demand. The district was seeking an extension of power voters had granted it a year before, not to fund extraordinary costs but for operating expenses. The district's one-more-chance to prove its frugality has long since passed: It has asked 15 times since the state leashed schools' appetites in 1993; voters agreed eight times. [. . .]

District officials talk of how they're constantly cutting, but the fact is that Racine's school spending rises every year even as enrollment does not. The district spent $166.7 million in 1997-'98; it is spending $252.7 million this year. Even after inflation, that's an average yearly increase of more than 4%, far higher than incomes.

That's not evidence of wastefulness. It's a sign that taxpayers must look critically at even legitimate spending.

Critics note that Racine teachers have a generous health care plan. Do teachers deserve good benefits? Sure. Do they deserve benefits exactly this good? I don't know.

First of all, McIlheran here is being a hack because not only is he treading ground that Mark Belling has utterly worn out, he's doing it with barely a fraction of the flair. I mean, consider the wuss-out at the end: He lacks the nerve to come right out and say what he and the ditto-heads bobbing along as they read are really thinking about, and that's all-out union-bashing.

It's also a pretty hacktacular piece because if he bothered to read the paper that he nominally works for, he wouldn't be sputtering the lame cliches. The news stories in the paper--much more likely to be built around facts than McIlheran's tired conservative whining--tell accurately the story of why Racine is in the trouble it's in. Let's start with something from just two weeks ago:

[Wisconsin's revenue] caps [. . .] "penalized prudence." Because Racine Unified was a low-spending district, the caps froze the district's budget at a lower number than other districts.

While each school district can add to its budget on a regular basis--the allowable increase this year was about $230 per student across the state--costs are increasing more quickly than revenue caps, he said. A higher spending district can more easily absorb the increasing costs, he added.

And what kind of increasing costs are we talking about? Well, remember that Racine is a lot like Milwuakee in the number of special education students and English Language Learners, not to mention students getting free and reduced lunch, the best measure of a district's poor students. All of these things make educating Racine's kids more expensive than average.

Is that all? Of course not! All McIlheran needed to do was dig a little deeper into the paper's archives, back to October, and an article entitled "School health costs affect pay":

Between 2002-'03 and 2003-'04, school districts in the seven-county Milwaukee area budgeted only 0.02% more for employee salaries at a time when the total amount for employee benefits rose by more than 8%, according to a report by the Public Policy Forum that's due out today.

"Employee benefits, especially the health care costs, are the key driver in municipal/ public school financing," said Jeffrey Browne, president of the forum, a non-partisan group that studies local government issues. "So what you have is relatively less resources going where we want them to go, which is into the classrooms." [. . .]

In Milwaukee Public Schools, which eliminated more than 600 positions during the period studied, the amount budgeted for salaries decreased by 3.4% even as money set aside for benefits rose by more than 8%. [. . .]

Some employees, in fact, are making a conscious decision to sacrifice wage increases for medical coverage, said Robert Stepien, executive director of business services for the Racine Unified School District.

Aha! So one problem is health care costs in the district, certainly not those greedy bastards' salaries. Clearly, we need to soak teachers on their health insurance, too, because that's much easier than recognizing that we have a bit of a crisis here in the Milwaukee area. What's that, you say? Your reading of McIlheran didn't suggest that there was any kind of wide-spread problem? Well, that could be because he never read that article from March noting that our costs are 27% above the Midwest's average. He also missed last summer's big sudy showing that Milwaukee had 68% higher hospital costs than the national average, among many other abysmal findings.

Hell, this week Russ Feingold wrote in the paper,

[T]he United States spends $5,670 per capita annually on health care, twice as much as any other industrialized country. Despite this spending, we are not healthier than other countries, and we still have tens of millions of Americans who lack insurance and countless others who remain underinsured.

Our expensive, inefficient health care system takes a staggering toll on American families and businesses.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for family coverage rose 59% from 2000 to 2004, compared to inflation growth of 9.7% and wage growth of 12.3%. The burden is just as devastating on businesses. On average, the cost to an employer of a family comprehensive coverage premium is $800 per month, close to the monthly minimum wage rate of $893 per month.

With costs going up every year, employers often have no choice but to shift much of the cost of health care to their employees, abandon health benefits to employees or eliminate positions.

Huh. Sounds to me like what's happening in Racine (and at many other school districts around the state, including mine) is no different than what's happening nationally and locally in the private sector. If McIlheran actually cared about you, me, or anything other than scoring easy points with lazy, recycled anti-public-school talking points, he would pick up on the health care angle and demand true reform. I've said it before and I'll say it again: If the state legislature had addressed the costs of health care a decade ago instead of capping school districts' revenue, districts would be solvent and all citizens of the state would have more money in their pockets due to lower health care costs. But the legislature, like McIlheran, found it easier to dump on schools.

What a hack.

Advocate Weekly

Joe Thomas has done the legwork again to put together an Advocate Weekly. This week, lots of information on NCLB, standardized testing in 1965, a couple of idiot governors, and a very compelling post about Milwaukee's voucher program (hmmmmm . . .). Block out an hour or so and get some required reading done.

Show Tonight

If you're not there, I will be very, very sad. In fact, I'm feeling a little sniffly now . . . but that could just be the allergies.

Friday Random Ten

The Guess Which One I'm Seeing Live Tonight? Edition

Lauren is running late with the rules.

1. "Even If" Girlyman from Remember Who I Am
2. "Forever Young" Bob Dylan from The Last Waltz Soundtrack
3. "Another Song About the Rain" Cracker from Cracker
4. "Barricades & Brickwalls" Kasey Chambers from Barricades & Brickwalls
5. "Adelaide" Old 97s from Drag It Up
6. "Gentle Arms of Eden" Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer from Drum Hat Buddha
7. "When I'm Up" Great Big Sea from Road Rage
8. "Gee baby, Ain't I Good to You" Diana Krall from All For You
9. "Jealousy" Natalie Merchant from Tigerlilly
10. "Anyday" Derek and the Dominoes from Layla and Other Love Songs

UPDATE: It was Girlyman, and it was awesome. No points to anyone, since no one guessed. Honorable mention to FJ, though, for at least commenting.

Not Blogging

Practicing for the show.

(And watching the auction.)

A coupla leftover Wisconsin Wednesday items

1. Marquette Gold? Gold? What, like you're the Harvard-blinking-Crimson now? Way to drop a brick, guys.

2. Mark Green makes it official. He's running. That means two things: A, I really, really need a Walker: Tosa Ranger-style disparaging nickname for him. It also means that we're not going to hear about a single real issue for 18 months. What did Green make a big deal of for his announcement? Voter ID.

3. Walker: Tosa Ranger is getting sued. If you click through the "Archived Coverage" links, you can read the whole sordid story and find that no one is really innocent. But you can also find another tale that looks bad for our wannabe-guv: When Walker came to power following the rout of F. Tom Ament, Susan Baldwin was only able to keep her job after signing an "agreement barring [her] from public criticism of the county." Then he "enthusiastically endorsed her plans to close the budget gap" at the parks department. Sadly, that plan involved closing pools and other unpopular things, and that August was hot. So Walker "staged a made-for-TV reopening of the wading pool in Gordon Park and introduced an interim parks director while offering little explanation" about why he fired Parks Director Susan Baldwin. That's right--he canned her, after "enthusiastically" approving the budget she presented. Sadly, she was under that agreement not to criticize the county, so she couldn't even defend herself against Walker's lies. J-Dizzle isn't my favorite governor, but we don't need Walker's underhanded duplicity in Madison.

For more on Walker: Tosa Ranger's hijinks this week, see Bill Christofferson here and here.

Wisconsin Wednesday: The People's Legislature

I think what I like most about Ed Garvey is that he shares my sense of humor. Or that I share his. ("Our credibility comes from the fact that we're not running for anything," he said. "Well, I'm thinking about running for the car.")

I spent my day Saturday with Ed at the People's Legislature in their fourth outing (following Madison, LaCrosse, and Cable). We met first in the Bruce Guadalupe school's cafegymnatorium; I walked in to a sea of 500 empty (and, I later learned, very uncomfortable) resin chairs. The chairs ended up staying mostly empty; the organizers tell me that there were 200 people there overall, but the steady stream of people in and out meant that there weren't more than 100 at a time in the room. It was also a starkly white crowd. As time went on, more non-white folks came in, but it stayed primarily white. There was a great range of age and socio-economic status (near as I could tell), though, and a very large contingent of Unitarians.

TPL is all about revolt against the lobbyist-owned legislature in Madison. There are 803 paid lobbyists in Madison (at last count), for 132 legislators. That's a half-dozen lobbyists per. The original idea was that if we could get 804 unpaid citizen lobbyists (the extra person is to guarantee a win if it came down to tug of war) to go to Madison, then they'd have to listen, right?

The morning began with a half-dozen speakers, including Ed Garvey. The other speakers:

1. Rev. Tucker Jones, from the Free Will Community Baptist Church, who also lamented the poor minority turnout, which kind of tied into the story he told about the poor minority presence at all levels of government. He told the story about working for the state Department of Workforce Development back in the 1980s when it had a different name. He was the only African American who worked there then, and since he left there hasn't been another hired.
   
   
2. Nino Amato, from the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group. He really laid the groundwork for what the People's Legislature is all about by opening with the story of Chvala and Jensen and others who, two-and-a-half years ago, were charged with pretty massive levels of corruption. To date, nothing has happened. Scooter Jensen is sitting on the Joint Finance Committee even now. We have this cloud of corruption (in his words) just hovering over Madison. He regaled us with archetypical love stories: Lobbyist/ industry buys legislature; lobbyist/ industry drafts bill; bill introduced by in-pocket legislature; hearing the next day without time to get public there; bill passes; lobbyist/ industry live happily ever after.
   
   
3. Joe McClain, who talked about some of the history of organizing the African American community in Milwaukee.
   
   
4. Lauri Wynn, who reminded us of how difficult it is to change the locus of power. It doesn't just change hands; no one gives it up willingly. If you don't have the money to take it, you need the people to take the power. She also told the story--and I have heard it several times before--about how the first thing you do every morning is an inherently political activity: You flush the toilet. Think about everything political that's connected to the act of flushing the toilet. Where does the water (et al.) go when you flush? What happens to it? Where does the water come from that refills the toilet, so you can flush the next time? So anyone who claims that they have no connection to the political process either doesn't flush (eeww) or is lying. We all have a stake.
   
   
5. Mike McCabe, from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, closed this first part of the program. Had this been a rock concert, he would have been the headliner bringing the house down. In fact, he got the only standing ovation of the morning.
   
   McCabe started by asking a series of questions: "How many of you voted in the last election?" Nearly every hand in the room went up. "How many of you gave money in the last election?" Still, most every hand. "How many of you gave more than $500?" A dozen or so hands. "To just one candidate?" One hand left up in a roomful of people, and it was Ed Garvey's. McCabe pointed out then how this was indicative of the relative lack of power in the room. Sure, we were all regular voters and activists, but when our Wisconsin politicians have a choice of listening to a voter or listening to a donor, you know as well as I that they take door number two.
   
   McCabe noted how political donations have sullied Wisconsin, everything from utility companies usurping county government to the way a single, unelected official can direct millions of dollars to an Enron-accounting, off-shore tax-evading, under-FEC-investigation, Apartheid-supporting, Wisconsin-ripping-off company to compile that most precious of resources, our state voter lists.
   
   McCabe went on to discuss how the single biggest threat to our democracy in Wisconsin--even after all of that!--is elections and campaigns in which the results are utterly predetermined, either through big money or gerrymandering. Even if the outcome of an election is not entirely certain, you can be certain of who the "winners" will be; think about the dozens of people who gave thousands of dollars to both Scott McCallum and Jim Doyle, occasionally even on the same day! In that 2002 governor's race, not counting Ed Thompson's third-party bid, Doyle and McCallum spent $23 million. Three-quarters of that $23 million was contributed by just 1100 individuals. (2006 will not be any better.)
   
   As to gerrymandering, the Assembly and Senate districts are so rigged that a full 2.2 million Wisconsin voters--and I was one of them!--had no real choice in the November election. The intent of a Democracy is that voters are supposed to choose their representatives; here in Wisconsin, we have representatives drawing the maps to choose their voters.
   
   McCabe's final points concerned the politics of fear. We're living in what he (and I'm sure he got this from somebody) calls a "second period of major economic relocation." A century ago, we were moving from the farm to the factory. Today we're moving from the factory to . . . well, nobody knows. And that's the problem. Anyone can come in and play on that uncertainty. These "rewinders," as McCabe refers to them, sell people on the idea of a well-known past over an undetermined future. And that well-known past will always win unless someone can come along and offer a compelling alternative vision for the future. And no one is offering that. Because, well, there's no money in it, for one thing

After the speechifying, they threw open in the microphones for an "open forum." Sadly, as is usually the case, whenever they are open mics too many people feel they have to say something, even when they have nothing to say. I'm not, of course, in favor of shutting up or shutting out the average voter; it's just that the People's Legislature is designed around a pretty significant, if singular, issue, the reform of the Madison legislative process. Once the mics were open, though, people wanted to plug their own pet issues and wander off on unrelated rants.

Then came lunch (mmmmm, school cafeteria hot dogs), and the forum for the afternoon followed. The discussion centered on the four resolutions the first People's Legislature wrote and ratified in January. (We also ratified them, unanimously.) Here they are, with my own commentary and discussion:

1. Campaign finance reform. We will never have a people's legislature if the people aren't the ones buying it. Some of you may remember Senate Bill 46's ignoble death earlier this spring; Mike McCabe said that this was a good thing. Senator Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) said the right sorts of things when it died ("the current system 'corrupts' legislative leaders, who he said become so intent on raising money and winning on election day that they have to barter for cash in ways that destroy the Legislature's integrity"), but the bill was stripped key provisions offered in earlier legislative sessions. For one, it did not require full public financing of campaigns. If you want to stop the over-dependence on donor cash, you need to provide an attractive alternative to the donor cash. For another, it did not require full disclosure on non-candidate advertising.
   
   The bill to support, McCabe says, is AB392 (.pdf), which is co-sponsored by my guy in the Senate, Tim Carpenter, along with a dozen other legislators. It's an 83-page bill, but it's the real thing.
   
   The most important thing right now is to change Wisconsin's political culture. Currently, you're loooked at like an oddball if you want to run for office but have no money (see Ed Garvey 1998 or Peg Lautenschlager 2006). In places that have enacted comprehensive campaign finance reform--Maine and Arizona, for example, who achieved reform only through citizens' ballot initiatives--you're the crazy one if you're trying to run for office with millions. This will bring normal, non-megalomaniacal people back into politics. It might mean a return to the two-party system (from the seeming one we have now).
   
   I was reminded, in this discussion, that my union, WEA, has been pretty reluctant when it comes to campaign finance reform. In part, it's because they are among the worst offenders (though, seriously, how much support for unions has their campaign money bought in Madison?). If I had the time I would run as a delegate to the WEA representative assembly and bring up the issue. Maybe next year.
   
   
2. Redistricting reform. This is a bug that's been growing under my saddle for some time now. How is it that a state that votes 50-50 in presidential elections, elects a Democrat with less than 50% for governor, and elects two Democratic US senators has a legislature that is nearly 2-1 Republican? (This partisan rhetoric is all me, not the People's Legislature). Without the threat of real competition, our legislators will never start being responsive to the people--you and me--whom they supposedly represent.
   
   Now, I'm represented by two people who are almost always unopposed, Josh Zepnick and Tim Carpenter. And in general, I feel they do a good job, especially Zepnick. But they could be better, and I think the occasional threat of a primary or general election challenge would keep them more on their toes.
   
   The People's Legislature actually recommends the system they have for non-partisan, independent redistricting in Iowa. The legislation we should support here is Assembly Joint Resolution 22 (.pdf).
   
   
3. Ethics enforcement, and combining ethics board and elections boards. Right now the situation in Madison is very fox-henhouse; the ethics and elections boards are appointed by the people in power that they are supposed to be monitoring. And, in the case of the ethics board, they have to ask for new funds every time they want to investigate. Imagine being the guy who had to go to Brian Burke--co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee--to ask for money to investigate him.
   
   Senate Bill 1 eliminates the elections board and creates an independent accountability board that comes with its own significant enforcement budget. Support it, and encourage your legislators to, as well.
   
   
4. Maintain local fiscal control. Yes, in fact, this is an anti-TABOR and anti-tax freeze stance, rather than a "pro-something new" reform stance. But the logic behind this is very simple: It's a lot harder for Wisconsin's big money interests to buy every single town or village board, to buy every school board, to buy every county board member, to buy every alder. If they only need to buy 132 legislators and one governor (since the locals have no more control), the power will just keep getting concentrated in the hands of the few. That's not democracy.

So if you are a Wisconsinite who supports these four things, go sign the petition supporting these reforms. The goal is 50,000 Wisconsinite signatures (including those on- and off-line). If you aren't from here but support these goals, consider starting some kind of "People's Legislature" campaign in your own state.

The next step for Wisconsin's TPL is a few more meetings like this one around the state, and then Fighting Bob Fest September 10. Shortly thereafter, we're going to Madison in large numbers to sit-in, or maybe levitate the capitol, something big, until they listen.

And they will listen. We are, after all, the people.

No Truer Words

Let’s stop them before they reform again. Darn tootin'.

Teaching Tuesday: Don't Lift the Cap

Last week Jim Doyle smartly vetoed an increase in the cap on Milwaukee's voucher program. Right now the cap is 15% of MPS enrollment, and this fall will be the first year that we've hit the cap.

I didn't say anything about it here when it happened (saving it for today), but I did comment on the story over on the dark side.

What I said then was that, while there may be 1500 more students who want to participate in Milwaukee’s voucher program, there are not 1500 seats at good voucher schools.  Those new kids will likely find themselves at more of the fly-by-night outfits unique to Milwaukee: It is literally true that anyone with a building permit and a business model can open a school. And it happens every year, with those schools far more likely to fail, sending kids (without funding!) back into MPS who are a year or more behind.

My high school got a couple dozen students from Academic Solutions (with no additional funds accompanying them) when it closed:  They have kept fighting since they got here, they have graffittoed every stairway, and they are surprised every day that their teachers teach instead of show a video.  This stems directly from what they were allowed to do as that school slowly imploded; not only did they themselves lose a year of schooling, they are now trying to disrupt a significant portion of the schooling of public school students.

There are dozens of other voucher schools in Milwaukee that, if the truth came out, they’d be shut down just like Academic Solutions.  Think, for example, of the Learning Enterprise schools, all of which closed becuase they couldn’t pay teachers except the voucher school, which is hanging on until the last state check comes in May.

If I thought every one of those kids would get the kind of education they could get at Messmer or Marquette (or even Harambee, until they stopped paying their teachers, too), then I wouldn’t care so much.  But I have had these kids in my classroom who come from these schools that fail, and this program has not been fair to them.  They lack skills--academic and behavioral--that should be taught.  Unfortunately, there are no academic standards at all that these schools must meet; they are only closed following riots or financial scandals.

Jim Doyle used property taxes as his excuse to veto the bill. I think the academic standards is a much stronger argument. Think about it: Do we really want to send another 1500 Milwaukee students into schools that are not required to measure or report one single measure of student achievement? Where is the accountability?

My Music Monday: Where Are You, Martin?

This song stems from the assignment last winter in which we all had to write a song about a holiday. I had to be difficult; my inspiration came from sitting through an insipid Martin Luther King Day program at school which had very little to do with MLK.

Oh, and the war and stuff, too.

Where Are You, Martin?
© 2005 Jay Bullock

Where are you Martin? Are you watching this?
Can you hear them invoking your name?
How are you Martin? Betrayed with a kiss?
After all this time, nothing’s changed.

It’s a different generation, the same ignorance
A different set of victims, and the same defense
Different causes, and all the same effects
Different history, but we know what’s coming next

Where are you Martin? Where have you been so long?
How can you stand to stay up there?
How are you Martin? I hope you like my song
It’s the closest thing I’ve got to prayer

I see the same dogs keeping different men down
The same torture on a different shade of brown
It’s the same gun shot from different hands
The same goddamned war fought in different lands

You say you saw the mountain, but you would never get there
Well, none of us has gotten to go
After all the marching, the riots and the scares
Feels like it’s fifty years ago

How are you Martin? Are you with Bobby and Jack?
I’d love to hear what you’re talking about
Where are you Martin? Are you coming back?
We sure could use a dreamer now

Social Security Rant, part deux

A couple of posts down, I went off on the daily paper's conservative hack after he made a mess of an argument on Social Security. I wanted to provide three quick updates.

One, here is the LTE I wrote after condensing that post into something closer to 200 words:

To the editors,

There is so much deception in Patrick McIlheran's column today about Social Security, it's hard to decide which to write about. But I'll limit myself to three:

First, he writes, "As an investment, it's a dog." Social Security is not now nor has it ever been an "investment," and to judge it against other investments is disingenuous.

Second, he says that future retirees are "only guaranteed lower benefits, higher taxes and a later retirement." The column only criticizes Democrats and "the left," so he does not note that only Republicans are recommending lower benefits or later retirement (see Bush's press conference last week). As for higher taxes, he forgets that the middle class and working poor have been overtaxed through the payroll tax for twenty years, and Reagan's original 1983 design was to shift tax burden to those better able to bear high taxes once the surpluses end.

Finally, in perhaps the biggest deception of all, he lionizes private accounts as an alternative without noting that the $2 trillion transition to risky private accounts actually does nothing to address the solvency issue. In other words, he is advocating a solution that will cost us trillions in additional taxes or borrowing not once, but twice.

For someone so upset about high taxes and lower benefits, McIlheran strangely does not seem to mind the risk of low benefits and massive cost a change to private accounts would leave us.

Two, I wanted to send you to read Billmon, who writes everything I said in 1500 words in just two-and-a-half paragraphs:

Maybe the White House figures deep benefit cuts will give the plan an aura of “fiscal responsibility,” making it easier to sell to the Senate moderates. The Rovians may assume the Senate is the real bottleneck, while the party automatons in the House ultimately will vote as they are told to vote.

That may be true, but it’s still hard to believe that anyone – again, leaving aside the pompous windbags in the corporate press – believes Bush’s “Robin Hood” pose will go over big with the volk back home. If means-testing benefit cuts is such a big political winner, why did the administration and Congress exempt Medicare (the universal entitlement program) from budget reductions this year, while swinging the axe at Medicaid (the welfare program for the poor)? Why does the GOP House keep trying to scale back the earned income tax credit, while spending megabillions on estate tax relief?

It should be obvious by now that Bush and the Rovians don’t give a rat’s ass about the poor – except when they can be used as decoys to funnel federal money into their religious patronage machine or provide the appropriate background for a few quick photo ops. As Matt Yglesias and others have already pointed out, their Social Security plan only “aids” low-income retirees if you ignore the trillions in general revenues that still would have to be poured into the trust fund to subsidize Shrub’s precious private accounts. Yet redirecting those same revenues into the existing system (without the private accounts) would leave all retirees better off than what Bush is proposing. If Robin Hood had tried pulling a bait and switch scam like that, I think Friar Tuck would have excommunicated him.

Three, in the comments to that post, one of my four regular readers, Dean, asks questions. I thought I would answer some here, rather than there.

Q. Protecting the [financially] untutored and undisciplined would have to be part of any privatization. Or perhaps we could take care of the whole ownership problem by making benefits inheritable?
A. See, more hidden costs. All the plans I've seen, though, are very limited in terms of investment options. That seems really crazy, that you get your own private account, but then they tell you what you have to do with it. That may cut down on people losing their shirts in the market, but you can't eliminate risk entirely. Further costs would have to include some kind of insurance for those who invest badly, unless we want them really to eat cat food.

Q. I can agree with gradually raising the retirement age. Would that save enough?
A. What I would want to see numbers on is a scheme whereby the retirement age was slowly raised, something like one month every other year over the next 48 years, so that by 2054, the retirement would be 69.5. By 2018, when the surplus supposedly dries up, the retirement age will be 68, and iin 2042 when the trust fund supposedly runs out, the retirement age will be 69. I don't know how much the changes would prolong either of those key dates, but it would have to make a little difference.

Q. I presume that, perhaps, you also saw the letters on the opposite page. The middle letter mentioned removing the income cap. I would be in favor of that. How much would that gain? Also I've thought about cutting benefits for the rich. Is there a maximum benefit?
A. The good thing about raising the cap is that, short-term, we would get a huge influx of cash that could be used to end the budget deficit and pay down debt to leave us in better shape for the 2018 and 2042 dates. In fact, I would do two things: Raise the cap from $90,000 to $500,000, and include in that all income, not just wage income. I would tax investment income less--say 3.1% instead of 6.2%--and I would also exempt employers from their half over $90,000 in wages. I might also consider shifting the employers' share from $0-90,000 to $12,000-102,000, to encourage job creation.

The downside to all of this is that the rich, who will have paid a whole lot more into the system by the time they retire, and much of the extra pay-in will be eliminated by the larger pay-outs. Unless we adjust the pay-out scale. Here's how the scale currently works:

There are currently two "bend points": the first at about $7,500 and the second at about $45,000. When you retire, you get 90% of your average income up to the first bend point, 32% up to the second bend point, and 15% of the rest of your income (up to a maximum of $90,000).

A worker with an average income of $7,500, for example, would get an initial Social Security benefit of $6,750. A worker with an average income of $45,000 would get an initial Social Security benefit of $6,750 + $12,000, or $18,750, which is 42% of their total income.

You can extrapolate from there for someone at $90,000, who would get back $25,500. If we lifted the cap to $500,000, without adding additional bend points, a $500,000 earner would get back $87,000. That may be fair, based on what he or she paid in, but it is certainly more than necessary to live on. Adding a bend point to 10% at $125,000 and to 5% at $200,000 gives that $500,000 earner just $52,750, which is mighty comfy and saves money for the solvency of the trust fund. (Looking at it now, I wonder if the bend points shouldn't be closer to 7% and 3%.) Yes, it ends up being barely 10% of the wealthy person's income, but someone who earns $500,000 probably has IRAs, 401(k)s, and other investments to help maintain that lifestyle.

P.S. Right now, I'm watching the public TV auction, and right now I could bid on dinner for four with Walker: Tosa Ranger. It's very, very tempting.

Dog Bites Man, again

You are: 0% Republican.

"You're a complete liberal, utterly without a trace of Republicanism.  Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure.  (You hope.)"

Are You A Republican?
I'm sad because my wife was -6%. She's a better non-Republican than I am. Sigh.

Somebody got paid to write this!?!

As an amateur (read: desperately unpaid) writer, I find myself saying that way too often, usually over badly written television. This morning, I said it--and not for the first time--over Patrick McIlheran's column in the paper. He's writing about Social Security, as is his wont of late (for now he's given up on vouchers). Today he's off on how bad a "deal" Social Security is. But first, some history.

McIlheran started writing edtorials for the paper in the thick of the campaign last year, gratefully liberated from the paper's "design desk" where he may embarrass himself, too, for all I know, but without a byline. Trouble is, he never gets beyond even rudimentary Republican talking points. He's like Mark Belling without the microphone. For example, he tried to show that "Bush tax cuts helped poor more than they helped rich" once, and joined in the self-congratulatory chest-pounding over PowerLyin's Dan Rather character assassination.

In the past, McIlheran has compared Social Security to a Nigerian email scam and, in true dim-bulb conservative fashion, wrote a big lie like this: "We are now told that the system is really less pension and more insurance--against disability, death or penury." What does he mean "now"? Let's just remind ourselves of something: The I in OASDI stands for what again? That's right. Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance. Liar.

Anyway, here's some pieces of today's pablum:

As an investment, it's a dog, only it's harder to dump than shares in www.daiquiris@work.com. Even President Bush won't let me out entirely. At most, he'd let me, should I choose, put part of the tax on my paycheck into my own account. [. . .]

As should be knuckle-whiteningly clear, Social Security's payoff is no certainty. The worker-retiree ratio's getting out of whack, and the "trust fund"--which is just government debt repayable after 2018 by me the taxpayer--runs dry about the time I'm eligible to drive too slow on the freeway in a Buick. Guaranteed? If you're 40 or younger, you're only guaranteed lower benefits, higher taxes and a later retirement.

But suppose that's wrong and it all works out. What's your rate of return under Social Security?

The Social Security Administration's own figures--these are from its chief actuary, published in August 2001--say it is (ready? helmet on? belted in?) less than 2% if you were born after 1960. Generally, the younger you are, the worse the figure. Two-income families do worse than one-income families; single people do worse yet: A single woman born in 1973 can expect about 0.6% return on her "investment."

First of all, McIlheran has bought into the big lie that somehow the "trust fund debt" is going to be such a horrible, horrible burden for the "taxpayers." Let's remind ourselves that this is the way Alan Greenspan designed the system:

• Between 1983-2018, this plan calls for payroll taxes to be higher than they need to be to cover payouts to retirees. However, because the surplus payroll taxes are handed over to the feds, it means income taxes are lower than they would otherwise be.

• Then, between 2018-2042, payroll taxes will be less than they need to be to pay benefits to retirees. However, the difference will be made up by higher income taxes, which will be used to pay off the trust fund bonds.

Payroll taxes are paid mostly by the middle class and the poor. Income taxes are paid mostly by the well off. So: for 35 years the middle class and the poor pay excess payroll taxes and the well off get a break on their income taxes. However, for the following 24 years the middle class and the poor get a break on their payroll taxes and the well off finance it by paying higher income taxes. Now, this may sound like a dumb idea to you, but that was the deal. The bottom 80% take it on the chin for a few decades, followed by a couple of decades in which the well off get socked.

Here's another description:

[I]n 1983 Alan Greenspan persuaded the Democrats who were in charge of Congress to overtax us on Social Security, that is to collect taxes in advance rather than on pay as you go system. The promise was that we would use the excess taxes to pay off the federal debt which was then about a trillion dollars. We have now paid 1.8 trillion dollars in excess Social Security taxes. This year the government will collect--if you make $50,000, about $7,500 from you. It only needs 5,000 to pay current benefits. That other $2,500 wasn't used to pay off the federal debt, which is now 7 trillion dollars, instead it is being used to finance tax cuts for the super rich. [. . .]

And now that money has not been spent to pay off the debt. Now Mr. Greenspan says you are not going to get those benefits but we should not raise taxes on those that make millions of dollars a year. It seems to me what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted in 1983 has come true. He said this was thievery and the middle class were going to have their pockets picked by the rich.

So I guess if McIlheran is in favor of reneging on this social contract, that's his business. And if he doesn't mind the super-rich soaking the working poor and middle class, that's his business, too. But to suggest that for some reason that returning tax levels on the wealthy to where they were pre-2001 is somehow the end of the world, that's ridiculous. I mean, in 2004, our budget deficit (which is caused significantly by spending on Bush's Iraq folly and the tax cuts) was 3.6% of GDP. Our total Social Security payouts in 2004 were only about 2.5% of GDP. In 2018, when the sky falls, the project Social Security Spending is just 4.5%, and it levels off at just over 6% around 2030. If McIlheran is willing to deficit spend now--and he has not written word one against it since he started at the paper--why would deficit spending, at levels perhaps less than we do it now, be so bad then? After all, if we had to make up a shortfall in Social Security, it wouldn't be the first time, and we came out okay then.

And no one except Republicans are suggesting that we cut Social Security benefits. That suggestion was a significant piece of Bush's press conference last week, and has been a factor in a number of Republican plans floated in the last year. Democrats maintain that we can keep benefit levels where they are with some small patches and fixes. Democrats also generally do not support increasing the retirement age, though I have occasionally wondered if a slow extension over the next 40 years might not be appropriate. But for now, we say we can hold the course without reneging on our promise to current workers and retirees.

As for the "return" that makes Social Security such a bad "deal," if I had back the many thousands of dollars I've paid American Family Insurance over the last decade or so, I could have invested it and gotten quite rich off the returns. But that's not what I use my insurance for. Perhaps more importantly, the reason the "return" might be lower on the government bonds becuase the Bush administration started cutting rate of return in 2001. Remember, as well, that your Social Security is a guarantee (unless the Republicans who want to cut those benefits win the fight), while any market-based system is inherently risky. Think, for example, about how the Dow right now is still 1500 points off of its 2000 high. Some people have even done the math.

Finally, and this is perhaps the biggest lie in all of McIlheran's column, he makes no mention that the estimated $2 trillion transition to his precious private accounts does nothing to address the solvency issue! He went on and on and on about how Social Security's insolvency is the end of the world, and his preferred solution doesn't actually fix the problems he laments! He's not only advocating borrowing or taxing today to finance the transition but neglecting to mention that we'll still need to borrow or tax that much later! He does, however, toss this one off at the end of his column:

The one reform on which the left won't compromise is exactly that: There can be no money set aside for you - no personal accounts. One argument is that money going to my account can't pay off current retirees.

But reform plans universally account for this with borrowing or tax hikes, which are going to happen anyway. [. . .] Go on, tax us to keep widows from having to eat cat food.

If I were king--and, sadly, I'm not--it would seem smarter to borrow or tax that $2 trillion to shore up the trust fund now, saving that money later. Or at the very least, use that money to pay off the deficit and cut our anticipated debt service costs. That alone will leave us in the kind of financial position that we could absorb the costs of an increase in Social Security payments four decades hence.

At TPL

No posting until later; I'm at the People's Legislature all day. Then we may go see The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy tonight. So maybe no posting until tomorrow, when I'd review both.

Tech Notes

My battery is here! Yippee!

Gostats, though, is out of here. In the last couple of months it has been horribly unreliable, and today I log in and what do I see? Two hits. Total. It's bad enough that they lost my stats in December 2003 (twice!), resetting me to zero, but now they have done it again. So they're out, even though I like some of their stats features a little better than Sitemeter. Maybe one day I'll spring for the full Sitemeter package, though.

Friday Random Ten

Simon says.

1. "When It Don't Come Easy" Patty Griffin from Impossible Dream
2. "Crush" Dave Matthews Band from Before These Crowded Streets
3. "Empty Pages" Traffic from Feelin' Alright: The Best of Traffic
4. "Innertube" The Nields from Play
5. "Are You Out There" Dar Williams from End of the Summer
6. "Scene of the Crime" Vance Gilbert from Fugitives
7. "Like a Mountain" Peter Mayer from Million Year Mind
8. "Lemon Marmalade" Kate McDonnell from Where the Mangoes Are
9. "Everybody Hurts" REM from Automatic for the People
10. "Turn the Lights Back On" Lucy Kaplansky from Ten Year Night

I'm excited; we've got tickets to see Lucy Kaplansky tonight!

Dog Bites Man

Big surprise!

Commission rules Walker's e-mail didn't break laws
The Milwaukee County Election Commission unanimously ruled Thursday that County Executive Scott Walker violated no campaign laws when his office urged potential voters to approve a referendum on a borrowing plan.

Commission Chairman Douglas Haag said elected officials are expected to provide constituents with information on important issues. [. . .] Commissioner Jack Melvin III said that while Walker used a public employee for a political purpose, the e-mail was no different than an ordinary press release expressing the executive's opinion. [. . .]

County Supervisor John Weishan Jr. and three other supervisors raised questions last week about whether Walker's actions crossed the line from education to express advocacy that courts have frowned upon. [. . .]

Weishan said he was not surprised at the ruling because he said Haag had appeared to prejudge the case in public comments last week.

For background, see my previous posts here and here.

Yeah, this is just "ordinary." Remember what happened: "At issue is the legality of Walker's use of office staff to send e-mails urging a 'yes' vote on the April 5 referendum on his $261 million borrowing plan involving pension funds. The non-binding ballot question produced a 57% negative vote on the idea." That doesn't sound like "information on important issues." This sounds like specific issue advocacy, and that is not kosher. I don't pay my taxes to further Walker: Tosa Ranger's political ambitions or personal agenda.

And this: "Election Commission Chairman Doug Haag, a Walker appointee, immediately pronounced his preliminary opinion that Walker had violated nothing. Haag said he had not read Walker's written request and was unfamiliar with the facts but felt that there likely was no problem."

And, wouldn't you know it, there wasn't! Lurvely.

Wow. People really hate Jim Sensenbrennner.

Including me. Twice.

This all stems from the actions of House Judiciary Committee members under F. Jim's control, when they re-wrote--quite inaccurately--Democratic amendments intended to protect the innocent. I'm not just blog pimping here--I want you to read the links and the links in those posts. Then sign up to help Bryan Kennedy beat this guy.

More early death

I'm not sure how a fruit fly's life span compares with an iBook's battery, but my iBook's battery went to Li-ion heaven today.

Luckily, I'm still under AppleCare, so I get a new one. But--and this is the really bad news--it means no liveblogging from the People's Legislature this Saturday (unless the battery gets overnighted). What's that you say? You haven't registered to attend TPL yet? Well, you'd better do that now, eh?

I used to think heart disease would kill me

Turns out, it will be sleep deprivation:

While most of us can't seem to function with less than seven hours of sleep, some people seem just fine with three or four. The difference, say researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is genetic. [. . .] And while the gene was isolated and identified in fruit flies, the researchers say that people have it, too. [. . .]

The one thing that did plague these short-sleepers was a short life span: While normal flies have a life span of about three to four months, these non-sleepers tended to die two to three weeks earlier.

I guess I'd better start getting more than four hours, eh?

Though, for my money, this is the best line in the story:

"And while the human brain is arguably more complex than that of a fly, Cirelli said, she believes the work will translate to people."

Arguably. Heh.

Updates on my job. As long as it lasts.

I'm not gonna link to 'em, but you probably all remember my various and sundry angry, often incoherent rants about the changes I expect with the district following the election of "reformer" Danny Godberg to the board.

Here's an update of some the crap coming my way:

The board elected a new president. This is not unexpected. It is also not terribly good news for the public schools in Milwaukee. For starters, I like Stacie's take: "As he stated numerous times during the minutes-long interview, Ken Johnson is a reformer. He's apparently been a reformer since he got elected. But he never once defined reformer, said what he was planning to reform, or how he was planning on reforming what he was planning to reform." Ahh, the vagaries of fresh power.

More, from the paper:

[Johnson] said he plans "to help empower the superintendent" to move quickly on changes he said had been "held hostage by process." He cited his support for a phonics-based curriculum known as Direct Instruction and for Andrekopoulos' high school reform effort, which aims to create dozens of new, smaller high schools in the city.

I keep threatening--and maybe someday I'll have the chance to get to it--to do a complete take-down of the superintendent's "small schools" baloney. And don't get me started on phonics versus whole language, either; the bane of my existence is students who a) spell phonetically and b) can sound out and read just fine but have no sense of what they just read. I teach as much reading with my regular education high-schoolers as I do anything else. If Ken Johnson really wanted to help Milwaukee students read, he'd work on getting parents reading to their kids, since that, after all, is the best indicator of how well students will learn to read in school.

Former board member Larry O'Neill took five with the daily paper the other day. He's the one who retired, leaving us with a majority on the board hell-bent on dismantling everything from successful high schools to my union.

The superintendent delivered his budget:

[The] budget proposal for 2005-'06 that continues reforms launched by Superintendent William Andrekopoulos and contains no major new steps is based on two big assumptions: That Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's state budget proposal, calling for a shift of more school funding back to state government, will win approval from the Republican-controlled Legislature; and that the School Board and the administration will win an arbitration proceeding with Milwaukee's teachers union that focuses largely on health insurance costs.

I hate to say it, but there's a good chance that the superintendent will lose on both counts. The Snacilbupers in Madison, of course, will sink Doyle's plan. And the superintendent's own intransigence has left us without a contract for nearly two years. If he would have accepted the union's proposal, we'd be saving a cool $1 million a month or more. But he's got an agenda that has everything to do with rigid ideology and nothing to do with what's best for the kids.

In other budget news, next year we lose another 130 teachers, and more of the central office support staff. Notice that he hasn't stepped up to return the five-digit bonuses he's been raking in, the car, or the health club membership. It's nice that he sacrifices, isn't it?

Finally, on a lighter note, the former administrator of the Mandela School--you know, the guy who bought a couple of Mercedes Benzes with the taxpayer money destined for his choice school--wants to take back his guilty plea in the criminal case. He had blurted out "I'm guilty!" in the middle of his trial. He is blaming it on his previous lawyer.

Mr. Paul's Social Security "Fix"

Last week, Wisconsin whippersnapper congressman Paul Ryan formally introduced a revised bill to "fix" the Social Security "crisis" (there is no crisis, remember?). Mr. Paul and his partner-in-crisismongereing, New Hampshirite Little John Sununu, laid this egg last year. But the scaled back on the plan, and now they're trying in earnest to sell Egg v2.0.

Let's take a look at it. Yes, I'm going to get a little wonky. And, yes, it's important to note that I'm not an economist. But it's my blog. Here's how the the plan works:

But the Ryan plan, co-authored by Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.), is different from most other plans circulating in Congress because it combines large personal accounts with no Social Security benefit cuts and no tax increases.

How do they pay for the plan?

The two lawmakers say they would rely in large part on savings in other government programs to both shore up Social Security and fund the upfront costs of creating individual accounts.

Seems like a miracle, eh? We're gonna solve a deficit problem by spending less money. Woo-hoo! Brilliant! I wish I had though of that. Maybe then I could be a congressman!

Okay, that's not fair, since I only quoted the spare newspaper summary. Here's how Mr. Paul's website sells it, under the heading of "Financing the Transistion":

• The short-term Social Security surpluses now projected until 2017 are devoted to financing the transition – instead of fueling other government spending

First, keeping Congress's grubby mitts off of the Social Security surplus is not necessarily a bad idea. I mean, I think it would be kind of cool if we took those surpluses and put them in a safe place, like a, um, whaddyacallit, a lockbox.

Okay, no, seriously: If the Congress didn't have that $145 billion (according to the Social Security Trustees), it would have to find it somewhere. I know that, given the current state of affairs, that's not all that much--less than 10%. On the other hand, it could seriously impact the budget deficit if, as Mr. Paul wants, that $145 billion buys private accounts for people. And how much private account would it buy? Given that there are roughly 145 million workers in the economy right now, that's about $1000 for all of us. So between now and when I retire, that would give me, um, compound the interest, carry the one . . . $77,000. My golden years will be great.

• A national spending limitation measure would limit the growth of Federal spending to 3.6% per year for eight years, with growth in subsequent years at 4.6%, consistent with current CBO projections. The savings coming from the difference from projected spending is maintained until all short-term debt issued to fund the transition is paid off in full

I could live with this. Trwo things, though: One, good luck with that. Two, if we can curb spending, we can direct that reduction into shoring up the Social Security trust fund and completely bypass the whole risky account scheme (more on that later).

• One of the basic assumptions of the Ryan-Sununu plan is that increased investment through personal accounts will result in increased tax revenues to the General Fund. The Ryan-Sununu plan recaptures a set portion of these projected revenue increases and dedicates them to the Social Security Trust Fund

You know what they say about when you assume, right? I'm also waiting for the accolades from the investment-industrial complex about the new high taxes. Besides, this is one of the things that rankles me most about private accounts: The big Wall Street investment firms will be raking in the fees--and those fees are our tax money. I'd rather not give my tax money to someone as profit.

But there is more to this than just an outrageous transition plan. Again, from Mr. Paul's website:

From 2006-2015, the Ryan-Sununu legislation would allow workers to devote to tax-free personal accounts 5 percentage points of the current 12.4% Social Security payroll tax on the first $10,000 in wages and 2.5 percentage points on taxable wages above that. Starting in 2016, workers will then be able to shift 10 percentage points of the current 12.4% on the first $10,000 in wages and 5 percentage points on taxable wages above that. Once fully phased-in, this creates a progressive structure with an average account contribution among all workers of 6.4 percentage points.

A couple of problems with this. First, if a significant portion of workers enroll the cost of this plan considerably exceeds the current surplus. Trimming spending and praying for higher corporate taxes may help, but let's face it: Under Mr. Paul's plan, we're going to be doing some deficit spending. This is not necessarily a big deal--we're deficit spending now--but why do we need to front-load the deficit spending when we can wait, say 25 years, when, jeebus willing, we're not busy fighting two wars and struggling to keep the economy afloat in $55-a-barrel oil.

Second, this part of the plan runs into a later part of the plan: "The official score [by the "Chief Actuary"] shows that by the end of the 75-year projection period [. . .] the [payroll] tax would be reduced to 5.18%." Oooookaaaay. So tell me how I'm going to put ten percentage points of my payroll tax into a private account if the payroll tax is only 5%. Of course, that's 75 years into the future, when everything will be completely different, and, for all we know, the Trust Fund won't run out.

More:

Workers will be enrolled in a “life-cycle” fund that automatically adjusts the worker’s portfolio based on his or her age - moving near-retirees into safe, government-backed bond funds. Workers may stay with this “life-cycle” fund or choose from a list of five index funds similar to those found in the federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP).

Oh, yes, the TSP. Not even the hand-picked audiences at Bush's staged events buy into the TSP. And, come on, Mr. Paul, if you're going to give us private accounts, then at least let us invest them the way we want.

After all, Mr. Paul, your website also notes that "The accounts are backed up by a guaranteed minimum benefit equal to Social Security promises under current law." So then, if the stock market fails us--I say if because, as you know, that's never happened before--then we will be deficit spending anyway. And, really, who are you kidding: You're basically admitting, with this safety-valve feature, that private accounts are inherently risky. And Social Security Insurance is not supposed to be a risk.

Let's face it, Mr. Paul's plan does nothing to address the solvency questions--such as they are--that simply adjusting federal spending won't do. When the surpluses run out, we can either panic or adjust our spending habits. When the Trust Fund runs out, we can either panic or adjust our spending. And there are very simple things we can do to stretch out both the surpluses and the Trust Fund, like upping the the income limit on the payroll tax. That's not an absolute fix, of course, but combined with otherwise prudent fiscal policy, Social Security will last, safely and in tact, for decades to come.