Let's play . . . Debunk the Myth!

In comments to this post of mine, where I lay out just two of the differences between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to scandal, Clint (of Milwaukee Id10t fame) repeats some myths that I feel need front-page debunking:

Harry Reid is still in a leadership position (Abrahmof scandal) Hillary Clinton still hasn't 'found' any Rose Law Firm records... Gwen gets arrested by a foreign gov't, prohibits jobs creation and still has a job.

Doyle still has the gaming $$ and travel $$.

Delay stepped down on his own accord, no one HAD to vote him out of his position. Are you sure about this post? I think that you may have this backwards.

One at a time . . .

• Reid and Abramoff: The meida--and one Associated Press reporter, in particular--have consistently misrepresented Reid's connections to Jack Abramoff, usually leaving out the fact that Reid voted consistently against Abramoff's interests. It's worth noting that "[a] search of Reid's donations over the last 15 years shows that the Gambling/Casino industry/sector have been his largest donors in most every cycle." It's natural, then, that tribes represented by Abramoff might continue to contribute to Reid. What's more, many of the contributions Abramoff directed were done to increase his own clout with the tribes, not to win influence with politicians. But the most important thing to remember about Abramoff's clients is this:

  A new and extensive analysis of campaign donations from all of Jack Abramoff’s tribal clients, done by a nonpartisan research firm, shows that a great majority of contributions made by those clients went to Republicans. The analysis undercuts the claim that Abramoff directed sums to Democrats at anywhere near the same rate. [. . . T]he Morris and Associates analysis, which was done exclusively for The Prospect, clearly shows that it’s highly misleading to suggest that the tribes's giving to Dems was in any way comparable to their giving to the GOP. The analysis shows that when Abramoff took on his tribal clients, the majority of them dramatically ratcheted up donations to Republicans. Meanwhile, donations to Democrats from the same clients either dropped, remained largely static or, in two cases, rose by a far smaller percentage than the ones to Republicans did. This pattern suggests that whatever money went to Democrats, rather than having been steered by Abramoff, may have largely been money the tribes would have given anyway.

• Hillary and the Rose Law Firm: Here's a long quote, but worth the full read:

  Even more damning was a "Nightline" report broadcast that same evening. The segment came very close to branding Hillary Clinton a perjurer. In his introduction, host Ted Koppel spoke pointedly about "the reluctance of the Clinton White House to be as forthcoming with documents as it promised to be." He then turned to correspondent Jeff Greenfield, who posed a rhetorical question: "Hillary Clinton did some legal work for Madison Guaranty at the Rose Law Firm, at a time when her husband was governor of Arkansas. How much work? Not much at all, she has said."
  
  Up came a video clip from Hillary's April 22, 1994, Whitewater press conference. "The young attorney, the young bank officer, did all the work," she said. "It was not an area that I practiced in. It was not an area that I know anything, to speak of, about." Next the screen filled with handwritten notes taken by White House aide Susan Thomases during the 1992 campaign. "She [Hillary] did all the billing," the notes said. Greenfield quipped that it was no wonder "the White House was so worried about what was in Vince Foster's office when he killed himself."
  
  What the audience didn't know was that the ABC videotape had been edited so as to create an inaccurate impression. At that press conference, Mrs. Clinton had been asked not how much work she had done for Madison Guaranty, but how her signature came to be on a letter dealing with Madison Guaranty's 1985 proposal to issue preferred stock. ABC News had seamlessly omitted thirty-nine words from her actual answer, as well as the cut, by interposing a cutaway shot of reporters taking notes. The press conference transcript shows that she actually answered as follows: "The young attorney [and] the young bank officer did all the work and the letter was sent. But because I was what we called the billing attorney -- in other words, I had to send the bill to get the payment sent -- my name was put on the bottom of the letter. It was not an area that I practiced in. It was not an area that I know anything, to speak of, about."
  
  ABC News had taken a video clip out of context, and then accused the first lady of prevaricating about the very material it had removed. Within days, the doctored quotation popped up elsewhere. ABC used the identical clip on its evening news broadcast; so did CNN. The New York Times editorial page used it to scold Mrs. Clinton, as did columnist Maureen Dowd. Her colleague William Safire weighed in with an accusatory column of his own: "When you're a lawyer who needs a cover story to conceal close connections to a crooked client," he began, "you find some kid in your office willing to say he brought in the business and handled the client all by himself." Safire predicted the first lady's imminent indictment.
  
  What really made the story take off, however, was White House aide Carolyn Huber's belated discovery of missing Rose Law Firm billing records that had been under subpoena by the OIC. [. . .] The records' contents also supported Hillary's testimony and public statements in detail. [. . .]
  
  Starr's investigators would spend years seeking evidence to the contrary, with no success.

  As you can see, not only did the law firm records turn up, they exonerated Clinton of any wrongdoing--despite the attempts of your liberal media to make her look guilty.
  
  
• Gwen Moore: Clint thinks Moore should resign because she was arrested protesting the genocide in Darfur. And he thinks she should resign because she--along with many others--thought that millions of tax dollars' worth of investment in the Menominee Valley deserved better employers than one that is primarily seasonal. It's a subject on which reasonable people might disagree; I personally thought BuySeasons should have been in, but they pulled out anyway for reasons unrelated to Moore's protests.
  
  
• Doyle: It is true that Doyle, perhaps in the spirit of good will or something, could return the donations, though no one has proven he did anything wrong--or that contributions influenced him. To be fair, Democrats have called for Doyle to make those returns. I myself have called for Doyle to fire anyone even remotely linked to scandals in his administration and run on a responsibility platform against Green, who hasn't given back his DeLay money (how many Republicans have suggested he do that?). But in digging around to make sure I had my facts straight on Abramoff, I found an editorial from the libertarian Cato Institute:

  Here's the troubling thing about this little ritual of returning donations. The standard of proof in public debates seems to be guilt-by-association. If Mr. Abramoff was a crook, everyone associated with him, including people who received legal contributions from him or his clients, is also guilty of wrongdoing. If Enron executives bilked investors, politicians share the blame. Given that reasoning, only a very public renunciation of the (monetary) tie to the wrongdoer holds out hope of acquittal.
  
  My generation grew up in the shadow of McCarthyism. Our teachers warned us that guilt-by-association drove the hysteria that did so much damage to our First Amendment freedoms. Now it appears that guilt-by-association is an unquestioned standard in the court of public opinion. Certainly the politicians giving back donations believe so. The media and everyone else simply assume the validity of the new standard.
  
  To be sure, guilt-by-association is a great weapon for demonizing and destroying one's opponents. It does less well at fostering civility, the rule of law, fairness or a respect for fundamental political rights. Perhaps those shortcomings should be kept in mind as official Washington readies itself to indulge once again in the pleasures of populist fury.

  Something to think about.
  
  
• Tom DeLay: While DeLay didn't have to be convicted before he resigned from Congress (a la Duke Cunningham), his resignation was timed just right. Consider: DeLay had been indicted already; one in four primary voters told him they wanted him out; his internal poll numbers showed the race to be "too close for comfort"; and the Texas Republican Party believed that if DeLay moved out of his Texas District, they could replace him on the ballot, giving them a chance to keep the seat. That last bit is what makes it suspicious . . .
  
  But there is a more important point in the DeLay mess that directly relates to the point of the post Clint was responding to in the first place. When William Jefferson was implicated--though not even indicted yet--Democrats pulled him from his committee position very quickly. When Tom DeLay was implicated in wrongdoing, Republicans specifically changed their caucus rules to protect him! That is the difference between Democrats and Republicans.

The Clinton and Reid myths Clint perpetuates make me most angry, since they are outright lies. The DeLay thing I think most clearly demonstartes how Republicans and Democrats deal with corruption among their own different. The Moore and Doyle things are a bit squishier, but both sides need airing here. I'm happy to do it, hopefully setting Clint straight.

Thompson emails: Smoking gun or just smoking something?

The Wisconsin GOP thinks it has the smoking gun in the Georgia Thompson "travelgate" case. A press release (.pdf) has copies of emails Thompson sent that, if you squint real hard and imagine things that aren't there, might indicate the the "scandal" goes all the way to the top.

In one email, Thompson mentions that she's arranging for the winning bidder (remember that Thompson's insisting on a final round of bids saved taxpayers money!) Adelman Travel to visit the offices of the Governor, one of the people who would be using the services of the agency. This makes sense to me:

But Doyle spokesman Matt Canter said there was nothing improper about Thompson trying to arrange the visit to the governor's office after the contract was awarded.

"Thompson and her staff went around to government agencies, including the governor's office, to explain the new procedures of the travel contract," Canter said.

Of course, the more important--and completely unasked--question is, If Adelman Travel was so well-connected to the Governor, why would they need Thompson to arrange a visit?

In a second, very long email, from January of 2005, as the bidding process was just getting started, Thompson included one line about Marc Marotta, Governor Doyle's then Administration Secretary (now a high roller in the re-election campaign). The line is about what was included in the Request for Proposals (RFP) sent out to travel agencies. "We included language in the RFP," she wrote, "about hotels and airlines, as Marc Marotta suggested." To the GOP, Marotta's suggestion that (horrors!) the state's travel agency might cover both airlines and hotels is tantamount to his having selected Adelman as quid pro quo for Adelman's contributions to the Doyle campaign. In fact (from the JSOnline link above):

Marotta said he attended one meeting, which his schedule says was held in Ocober 2004, at which a potential $4 million savings by consolidating state travel was discussed.

There you go. But again, an important and unasked question remains. The very next sentence in that Thompson email reads, "I still believe both hotels and airlines need to be bid separately [. . .]." If Thompson was supposedly doing all this to please her supervisors, why would she express reservations, instead of going at it full bore? Seriously, do you really think it would help you with your boss if you went around saying, "Hm, I think my boss may be wrong"?

It doesn't make sense. The GOP is not making a very good case here, and if this is as close as they can get to a smoking gun, then maybe it's the crack they're smoking.

What's more, the Republican-appointed US Attorney who's been on this case--and who secured the conviction against Thompson--thinks the GOP is on crack, too. Again from the JSOnline link, with my emphasis:

U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic, who prosecuted Thompson, said in a statement today that in the course of his investigation, he had examined the e-mail released by the Republican Party and concluded there was nothing in it criminally damaging to Marotta. In fact, Marotta was not even called as a witness in Thompson's trial.

"The public should not presume that anyone else will be charged," Biskupic said. "We are continuing to look at the evidence, but the public is cautioned not to read anything else into it, only that we're being careful. It doesn't necessarily mean that more charges are forthcoming."

Seth Zlotocha called it right the other day when he said that the GOP's relentless negative digs at Doyle--and, in today's case, desperate digs at Doyle--show nothing more than a lack of leadership and a plan from their candidate for governor, Mark Green. If they had something positive to show, they would show it. Green's got nothing, so they have to do the next best thing--stretch the truth about Jim Doyle.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans, episode #6,723

6,723: When the media claim that a "former official" of a Democratic administration was convicted in a pay-for-play scandal, what they mean is that a civil servant hired by the personnel department of the previous Republican admnistration was convicted.

When the media claim that a "former official" of a Republican administration was convicted in a pay-for-play scandal, what they mean is someone who was hand-selected by that Republican to head a powerful agency with control of scads and scads of money was convicted.

The hits just keep coming, no?

That explains that

Digby has up an email he got from a "Wingnut Ted," defending Ann Coulter (who is indefensible, like the rest of the wingnuttosphere). One of Ted's points:

She is also very pretty, sexy, and aggressive which attracts even more attention because, when combined with her intelligence, it makes for a very unusual and interesting combination.

This clearly explains conservatives' fascination with Michael Moore and Ward Churchill.

Milwaukee Public Schools: Screaming, and Small Miracles

Last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a series on Milwaukee Public Schools high schools. As a teacher in an MPS high school--indeed, in one of the schools specifically profiled--I do not think that, for the most part, there were great inaccuracies. I do think that this editorial on small schools overlooked the problems of implementation, including those reported by that very paper. Fellow teacher Diane Hardy countered with an op-ed; I did a whole series on the problems last year.

But by far the story that rankled me and other bloggers was ths one from last Monday. First of all, the photo on your right accompanied the story, on the front page, and it was taken in a chemistry class at my high school. The photo--whose caption indicated that students were sleeping--was actually of students who did not want to have their pictures taken and, consequently, hid their faces from the photographer. That was the first problem.

The second problem was Milt Perry:

The class is called Employability Skills. If so, Lord help our future employers.

The teacher, Milton Perry, has been at [this school] for 39 years. What kind of class is this, a reporter asks before entering the classroom. "Wild," Perry answers. He says there are 35 students on the roster. About 20 are present on a typical day. On this day, 16 are in the classroom at 8:50 a.m., 15 minutes after the period began.

At no point in the 90-minute period does Perry do any conventional teaching to the class - a lecture or presentation of any material.

"Lecture to this group?" Perry says. "You'd be up here talking to yourself. You might as well go over there and talk to that closet." He looks toward the students, who are spending most of the time goofing around, and says, "All they want to do is play with the cell phones, eat junk food, listen to CD players."

What are they supposed to be doing? They have a textbook, "Succeeding in the World of Work." Perry gave them work sheets that call for them to turn to specific pages in the text that summarize the main points of each of the 25 chapters in a few words. Then they are to fill in those phrases on the work sheet. This is Thursday; they've been working on this since Monday. And if they don't finish by Friday? Perry says he'll give them some more time. He also says it ought to take two periods to complete.

The other assignment for the class is to learn the two-letter abbreviations for every state and the District of Columbia used by the U.S. Postal Service. On Monday, Perry passed out a sheet with the 51 locations and the two-letter answers and told the kids to copy the abbreviations. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they did the same thing but were supposed to do it without looking at the answers. Now, on Thursday, they're supposed to do it again. On Friday, they will do it once more, this time as a test.

Why learn these abbreviations? "Number one, it's knowledge. You don't turn down knowledge," Perry says. He calls the lesson a "sponge activity," because it needs to be repeated a few times before students soak it up.

Perry says the trend in student ability has been downward for years. What could change that? "Ooh, that's a tough one," he says. "The only thing I can think of is parental involvement." The hands of administrators and teachers are tied, he says. At parent teacher conferences recently, he had four parents show up. He has about 90 students.

You can probably guess why I'm frustrated. I teach these same students--and I'm not speaking metaphorically, here; I literally teach these same students--and I do not just give them a packet on Monday and sit around hoping they finish copying out of the book by Friday. That's crap. And I know what a "sponge activity" really is, and I use them wisely. (A better solution to the problem of students' not knowing postal abbreviations: Take them to the library and teach them where to look them up.)

The students are not "wild" unless you expect and allow them to be. And I don't care what the "trend" in student ability is: You meet them at their level and you help them reach the next. It's not a matter of worksheets and drills; it's a matter of caring a little bit.

But there are two key points that need to be made coming out of this. One plays off of Perry's claim that four out of 90 parents showed at conferences. That, I have no doubt, is absolutely true. I don't get a much better rate myself, even among parents of my college-bound students. This does not mean the failure of students to learn is solely the fault of disengaged parents; that disengagement does, however, reinforce something that I have been saying for almost as long as I've been in this district. The problem of education in Milwaukee is not (just) a schools problem. It is a Milwaukee problem. And to expect schools alone to overcome parental disengagement, recreational violence, endemic poverty, chronic unemployement and its attendant problems (poor health care, bad nutrition, lack of parental oversight and discipline), and fifty years of white flight and resegregation is ridiculous.

Getting parents to turn up at conferences is a start; getting them more involved in how students treat school at home is better. Too many on the right, though, are willing to lay all the blame on the parents. Dad29, for example, or fellow MPS high school teacher The Game. For them--for Dad29, in particular--this seems to fit more of an anti-Milwaukee bias: The people in Milwaukee are to blame entirely, not anything systemic or systematic.

Schools can work miracles--I see small ones every day--but we cannot upend the social order to make everything right again. It's even more frustrating to think that some (Bill Gates and our superintendent, to name two) think that tinkering with high schools alone can save the world. High school is an easy target for education critics, because high school is where long-term problems become manifest: students don't drop out at fourth grade, for example. Years of difficulty and challenges in a student's life compound right up until the point when they get to me, and all of a sudden I'm blamed for the wide-spread failure.

Which brings me to the second point: Milt Perry is not representative of the teachers at my school, or MPS generally. Three classrooms from my school got profiled in that story, two positive. Guess which one the right crowed about? Commenters at Joanne Jacobs's site called for Perry's resignation. As did WISN's Dan Diebert (who did, I admit, mention another teacher--but then claimed she was "creating victims" by trying to convince them that education is the lynchpin of their future). Brian Fraley probably wins the prize:

How in the hell is Milton Perry still employed by MPS? This guy has been there for nearly 40 years and is not educating students. He’s barely babysitting them. [. . .]

He has no business working for the taxpayers in a public school. He isn’t helping these kids. He himself implied this was a typical day in his classroom. If true, then he is an embarrassment to the district, the school, and his peers. He’s especially embarrassing to the quality teachers in MPS, some of whom are also profiled in this series. [. . .] The question is, what will be done with this information?

My gut tells me that nothing. Nothing will be done.

The MPS bureaucracy is too cumbersome, the teachers’ union is too blockheaded to rid their ranks of those not competent or not compassionate enough to be called true educators, and too many people are like Milton Perry.

One of the right's most favorite things to do is to blame the teachers union for protecting bad teachers. You see it all the time; every day, someone somewhere is demanding that a teachers union stop protecting bad teachers. It's a cop-out and the worst kind of lie.

First of all, it is not--it is never--a union's job to root out bad members. That's management's job. Period. The union is there to ensure that the process is fair, not to ensure that it never happens. MPS, for example, has a union-developed program called TEAM, which is very easy for administrators to use. It's designed to get poor teachers the help thehy need, either to get better, or to hit the road. It works--but only if management does its job.

Second of all, I have been Milt Perry's union rep for three years. I have not been protecting the man from anything. Not one principal--out of three I've worked under at my school--has done anything about him.

In fact, in one discussion I had with the current principal after the article ran last week, she actually laid that one on me: "Your union protects him," she said smugly.

"You can get rid of him if you want," I told her.

"Why should that be my job?" she said. I held my tongue; I wanted to scream at her, "Because you're the principal!" but screaming is not my style.

So, in the end, if I don't scream, what is to be done? Well, word will get out eventually that my school is being closed. As part of the superintendent's high-school redesign effort, they're chucking the school and putting a new, different, and (we all hope) better charter school into the building. Charters have slightly more freedom when it comes to teaching and program design, but, as I noted this morning, the raw material coming in will still be the same. We'll still have to meet kids at their level and help them get to the next one.

And what happens when the students don't make it to the next level? Former MPS school board member Bruce Thompson kind of wishes that, like private schools, MPS could expell students for not meeting expectations. Sadly, we can't. We're stuck with what we have.

And small miracles are all you get.

$30 by 30

There's a June 30 fundraising deadline (technically, a reporting deadline), and you'll be hearing more from me about that as the time approaches. But I wanted to draw your attention to one campaign in particular: Fair Wisconsin's $30 by the 30th campaign. Fair Wisconsin is leading the effort to defeat the amendment that would constitutionally ban gay marriage, civil unions, or any other similar arrangement. This is important work, people, and even those of you on the right side of the Cheddarsphere who oppose the amendment can step up to help.

Fair Wisconsin has a modest $30,000 goal for this effort, which means just 1,000 of you need to chip in the measly $30. You can click through the link above, or go straight to the secure contribution page.

We deserve a better legislature

Yes. Yes we do. One-stop shopping there for my northwestern Wisconsin readers.

If college athletic recruiters can't do this . . .

. . . why can a charter school?

For Milwaukee students with good grades in search of a high school for the fall, the Wisconsin Career Academy offers a special little perk: a $100 gift card for those arriving with at least a 3.5 grade point average; $50 for students with at least a 3.25 GPA; and, for those with a 2.5 or better, a school T-shirt or sweat shirt.

The controversial strategy, which School District officials say might violate policies, speaks to the competitive landscape in Milwaukee when it comes to recruiting students, a landscape where schools of all stripes are much more likely to send out mailings or set up booths at fairs than they were even five years ago. It also points to a more high-stakes testing culture, where school officials see the benefit of signing up motivated students who will score better.

"We are trying to attract better students, and more students," said Tarik Celik, the school's principal. "Every year, Milwaukee is losing more than 2,000 students, and, as a charter school on the south side, it's hard."

He points out that the school no longer offers yellow bus service because of budget cuts and will not be able to provide bus passes in the fall. "You have to offer some sort of incentive," he said.

Um . . . shouldn't the incentive be the quality of your program?

The Wisconsin Career Academy shared space in my school's building for a couple of years back when they were starting. We used to refer to it as the "sit down-shut up" school, since that seemed to be the extent of the teaching that went on there. I imagine things have picked up for them by now--I don't know where they are in the five-year charter review process--but if they aren't creating buzz on the strength of their academic offerings, then artificial attempts to boost their numbers and scores are just that--phony.

One thing that distinguishes education from other enterprises--anything that makes widgets, for example--is that there is very little that educators and schools can do to control their raw materials. (See "The Blueberry Story" for example.) Even those (like occasional interlocutor Paul Noonan) who believe that "the K-12 system [should] more closely reflect the college/university system" forget that at the post-secondary level, too, schools can pick and choose whom they teach.

That doesn't happen in the public schools, even in a system like MPS where parents have a choice among all 200+ programs. Parents have the choice, not schools. A few schools with waiting lists--Rufus King, for example--get some choice, but they still must accept neighborhood and special education students and they are expected to teach them just as well as those who gain early admission through testing.

Wisconsin Career Academy is trying to upset the system in ways that, as district officials in the story indicate, may be illegal. Cash payouts to (presumably) easy-to-teach students turns the notion of "choice" upside-down, and it needs to be stopped. Now.

More Hands on the Internet

As I noted the other day, the BlogAd to your right for "smart network or dumb pipe" or whatever it says today takes you to a misleading video and presentation that distorts the arguments for what we're calling "net neutrality" and instead offers a point of view sponsored by the big telecoms like AT&T and Bellsouth. You can click on the ad and get their point of view if you like. That's the great thing about a neutral internet--no one is telling you what you can or can't see.

But I want to follow up with some more information for you. Last Friday, Mike McCurry (lobbyist for the telecoms) debated Paul Misener, vice president of Global Public Policy for Amazon.com (McCurry calls him the lobbyist at McCurry's blog!) about the issue. This post has a partial transcript and links to the video, but I wanted to highlight just a smidge of Misener's words. He starts by refuting the notion that somehow the telecoms get stuck with all the bills for high-profile and high-bandwidth dot-coms:

Tiered pricing for access is something we support. Amazon pays a lot more than ‘Joe’s-Internet-retail.com’ simply because we use more capacity… That makes perfect sense to us. You pay for that capacity. But the important component here is that once the consumer has paid for his or her capacity at their home they ought to be able to use that capacity however they want. There’s a fundamental misconception here that somehow delivery of video over the Internet is just like it is over cable TV, over satellite, over broadcast or, frankly, like delivery of content through newspapers or magazines. Those models have always been about ‘push.’ Somebody decides — who either owns the pipe or owns the newspaper — what content goes in their and pushes it out to consumers and they can choose to read it or not.

That’s not the way the Internet works. The Internet does not have all this content in there unless the user asks for it. When you hit return on your browzer it actually sends out a ‘get command’ to the server; it’s a very illustrative name for a command in computer code. It actually says ‘get’– that means now send me the file. That file never gets into the pipes owned by the network operators that Mike represents unless their customer who’s paid for that access asks for it. So we’re not clogging their pipes at all. We’re only providing the content that we hope our joint customers want to see.

As you can see, the argument that telecoms must have control over what goes in or out of their networks--or at what speeds--to protect themselves is baloney. McCurry and his crew are simply not being honest with you.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans, episodes #6,721 and 6,722

6,721: When Democrats find one of their own implicated in unethical and potentially illegal doings, that member is stripped of his seat on the influential Ways and Means Committee. When Republicans find one of their own implicated in unethical and potentially illegal doings, that member gets to sit atop the House Appropriations Committee. (This is similar to a variety of previous episodes in this series, involving such Republican figures as Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and Duke Cunningham, who had to be convicted before he resigned.)

6,722: When a Democrat loses money in a real estate deal, it takes special prosecutors, eight years, and tens of millions of dollars to get to the bottom of it and find that he did nothing wrong. When a Republican makes a killing in a land deal made possible because of earmarks he wrote, he gets to keep his cushy job as Speaker of the House.

Stay tuned for more in our continuing series . . .

Sensenbrenner: Lying with impunity

Xoff beat me to the punch on Sensenbrenner's continued abuse of taxpayer money through "junkets." (Aside: If F. Jim is so big on not wasting taxpayers' money for things like hurricane relief, why is he ok with traveling on our dime?) So I'll pick up on a tip from a reader instead.

I heven't spent a lot of time following F. Jim's press releases, but once you get into them, you can find them riddled with lies--lies no one in the Milwaukee-area press seems to be calling him on. For example, from May:

Over the past several months, organized anti-war protests have taken place around the country, including in Wisconsin, at the funerals of servicemen and women killed while fighting in the war against terrorism. These extremist demonstrators harass family members and friends with chants and signs that read, ‘Thank God for dead soldiers,’ ‘God hates you,’ and ‘Thank God for IEDs.’ This behavior is revolting and deeply disrespectful.

Whatever your political persuasion, or stance on the War on Terror, I think we all can agree that family members and friends should be protected during military funerals. [. . .] As a result, I, along with over 100 Republican and Democrat House Members, cosponsored HR 5037, the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act. The bill would prohibit demonstrations on national cemetery grounds, unless specifically approved, and would silence all demonstrations one hour before and one hour following a military memorial service within a 500-foot radius.

Lies. Sensenbrenner clearly labels the protesters targeted here as "anti-war," and with his reference to "political persuasion," implies that said protesters are liberal. This is not true: The resolution came about as a direct result of protests at military funerals by Fred Phelps, an ultra-conservative who is not anti-war, but anti-gay, and feels that the US deserves to have its servicemembers die beczuse of our liberal policies regarding homsexuality in this country. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covered Phelps when he brought his circus to Wisconsin, and if F. Jim had bothered to read the paper, he'd know that the protests are not anti-war or liberal in nature.

The New York Times ran an op-ed just this week (behind their stupid subscription wall) in which the writer claimed that liberal anti-war protesters were disrupting military funerals. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) investigated and found that, in fact, it was all Phelps's group, not liberals.

Google all you want; you will not find that liberals--or anyone anti-war--are protesting military funerals.

(Tip on that one from Green opponent to F. Jim, Bob Levis.)

One example ought to be enough, but there's more. This release, for example, lies about what's in the Senate immigration bill. My favorite is possibly this one, which may not be a lie, but is certainly dripping with irony:

The National Taxpayers Union (NTU), an independent tax watchdog group, has awarded Menomonee Falls Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner the ‘Taxpayers’ Friend Award’ for 2005 because of his voting record to reduce and control the tax burden on American taxpayers. Congressman Sensenbrenner, the only Member of the Wisconsin delegation to get an ‘A,’ received the ninth highest score in the House of Representatives. [. . .]

“Ultimately, this is the taxpayers’ money we’re talking about and we’re the ones entrusted to spend it responsibly,” Sensenbrenner concluded.

Who is it being irresponsible with taxpayers' money again?

Hands on the Internet

For the first time ever in the history of this here blog, I have two BlogAds going at once. It's still not enough money to cover what they want to fix my car, but, hey . . .

However, the second of those ads ("See the future of the internet!") is one that you should be wary about. You may have heard a little bit about the "net neutrality" debate going on right now in Congress. The idea is that, absent regulation or law, internet service providers could be free to deny or privilege specific web content. For example, if you get your internet through SBC/Yahoo/AT&T or whatever they are now, your ISP could decide that you just don't need access to Google, which is, of course, a chief rival to Yahoo. MSN could decide not to let you visit the Apple Store online. Providers may decide that all the streaming video you've come to enjoy from places like YouTube is just too bandwidth intensive, and so you can't have it. Or, you can't have it at a reasonable download speed.

The ad takes you to a quaint little deceptive movie about the net neutrality debate, but you can click around and get to Hands off the Internet, which is kind of the blog of the group sponsoring the ad. You can find there that they believe

that the Net's phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation. We believe consumers across America see the results of this "hands off" approach - through such benefits as expanded distance education opportunities, improved access and speed to almost any information, on-line commerce, and an easier and inexpensive way to communicate with family and colleagues.

What's funny about this, of course, is that up until recently--the last year or so, I think--there were regulations in place requiring neutrality and equal access to content from all ISPs. Those regulations went away, and that's why we're now in a fight to get them back. So the "phenomenal growth"--things like Google, eBay, MySpace, YouTube, and so on--all happened under the kind of regulation this group opposes!

It won't surpirse you to learn that their effort is heavily subsidized by the telecoms (which is why I don't feel bad about taking their ten bucks even though I disagree with them). The lead spokesman is former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry--who has, because of his corporate shillingness, earned the inetense scorn of the left.

At any rate, you can click through and decide for yourself. But don't be fooled by their discussions of taxing the internet and things like that--none of that is on the table from anyone anywhere. All the forces of good are looking for is the assurance that ISPs cannot block or slow down content, picking and choosing what you get to see.

Balistreri Documents

I've been getting some Google hits from people looking for info on the documents to be released today on Milwaukee school board member Tom Balistreri.

I don't know if the docs are released yet, and I'm not likely to get a copy of them.

However, scuttlebut around the district says they're probably sexual harassment complaints. Balistreri's roving eye (and maybe hands) are not that big a secret.

But you didn't hear it from me.

Update: You heard it from the newspaper.

ActBlue gets better

Not a lot of time for the blogging tonight, but I do bring you news that ActBlue, the central clearing house for contributions to Democratic candidates nationwide, is New! and Improved!

The people at ActBlue have been working double time to get all of the appropriate legwork done so that, rather than just federal candidates, you can now contribute to campaigns in most states. I can't imagine how much work it is to try to follow election law in 50 states plus the feds, so big props to them.

More important for you and me, I've updated my ActBlue page to include some other candidates that I feel deserve your support. So right now, in one convenient step, you can contribute to Bryan Kennedy, Jim Doyle, Pat Kreitlow, Jim Sullivan, and more.

So, go ahead!

Tutor This

I have a few long posts in my head about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's series on MPS high schools this week, but, given work things, I will start with a response to something from Sunday's "Crossroads" section instead.

Eugene W. Hickok, a paid shill for the "supplemental education services" industry, has an op-ed lamenting the fact that parents don't make use of supplemental education services. Kind of like the Jiffy Lube guy complaining that you get your oil changed at the dealer.

Leave aside for a minute that the guy in question, as an Undersecretary of Education, "was an architect of the No Child Left Behind Act" (the sort of thing that always reminds me of the marketing philosophy of "create a niche, then fill it"--the man created a cash stream for these SESes and now he's profiting from it). Leave aside the additional willy-generating fact that the company's business model is to lobby for changes in education law that benefit the private-sector companies that pay for their services (and people complain when NEA lobbies for the public schools!).

Consider simply the fact that the op-ed is bone-headedly offensive.

The basic idea behind the SESes in question is that schools identified as "in need of improvement" under NCLB must divert a portion of their federal Title I money to outside groups, which can include everything from for-profit companies to faith-based organizations, who then tutor children in the basics like reading and math. This is supposed to help the students not with their schoolwork, but to achieve better scores on state tests. And, given today's release to the public about Wisconsin's failing schools, you'll probably hear more about it soon.

Hickok doesn't live in Milwaukee and hasn't seen what goes on here; I do. I've seen these SESes in action. But first, here's his complaint:

These school administrators claim that of the 1.4 million children eligible for such tutoring during the past school year, only 233,000 (17%) had parents and guardians who found this offer worthy of acceptance. All the rest apparently declined free tutoring for their children.

That is simply preposterous. [. . .]

The law says schools [. . .] are to notify parents of their children's eligibility for the services, inform them of the names and varieties of tutoring services available, and make it easy for parents to enroll their children for the services.

But in far too many places this simply isn't happening. Why would only 17% of eligible children be enrolled in this program?

In far too many places, it's not the parents' fault or an oversight that's to blame. It is the people in charge of the schools, who, in far too many cases, think that the money set aside for free tutoring is money that ought to stay with their schools and districts instead--that it's their money to manage as they see fit. [. . .]

Too many children in this country are failing to get the education they need and deserve. What a tragedy it would be if, years from now, we learned that those responsible for providing that education to our children were the very ones responsible for their not getting it.

The omitted litany of complaints, though written from a cozy office in DC, is published in the Milwaukee paper, leading many, I would guess, to assume that these problems exist in Milwaukee--that MPS is trying to cheat parents out of an opportunity for their children. This is not true, and to imply it is an insult.

I've seen the district letter that goes out to parents about my school. Even though we have generally been improving in one or more areas every year we miss Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the letter pretty clearly makes the case to parents that our school sucks rocks. This year, when parents get their letter ('cause my school is on the list! yay!), parents will not be told that our math and reading scores were up ten or more percentage points over last year. Nope. Just like last year, they didn't hear about how we missed AYP simply because three too few special education students could be rounded up to take the test. Instead, parents just get a letter full of alarming rhetoric about how the whole school is doomed! Doomed, I tell you!

The letter does not set firm deadlines. In fact, though every year there's a supposed deadline, the SESes that inhabit my school keep recruiting kids year-round. They are in the lobby for the ninth-grade orientation. They are all around at parent-teacher conferences. The people running the programs are in the building constantly trying to drum up business.

Perhaps one reason why Milwaukee might have a low participation rate--in 2004-2005, it was about 20%, not significantly better than the national average Hickok cites--is because many parents never get their letters.

I was at one of the school-closing meetings (see this post) last week, and Tyrone Dumas, who's running the process, said that a mailing to every parent in the district that his office prepared had a returned-undeliverable rate from the post office of more than 1 in 5. That's 20% of parents who may not be getting the letters in the first place.

Another reason why participation may be low is something hinted at above: The "tutoring" is not supposed to help students be successful in school, but rather successful on state tests. For any student who is past November of his or her sophomore year, this tutoring--while it may be needed to brush up rudimentary skills--seems useless, since the test is over. I've had many students tell me that when they asked for help on work I assign, they can't get it from these tutors. This upsets students and parents, both.

The tutoring is also of questionable quality; at my school, I have observed or have been made aware of activities at these SES sessions that should worry parents:

• teachers ignoring tutoring students to conduct after-school, paid activities with different children (double-dipping, anyone?)
  
• incentives such as TVs and cash given to students for mere attendance, rather than performance
  
• tutors trying to recruit students from my school to attend the private school where they teach
  
• abuse, misuse, theft, and vandalism of school property during the after-school sessions
  
• students being called out of class during the school day for meetings about incentive trips to places like the Mall of America
  
• students missing days of school to attend such incentive trips
  
• teachers asked to evaluate students they have never personally worked with--on forms that would be filed with DPI!

This is not the sort of thing that would make a parent confident in the ability of these services to improve a child's basic skills.

I'm not suggesting that all SES providers everywhere are scam artists or completely useless. I just haven't seen enough to encourage me about their effectiveness, certainly not enough that an industry shill like Hickok can pursuade me.

Apparently, the state hasn't seen enough, either. Last August, the state raised red flags:

When asked if there is any current, objective way to judge whether kids are doing better in school or on state tests, Mary Kleusch, the assistant director for the Office of Educational Accountability, who oversees the program, said simply: No.

[. . .T]he law puts the task of approving--and evaluating--providers squarely in the lap of the state, not school districts.[. . .] Currently, the state requires providers to report the number of students they served, the degree to which they attended and how much progress the students made. "The limitation is that it's a self-report," Kleusch said.

This year MPS decided they would disrupt the learning even more at my school--and other sites served by SESes--by making us give more standardized tests during class time at the start and end of the school year. These tests were somehow supposed to tell someone somewhere whether the SESes were working. Why the burden fell on us--and not the groups being assessed--I don't know. I just know I lost four days of teaching this year because of it.

I have no idea what the results will show, or whether the state will ever develop any kind of a rigorous accountability model for these groups. But until they do--and until someone shows me data to suggest that the students in these programs are improving at something more than test-taking ability and that my tax dollars are being spent wisely--I will not sit idly by and let someone making a pretty penny off those same tax dollars blame me for the failings of his damned law.

This will make waves

Tom Balistreri is resiging from the Milwaukee Public Schools board:

Balistreri, a vocal critic of Superintendent William Andrekopoulos, had less than a year left of his four-year term. He said in a statement and an afternoon interview that he decided to resign solely because of health issues, not political ones.

"It's strictly that I've got to get on a very regimented program to take care of my health," Balistreri said. He is diabetic and had open-heart surgery a year ago.

What kind of waves, I don't have time to speculate on. But, as far as things go, this is a big one.

Also, yes, I've seen the first several of the reports on MPS high schools, including today's, which is in part about my school. They seem accurate. If I didn't have finals this week and a ton of work packing up for the summer, I'd say more now. As it is, I will say more later.

McIlheran Watch: Hey, Gays, Go Back in the Closet and Let me Insult You

As the debate over various gay marriage amendments heats up--nationally, again, where is fizzles--and here in Wisconsin, it's interesting to watch pundits' true colors coming out. Even the circumspect ones might leave enough pieces lying around to put together into a full picture. In Patrick McIlheran's case, the picture is not very attractive.

We already know that he favors the anti-gay marriage (and civil unions and other substantially similar arrangements) amendment because he really wants to criticize the gays. In a November column, he wrote (my emphasis),

The campaign for gay marriage is all about denying anyone the ability to disagree. If we are told by legislators or courts to permit same-sex marriage, then any disagreement we might have with it can have no effect on what we do or say. The law will have told us that we must regard the couple as married, even if we think that's nonsense.

That's because marriage isn't about mutual affections, an ungovernably private matter. Nor is it the prerequisite to intimate relations: No one suggests a lack of a legal document has kept any couple pining in separate beds.

Rather, marriage is about declaring those mutual affections before the world and having the world in turn regard two people as a unit. [. . . O]nce the state says marriage includes mutual husbandry, there's no disagreeing. The moment you treat the couple any differently than any other, you'll find yourself cornered by a motivated, high-end pro-bono lawyer ready to dice, slice and ice you. Good luck.

In other words, shut up and let me insult you all I want.

And now we now also know that Pat doesn't just want even want to know gays exist. In response to MPS school board member Jennifer Morales's coming out this week:

Frankly, I suppose that like many I’d prefer to say nothing--and that she hadn’t made a public thing of it. Did we have to know this? There is a virtue in discretion, after all, a reason bedrooms have doors.

The way modern society is disposed, we are not supposed, upon learning someone’s homosexual, to think less of him, since we’re not supposed to regard homosexuality with moral disapproval. Yet the plain fact is that a great many denominations and their adherents do view gay sex as morally problematic. What can a public coming-out be, then, but, intended or not, a confrontation with what many people think is a matter of right and wrong?

Such a declaration could, I suppose, be presumed a morals-neutral thing, but this seems absurd: One does not come out as a fan of the color red or as being fond of pickles. [. . .]

I know the act of "coming out" is a big thing if you feel your sexual preference is the defining characteristic of your life and you’ve kept it a secret. But if it’s therapeutic to tell someone, surely therapy could be achieved by involving family and a circle of friends, by some step short of bringing all Milwaukee, whether they wish it or not, into a confidence.

The fact that gays and lesbians exist, and that we know about them, is too much for him to handle. Jeebus forbid that he should have to know that something exists that he disagrees with.

(The full story on Morales's coming out is here. I say good for her. I find it interesting that McIlheran critiques Morales, a public figure, for making it public, while it's his paper--on whose editorial board he sits--ran the story.)

Vote Kennedy!

You may or may not have noticed the BlogAd in the sidebar there for the Forward Together PAC's "Map Changers" promotion. The PAC is former Virginia Governor Mark Warner's thing (comparable to Russ Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund PAC. It is a way to 1) curry favor with other Democrats and B) gather email addresses.

So go give Mark Warner your email address for this one. Why? Is it because I think you need another eight or ten emails a week for the next two and a half years? No--it's so you can vote for Bryan Kennedy.

Bryan, you may recall, is running in the WI-05 against grumpy gavel-beater F. Jim Sensenbrenner. And the whole idea behind Warner's "Map Changers" is that you, the voting (and emailing) public, can nominate and help select candidates who will benefit from the PAC's fundraising and, with hope, change the map to blue.

Byran Kennedy is on the list for nominations now (through Tuesday June 13) in the "West" region. You can also nominate someone from the "East" region--I went for Illinois's John Laesch, who is challenging another grumpy gus, Dennis Hastert. So click on the ad (or the link above--I don't get paid per click, so it doesn't really matter), register, and nominate Bryan. He's the last one in the "West" region.

And, as a bonus, you can select "No" for the "email updates" question!

UPDATE: Xoff reminds us that you can vote Kennedy in two more of these contests: DFA's Grassroots All-Star (where Bryan was a finalist last time) and Feingold's PPF itself.

Friday Random Ten

The Graduation Day Edition

1. "Somebody More Like You" Nickel Creek from Why Should the Fire Die?
2. "Maori" Girlyman from Remember Who I am
3. "Here's to the Real World" Whiskeytown from Faithless Street
4. "The Weight" The Band from The Last Waltz
5. "If I Met Me at a Party" The Loomers from Shine
6. "When One Door Closes" Carrie Newcomer from Bare to the Bone
7. "All the Way Home" Peter Mulvey from The Trouble with Poets
8. "Laughlin Boy" Tracy Grammer from Flower of Avalon
9. "Ten Little Kids" The Jayhawks from Tomorrow the Green Grass
10. "When I'm Up" Great Big Sea from Rant and Roar

How lame am I . . .

. . . that I have only eaten at one of Getto's top 30 restaurants?

And a thousand imaginary bonus points to anyone who can figure out which one it is (dining companions from that meal excepted).

Update: Link fixed. Thanks for (not) telling me guys. And the correct answer is Rey Sol.

More on my Deferred Compensation Battle

The post I wrote the other day facetiously comparing pensions and retiree health care to Dick Cheney's deferred compensation--but making a serious point about how public sector employees should not be quite the targets they are--has itself been a target. the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick McIlheran, whose post inspired that compensation rant, graciously defers (get it?) to Dad29 to do the dirty work.

Dad29, on his way to becoming my own stalker, perhaps, tries to show that, compared to others, teachers don't have it so bad in the pay department. Therefore (he implies) I should just shut my trap when conservatives demand we--or other public employees--give up the benefits we have leaglly baragined for. He even throws in the old "all those other folks work 12 months a year" just so you know he's original.

Of course, I never said I wanted more pay. I said, in fact, that people like me have voluntarily chosen less pay in exchange for, essentially, deferred compensation--penisons and health care upon retirement. He also notes, helpfully, that average pay for all workers in Wisconsin shot up 10% between 2002 and 2005--considerably more than teacher pay rose in that time.

Rick Esenberg, in comments to that original post, complains that the burden of pensions and retiree health care is too great and, he says, way better than what your average bear retires on. This means--again, implied--that our benfits need to be trimmed, rather than health care needing to be cheaper or everyone else's retirement needing to be sweeter. (I love it when someone complains about how good I have it. Why, I ask them, are you complaining about mine? Sounds like you should be complaining about yours.)

But not everyone is complaining. Jim McGuigan revises and extends my remarks:

To expand on his argument, there is no 401-K and no profit sharing plan public sector employees can enjoy. The GOP isn’t really too stupid to be able to figure that out, they just don’t have the little guy in mind with any of their policies. That’s why they support tax cuts for the wealthy and don’t bat an eye at multi-million dollar executive compensation packages that are hundreds of times the salary of some of their employees.

Deferred compensation and pensions are ways for companies to meet todays needs while allowing the company the ability to use its capital to grow the business now. Public pension plans are a little different in that if they do especially well with investments, the government entity is not allowed to draw any excess from them to pay for existing expenses.

Thanks, Jim.

And, perhaps most surprising of all, Republican extraordinaire Deb Jordhal steps up for me:

A pension is not a gift from employer to employee; it is part of an employee's overall compensation package, and when employment terminates, the pension belongs to the employee. Any attempt by the legislature to seize that property is not likely hold up in court, especially if it’s done retroactively.

Let's remember that, people, as the demands to wring public employees trying to solve bigger budget mismanagement problems keep coming.

Your humble folkbum and US Senate candidate Ben Masel

Hmmm . . . . Two people who will not be at this weekend's Democratic Party of Wisconsin Convention!

I can't be there because of other obligations--like having to speak at my high school's graduation Friday night, and trying to finish grades before Monday's start of exams. There's just no way I could get to Lacrosse and back and do what I need to get done at the job that pays the bills.

Ben's speaking! See update below. (To clarify, Ben will be there, but not speaking.) Ben Masel won't be there because Joe Wineke lied to him:

On February 23, I asked Wisconsin Democratic Chair Joe Wineke if, as a candidate for the US Senate, I'd be afforded a podium slot at the State Convention, set to take place next weekend. He asked if my dues were paid up, as it was policy to require Candidates seeking to speak to be Members. As it happens, I'd just lapsed, but he assured me if I renewed, I'd be afforded the opportunity to address the Convention. Lacking forms, he declined to take my renewal on the spot. A few days later, I stopped by the Party HQ, and paid my $25.

Next I saw Joe, a few weeks later, I told him I'd renewed, and he assured me I'd still be speaking. Repeated a couple times since.

Now, I find a full schedule in a press release at Wheeler Report (pdf) and I'm not included. Primary challengers to the Attorney General and Secretary of State, however, appear.

The Democrats both nationally, and here at the State level, have been telling folks who are tempted to vote for 3d Party candidates that they should instead participate inside the Party, that there's a new openness. Put this to the test, it would seem the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has failed.

There's no excuse for this. None at all.

You can let the party know that all candidates should have the same opportunity to speak:

Chair: Joe Wineke joew@wisdems.org
(608) 255-5172 (voice)

1st Vice Chair: Lena Taylor lenataylor@wisdems.org
(608) 255-5172 (voice)

2nd Vice Chair: Jef Hall
jef@jefhall.com

Be polite in your emails and calls, but demand that Wineke make good on his promises. From Ben's comments:

UPDATE: Just spoke with Exec. Dir. Mike Murphy, I'm on, first after the Saturday lunch break.

Further update: Phone call with Party Chair Wineke, he takes responsibility for forgetting to tell staff about his commitment to me.

McIlheran Watch: Republicans want to steal my deferred compensation

I like it when Patrick McIlheran blogs a lot, as it gives me so much more material. If I get time, you'll see another one yet tonight.

As prelude, consider this: I am a public school teacher. That means that, depending on your perspective, I am either woefully underpaid or I have Cadillac fringe benefits that I don't deserve.

Actually, both of those are accurate.

Thing is, I consider myself to be just like Dick Cheney. See, Cheney once worked for a tiny little outfit called Halliburton, and during his time there, he negotiated a compensation package that not only paid him handsomely while there, but continues to pay him to this day. It's a good deal for both Halliburton (tax incentives and whatnot) and Cheney, who is now able to enjoy his retirement without concern for his future financial needs.

But, Jay, you may be asking, how is that like you at all? Simple: As a public school teacher, I, too, have chosen a package that includes deferred compensation. In fact, most public employees have.

We just don't call it that.

Here's McIlheran, complaining about Milwaukee County:

As [County Executive (and Big Brother) Scott Walker] has pointed out earlier, after it makes its payroll, the county has another huge bill, another 70% or so added on, to cover benefits. That rate, he says, is “Staggering. Nationally, the private sector is under 30% and state and local governments are under 33%.”

The Journal Sentinel’s Avrum Lank and Dave Umhoeffer covered this in detail. Read it if you haven’t; it says exactly what has gone wrong that we don’t have money to keep up parks or bus lines. The reason is that we’re paying, still, for work done long ago [. . .]. The reason the county is having the raise bus fares and talk about cutting service is because it is paying people splendid benefits not merely to drive buses — but to have driven buses once upon a time.

One of the nice things about living in a capitalist society is the ability of workers to organize and bargain for a compensation package that suits them best (management also gets a stake; that's why they call it bargaining). Public employee unions long ago figured out that demanding high salaries was pointless--and too expensive for employers concerned with the other costs of maintaining government services--and so they opted for something besides salary: namely, benefits, including retirement benefits like pensions and health care.

This is not significantly different from unions in other sectors did, sure. Other sectors, though, have been able to maintain salary increases at a much better pace than public unions have.

As the costs of (retirement and non-) health care and pensions increased, unions traded a maintenence of those benefits for potential salary increases. Teachers like me, for example, have seen wage increases below inflation (.pdf) and, even when not below inflation, below the increases seen in other sectors (a fact acknowledged even by the anti-union WPRI in this .pdf report). Teachers in Wisconsin have not just fallen in salary compared to other workers, but also to teachers in other states: Fifteen years ago, we were in the top third; now we're in the bottom half. This is again due to our being willing to take lower salary in exchange for benefits in the Midwest's most expensive state for health care. Bus drivers, too, apparently aren't raking it in, either.

But the non-retiree benefits aren't the subject of this post, or of McIlheran's rant (it does, indeed, take one to know one). The subject is the pay that I'm not getting now that I expect to receive when I retire--in the form of a pension and health benefis. What I want to know is, why is my deferred compensation--which I bargained for and agreed to lower current wages in exchange for--different from Dick Cheney's--which he bargained for and agreed to take lower salary in exchange for?

Republicans bristle at the suggestion that Cheney should give up the money he's getting from Halliburton, especially now that we're at war and Halliburton is getting mucho contracto federales (I know, I've sugested it at Republican blogs before). But Republicans like McIlheran--and, to pick just one more example, Brian Fraley--have no compunction at suggesting that public employees surrender their deferred compensation.

But, I can hear them objecting, Cheney's not being paid his deferred compensation by taxpayers! Oh, really? How many billions in contracts is Halliburton getting from the feds this year?

I'll pony up here and admit that I'm at least somewhat facetious. But I do regularly wonder why those who extol the virtues of the free market complain about those of us who have used market principles and a technique--deferred compensation--that doesn't even merit a raised eyebrow in the private sector.

I'm not saying that the public sector isn't headed for trouble when deferred compensation starts coming due. And, as usual, I could recommend some fixes, like a national health-care policy that brings per capita health care costs down significantly. (The Republican agenda, sadly, is not even close.) I can't fix everything from here at my laptop. All I can do is speak up when spoken about.

Sensenbrenner Watch: Now for Step Two

Xoff has started posting to SensenbrennerWatch, and at least one other person has expressed interest in starting to post there as well. So now, we need to review the plan. It's based on the Underpants Gnomes' plan:

1. Steal underpants
   
2. ?????????
   
3. Profit!

Step two for us is, I think, getting SensenbrennerWatch into the WI-05 zeitgeist somehow. I'm not sure how best to do that except to tell you all to start linking, early and often. Step three, rather than profit, is the swearing-in of Bryan Kennedy into Congress next January.

In honor of 6-6-6

I know this disappoints my conservative fan(s). And perhaps my liberal one(s), too.

McIlheran Watch: Blame Clinton First

There was a bit of a running joke among liberal blogs a few years ago about The Clenis™. The joke was that Republicans, eager to distract from all the bad things happening on their watch, would blame Bill Clinton--since, as we all know, Clinton's rhymes with "eenis" was the worst thing ever to happen to this country in general and the desk in the Oval Office in particular.

Economy slow? Clinton's fault. Terrorists attack despite a warning that "Bin Laden [is] Determined to Attack Inside United States"? Clinton. Military not prepared for an overextension into Afghanistan and Iraq? Bill did it.

The defense--but thankfully not the joke--has continued to be in fashion among Republicans. Sometimes, for example, you have to speak slowly when trying to explain that, no, Clinton never violated FISA or spied on Americans for national security purposes without a warrant. It doesn't stop them from trying, but I figure that the more often I get the truth out there, the more likely it is one or two will see the light.

Which brings us to one of my favorite dark-dwellers, Patrick McIlheran. I've let him off easy lately (you may have noticed that things slowed down here for a while), but his recent blogging offers up not one but two sad attempts at Blame Clinton First. If I were extra snarky, I'd say something about how his CDS (Clinton Derangement Syndrome) clouds his judgment, but, since I'm on a diet, I have to leave the extra snark alone.

Last night, in a commentary on the Wen Ho Lee lawsuit settlement, McIlheran says,

Truly, with every day we see new evidence of our government’s abuse of civil liberties.

Just last Friday we learned that the feds will pay a former nuclear weapons scientist $895,000 because the feds blabbed to newsmen that the scientist was being investigated for spying, which he was, though it appears he didn’t spy after all. [. . .] What has our country come to? Or, rather, what had it come to – I use past tense since the false accusation of spying against Wen Ho Lee took place in 1999, long before the dark era of George W. Bush ever began. The feds held Lee in solitary for nine months long before the oppressive John Ashcroft ever seized power at the Department of Justice, long before Dick Cheney ensconced himself at a secret location.

He's a little circumspect there, not actually using the C-word in his attempts to distract us from the current administration's questionable civil liberties practice, but he lays the groundwork for a Blame Clinton First defense pretty clearly.

He followed that post up with another one this afternoon, in which the naughty C-word slips from his fingertips:

My point was that Mr. Lee will be paid big bucks by you, dear taxpayer, because your government abused his civil rights — during the Clinton administration.

There it is. Makes you want to giggle a little, no?

This is because trying to blame the abuse of Wen Ho Lee's civil liberties--and the media's slander of the man, which caused the rest of the $1.6 million settlement--on Clinton would be like blaming a cancer patient for getting a tumor. Eric Boehlert sets us straight (my emphasis):

I wonder what Notra Trulock makes of last week's news? A discredited former Energy Department intelligence officer who often came across as a Clinton-hating dittohead, Trulock served as a key government source throughout the Lee witch hunt. (The charges against Lee crumbled in court after Lee had already spent 278 days in solitary confinement.) Trulock was the source some news organizations didn't want to reveal in court and the man who led key reporters around by their noses, spinning fantastic tales about Lee's diabolical deeds; half-baked tales that were often faithfully retold in the pages of the most important newspapers in America. Read: The New York Times. Last week's settlement might have included five news organizations--ABC News, the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post--but the Wen Ho Lee saga has always been about the woeful conduct of the Times and its embarrassing reliance on someone like Trulock who wielded such an obvious partisan ax as he chased after Lee, and by extension the Clinton administration, which Trulock argued was somehow protecting Lee's espionage.

Got it? The Clinton Administration didn't destroy Wen Ho Lee; a Clinton-hater destryoed Wen Ho Lee in order to destroy Clinton.

Maybe someday we'll learn that General Hayden, a principal architect of Bush's program to eavesdrop on Americans without the legally required warrant, is just a Bush-hater out to take down Bush, like that Trulock fellow . . .

Let the retractions roll . . .

From the fine folks who bring you the news:

The man police believe fatally shot two people and wounded three others in South Shore Park last week appears to be a legal resident of the United States, immigration officials said today.

Octaviano Juarez-Corro is a "legal permanent resident of the United States with a green card," said Gail Montenegro, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The right Cheddarsphere was all about Juarez-Corro's illegality lasty week prompted, if memory serves, by Jeff Wagner's initial accusations. I'm sure they'll be racing to be the first to retract all the anti-immigrant bile . . .

Being legal makes what he did no less excusable. But a picture of the man with the caption "This is the face of illegal immigration" is fear-mongering dishonesty at its worst.

Paging Dr. Pangloss

I teach high school. In Milwaukee. It is neither easy nor all that uplifting most days.

Considering how hard I worked last year trying to change my school’s fortunes on the state’s standardized test (a vain effort, as my school failed again), I was surprised to see a front-page headline in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel telling me I was getting off easy on No Child Left Behind.

Well, not me, personally, but Wisconsin in general.

A report by the think tank Education Sector takes us to the woodshed. Research and Policy Manager Kevin Carey has created what he calls the "Pangloss Index," so named after Voltaire's character Dr. Pangloss, who, in the face of evidence to the contrary, keeps insisting that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

“According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction,” Carey says, “the state is a modern-day educational utopia where a large majority of students meet academic standards, high school graduation rates are high, every school is safe and nearly all teachers are highly qualified.”

If you can’t tell, he’s being sarcastic. Apparently, none of those things is true in his world.

I’m no fan of No Child Left Behind. A tiny part of me is gleeful about our gaming the system. Another part of me wonders whether anyone learned anything from the phony “Texas Miracle” that spawned NCLB in the first place.

But most of me is thinking, “Hey, that’s my integrity being impugned, there.”

I read the rest of the report at Education Sector’s website. Carey is merciless towards Wisconsin, using more italics to express disbelief than even I do. However, Carey’s breathless takedown of Wisconsin’s DPI ignores how our students, even on measures external to DPI, do very well.

Just a week before, for example, the same newspaper buried a story on page 8B about how only three states perform better than Wisconsin on the National Assessment of Educational Progress science exam. Other NAEP data (click on our state) show that Wisconsin ranks in the top third in reading and math, too. Our ACT-taking students rank second in the nation. Census figures show that we are in the top 25% of states for adults with high school diplomas.

These are all data we can be proud of, and that indicate things are going well here. Utopia? Maybe not—but certainly not deserving of Carey’s critiques.

Another complaint is the notion that 99.5% of Wisconsin’s teachers are “highly qualified,” according to DPI. To DPI, “highly qualified” means you have a license in the subject you teach. Carey thinks this is insufficient. Clearly, he hasn’t gotten a teaching license in Wisconsin lately. The process includes not only coursework and practical experience (up to a full year of student teaching, depending on your license), but also a standardized exam in general knowledge and your subject area.

Maintaining a license isn’t as easy as it used to be, either. Gone are the “lifetime license” and easy renewal credits; instead, the law governing license renewal (called PI-34) requires rigorous self-assessment under the strict guidance of specially-trained mentor teachers. It is no longer true—if it ever was—that those who can’t do, teach.

Then there’s Carey’s utter horror that only one district in the state is labeled as failing (Milwaukee, naturally). Surely, Carey thinks, the rest of the state must be failing, too, and we’re just covering it up.

Well, it depends on how you really want to define failing. One of my biggest complaints about NCLB is the way its labels can create an inaccurate impression of student performance.

The report notes that only 28% of schools in Florida are making annual yearly progress (and the report praises Florida for its honesty). I don’t believe for a second that 72% of the children in Florida are getting substandard education. The NAEP data confirm my suspicions.

Schools can miss AYP—and be labeled as failing—when only a small percentage of their students perform poorly on state tests. Florida, apparently, is willing to take that to the extreme, an extreme that includes taking money away from the failing schools to hand over to unaccountable supplemental educational services, among other things. Wisconsin does not do that, figuring, in part, that continued investment in what works in schools is the better choice.

Do I think Wisconsin’s schools are perfect? No. But I also do not believe that DPI is blind to the state’s problems.

And I don’t think we should be criticized for our success.

No Carry for Me

Last week, a conservative acquaintance emailed that he’d recently realized that “few, if any, opponents to concealed carry had ever heard a presentation which addresses the responsibilities and consequences of carrying a concealed weapon.

“Seemed to me,” he wrote, “that were someone who opposes concealed-carry to hear such a presentation, it might be an ‘AHA!!’ moment.”

I am, in fact, an opponent of concealed-carry legislation. But I doubt sitting through a presentation like that would change my mind. My opposition has little to do with not knowing all the responsibilities and consequences of carrying; it has everything to do with the kind of place I want to live in.

I’ve always appreciated that Wisconsin’s motto is “Forward”; it means my adopted state ought to spend its time thinking about how to progress as a society. Regression towards the Old West runs, I believe, counter to the motto.

More importantly, I don’t want to live in a society ruled by fear.

At a town hall meeting last month with my state senator and representative, an advocate for concealed weapons wanted to know why the two had opposed concealed-carry bills in the legislature, and had voted to uphold Governor Doyle’s vetoes.

After complaining that Wisconsin was one of a dwindling handful of states yet to allow concealed carry, and claiming that crime rates had fallen in other states after the measure’s passage, the gentleman finally got to the heart of why he felt he needed a gun.

“These people,” he said—and everyone in the room full of white South Side faces knew exactly whom he was referring to—“these people will get so bad they’ll drive everyone out of town!” Here was a man, a Vietnam veteran, according to his hat, letting fear and prejudice drive his desire for a concealed weapon.

I’m not suggesting that everyone who favors concealed-carry has the same kind of underlying issues he does; but a common argument among advocates is, “We need to protect ourselves.”

I can’t tell anyone not to be afraid—it just doesn’t work that way—especially given last summer and the kind of summer we seem headed toward this year. But I can say that it’s unlikely our law-abiding, class-taking, responsible-seeming gun-toters will ever need to defend themselves against a violent crime. There’s something soothing, maybe, in knowing you’re packing, but you are probably not going to be a victim of a violent crime perpetrated by a stranger—“these people,” as some might say.

The FBI’s crime statistics repeatedly tell us that, more often than not, violent crime is not random, and victims usually know perpetrators. Even the violent Memorial Day weekend just passed bears this out: Most victims knew the person who pulled the trigger.

As to the claim that carrying reduces crime, it is suspicious at best. (The author of a book with a similar name is a demonstrated fraud.) Yes, violent crime rates fell during the 1990s in states that liberalized their carry laws. But to believe the changed laws cause the drop in crime is to fall for the oldest social science fallacy. Just because two things happen sequentially does not mean that the first caused the second.

Because guess what happened to violent crime rates in Wisconsin during that same time period, with the same restrictions in place that the NRA and my email correspondent now want changed? If you guessed that they fell, you win.

In fact, in 2000, only four states had less violent crime reported to the police than we did, with our rate being half that of the US as a whole. Last summer’s murder rate notwithstanding, Wisconsin continues to have one of the lowest rates of violent crime, all without concealed carry.

Sure, maybe we could drop a few more points in the ratings—though there is not that far to fall—if we thought criminals would be afraid every potential victim of theirs was carrying.

But in the same way that I don’t want to let fear drive me to carry, I think there are better deterrents for criminals than fear. The same things that probably lowered crime rates in the nineties—expanded economic opportunity and money for more police on the streets—will work just as well now.

And I don’t need a presentation to tell me that.

Sensenbrenner Watch: Volunteers Needed

When I helped put together Sensenbrenner Watch a little over a year ago, I did so with the hope that a group of other regular volunteers for Democrat Bryan Kennedy would keep the place humming. I'm busy neglecting my own blog most of the time, and I don't actually live in the district.

Over the past twelve months, I've invited a handful of other people to try to keep the place up. Sadly, S-Watch has pretty much languished, with no new posts since November.

We've got an election coming up, people, and we need some help keeping F. Jim's antics in front of the voters.

So here's the deal: Email me if you're a Democrat/ liberal/ anti-Sensenbrenner activist in the 5th CD who wants to keep S-Watch regularly updated, and, if you are willing to make a commitment to use the blog only for good (never for evil), I will turn over a key to you.

The important thing is to get the net- and grass-roots energized and organized for November. In this off-year election, it's all going to be about turnout, and the more sources we have telling people the importance of beating Sensenbrenner, the better.

(Note: S-Watch is blog*spot hosted, but sensenbrennerwatch.com will redirect you.)

Memorial Music Monday

The War Game

There was no note but if there was, it might have said:
"Forgive me for the things I’ve done, things there’s no forgiveness for. The things I’ve heard the things I’ve seen the things I've said have been so mean, but the men I've killed won’t haunt my dreams no more. In the jungles there’s no why, no right or wrong just live or die, and a lot men, a lot of friends died right next to me. You can’t blame charlie for this crime if you don’t blame me for mine, after all, he was under orders just like me.

"Father cousin brother son in charlie’s eyes they’re all the same, in columns lost and won, when you’re playing the war game.

"I didn’t come home to be spit on, or to be told that I was wrong, or to confront an angry mob. I just wanted to be with my wife, to try to start a new life, but it turns out I didn’t come home to a job. I raised my daughters the best I could, did what all good fathers should, but I still don’t think I spent enough time. They couldn’t understand my pain, they didn’t share my shame, once a week as I stood in that line.

"Father cousin brother son in Uncle Sam’s eyes they’re all the same, in columns lost and won, when you’re playing the war game.

"So I went back to the church, to try to heal decades of hurt, but I didn’t think god would want me after all this time. But my brothers made me secure, made me feel almost pure, and I felt god was back on my side. So this one last thing I do, I don’t do it to hurt you, it’s an exercise of my faith. So please, pray for me, pray the lord my soul to keep, because I’m off, I’m off to a better place.

"Father cousin brother son in god’s eyes they’re all the same, in columns lost and won, when you’re playing the war game.

"When you’re playing the war game, it’s not a game, it’s just a shame, a shame grown men would act that way. When other men are just marks on a map or page or charts, they don’t even know our names. And just a telegram or note is all they send, always by rote, to let our families know we’ve died. We’re not numbers, will you see, not survivors and casualties, we’re human beings with a life --

"Father cousin brother son in war’s eyes they’re all the same, in columns lost and gone, when you’re playing the war game."

There was no note but if there was, it might have said:
"Forgive me."

This is one of the oldest songs of mine that can go in the regular rotation if I need it. I wrote it back in 1995 after a relative, a Vietnam vet, became a casualty of the war, 25 years later.

You can download or listen to the song here.

I'm this many!

On this day in history, three years ago, I started experimenting with this form called blog. Thank you all for sharing the experiment with me.

Weekend Reading for Democrats

And it may take you a weekend: Kid Oakland has a long but spot-on post about how Democrats should be like Dolphins, but are really like carp:

Central to this definition of the worldview of a Carp is the dual belief in both "scarcity" and "the imminent loss of what you already possess."  Ring a bell?  From the current debate over the 50-State strategy, to the legendarily careful tactics of the DCCC and the DSCC, to the timid efforts of the Kerry/Edwards campaign to go out of their way to offend absolutely no one in 2004, to, yes, the Gore/Lieberman's failed tactics in Florida in 2000...Democratic strategy has been anchored for decades now in the concept that there's little out there for us to win and much for us lose.  Of course, the mindset that says, "better not lose what we've already got" in the face of relentless attacks from sharks is a sure way to lose even more.  (For more of this debate, try this discussion on MyDD.)

I can't think of a better summation of the frustration that DNC Chairman Howard Dean's supporters expressed in the last Presidential election or the rage that spreads through the netroots every time the Democratic party seems to fall back into this mode of thinking.  It's clear that the current Democratic Party believes in scarcity; we're afraid to lose and we're sure that "making mistakes" will only lead to further losses.  We're acting like Carp!

Read it.

Voucher Schools: The Hits Just Keep Coming

Yesterday a fifth school this year in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was cut off officially by DPI for cheating taxpayers:

In an order kicking the [Sa'Rai and Zigler Upper Excellerated Academy] out of the program, state officials said they noticed in March that student applications submitted by the school appeared to have forged signatures. [. . .] Zigler denied that the school had forged any signatures, calling the state's accusations "a smokescreen" to cover up the fact that "once again, we are a black school being targeted."

Earlier this month, leaders of a half-dozen voucher schools accused the state Department of Public Instruction of targeting black schools for closure, a claim that Deputy State Superintendent Tony Evers says he categorically denies.

After suspecting forgery, department officials asked for the original student applications for the families attending Sa'Rai and Zigler using vouchers. But, according to state officials, the school submitted only 39 out of 90 original student applications, and failed to provide any evidence that it had checked W-2 or other forms to ensure that the families met the income guidelines of the program. To be eligible, family income must not exceed 175% of the poverty level.

State officials allege that, in one case, the school accepted voucher money for a student in a family of three with a total income of $50,900, but the maximum income for a family of three to be eligible in 2005 was less than $29,000.

But Zigler argued that the department decided to give his school the boot to avoid paying Sa'Rai and Zigler $57,000 he claims is overdue.

What's interesting to me--and what could probably have been predicted as the DPI begins to crack down on the schools that are breaking the rules--is the way this is becoming a racial issue. The accusations started at the beginning of this month when DPI cut off Woodson Academy, also for forgery, even though that school had been in the program for more than a decade. (It also had been in trouble off and on for that decade.)

The vast majoity of schools not run by minority personnel or organizations are the religious schools, those run by the archidiocese or the Lutherans. These are long-established schools without as much need to inflate their numbers (considering how many non-voucher students they can draw). They also tend to be run by people with years of experience in school administration and monitored closely by an overseeing organization.

The new schools that have been started, while they definitely fill a void in the community (the need to fund them by shorting MPS is an entirely different question), do not always have the history, the experience, or the oversight behind them. They also don't have a natural base of students who can pay outright instead of needing a voucher. That creates a dangerous situation--whether those schools are run by African Americans or not.

Even back during the discussion of--and eventual passage of--a requirement that all the voucher schools get accreditation, I knew that it would hit the minority-run schools hardest, since almost all of the non-minority-run schools already have accreditation. This fight is only going to get uglier.

MPS School-Closing Hearings

I know I have quite a few Milwaukee Public Schools teachers and parents who read the blog regularly, so I will mention these and encourage you all to attend. Over the last year, many people were taken by surprise at the news that Juneau High School, in particular, was targeted for closing. Everyone who feels you might have a stake in this needs to get involved in the process (.pdf) now:

Adding dollars to classrooms, cutting excess space

MPS would like to hear your input on the process to trim excess space in the district by closing some schools. Please come to one of the community meetings listed below and share your thoughts as we begin the second year of the process.

Wednesday, May 31, 5:00 p.m., Bell Middle School, 6506 W. Warnimont Avenue
Thursday, June 1, 5:00 p.m, Milwaukee High School of the Arts, 2300 W. Highland
Avenue
Monday, June 5, 5:00 p.m., Bay View High School, 2751 S. Lenox Street
Tuesday, June 6, 5:00 p.m., Burroughs Middle School, 6700 N. 80th Street
Wednesday, June 7, 6:00 p.m., Gaenslen Elementary School, 1250 E. Burleigh Street
Monday, June 12, 5:00 p.m., MPS Central Services, 5225 W. Vliet Street

No determination has been made at this time as to which schools could potentially close. This is the second year of the initiative to address MPS’ over-capacity. The district is about halfway to that goal. If you cannot attend the meetings, please call (414) 777-7800 to register your thoughts on our hotline.

Friday Random Ten

The with a capital T Edition

1. "Trouble in My Head" Melissa Ferrick from Willing to Wait
2. "Trouble" Shawn Colvin from A Few Small Repairs
3. "The Trouble with Poets" Peter Mulvey from Glencree
4. "Trouble" Kat Eggleston from Second Nature
5. "Wrap Your Trouble in Dreams" Jennifer Kimball from Oh Hear Us
6. "I've Seen Trouble" Bill Camplin (as Döet) from Love Songs and Other Trios
7. "Howling at the Trouble" Richard Shindell from Sparrows Point
8. "The Trouble with Normal" Bruce Cockburn from Anything Anytime Anywhere
9. "Trouble and Care" John Gorka from Old Futures Gone
10. "Troubles" Mark Erelli from Hilbilly Pilgrim

Things to do in Milwaukee when you're liberal

• You can crash the Badger Blog Alliance Spring Fling on Saturday, June 3. Well, crash is a bit strong of a word, since they are actively inviting us lefties. I don't know if they want us for target practice or what.
  
• If you're a dude (I think dudettes can go too), you can join Women's Choice Wisconsin for Dudes for Choice on Monday, June 5. It's after work at the Wicked Hop, with cool music and money going to a good cause.
  
• If you want to support the possibility of Air America's coming to town--and it seems almost a certainty, now--you can go to the Hi Hat Lounge on Brady Street next Wednesday at 7:00. Sign up at the link there for updates.

What else is on tap? Use the comments here to promote your thing, and maybe I'll add it to the front page here.

Sorry for the silence

I posted quite a few things on Monday to get them out of the way; work is eating up too much of my time, plus I have a deadline this week for a class I'm taking. My usual several-thousand-words-of-BS-a-week is currently being spent writing a paper, not blogging.

In the meantime, well, just be the best you that you can be.

Or something.

Episode 697,462: A New Hope

We've been yanked around before (repeatedly) here in Milwaukee, but Scott offers us solid hope that one day soon, there will be balance in the force Milwaukee's talk radio market.