Baw. I admitted it's flawed. What do you want me to? Do you think this bill is in the good interest of cutting the deficit or is there obviously far more at work? And you still haven't done a rejoinder to the Kochs thing I rebuffed.

It is about cutting the deficit today AND cutting future spending. To say that spending only matters in the short term is extremely short-sighted, considering how underfunded public employee pensions are, among other things. And yes, it's about other things. You can't innovate in the public sector when you have the union opposing proposals such as merit pay and school vouchers.

See, all of those are fair points.

I almost used this term, but it's not 100%. Maybe at a more broad level by certain elements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Yow, I've been busy and haven't kept up with this thread, sorry.

Don't have anything new to add, though -- and it appears neither do most of you! heh. Hate to just keep repeating the same arguments over and over again.

You can start by sourcing your assertion that Wisconsin students do better on tests than others.

OK let me go back and see what you're referring to; I didn't read the entire thread.

EDIT: Yep, I was suckered in by the unions. the stats had been all over the blogs, and I just assumed if everyone was saying it, it was probably true. I'm usually better than that.

Politifact points out the truth: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/sta ... -scores-v/

Apparently it's mostly a matter of (a) using old data and (b) interpreting the data in such a way to make it look better than it is.

The numbers still seem to indicate that Wisconsin still is high and the other states low, though -- just not as extreme as portrayed.

All this talk about unions reminds me of an old classic Simpsons episode:

http://www.iwatchsimpsonsonline.com/s04 ... ringfield/

Maybe not the same boat, but like teachers in public unions, working at a power plant does have a direct impact on the community at large.

They're trying to pull this in Ohio now, I hear.

Here's a rebuttal of all these educational stats. http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/20 ... ers-1.html

In short - Texas has a much higher minority population than Wisconsin, which explains why it lags. When you compare across demographics, Texas comes out ahead (whites in TX do better than whites in WI, same is true for blacks and hispanics).

Note that I'm not saying that this has anything to do with unionization rates, just want to lay this argument to rest.

Does anyone else think Walker's posturing for ego's sake/a run in 2012/2016?

He's pandering to his core constituency.

However, the core constituency is maybe 30% of the voting public, as we can see from the latest polls.

Yeah, he shot his political capital. Hubris up the ass.

20 lies (and counting) told by Gov. Walker



___________________________________________________________________

"Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense. That is my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet."

--Sam Seaborn, fictional character from TV show The West Wing.

I skimmed some of the study from EPI. It failed to consider costs of working in the private sector. For example, being a doctor or lawyer in the private sector (which the study calls "professionals") means that they have a total compensation package of $226k yearly whereas the public sector version has a total package of $110K yearly. Doctors and lawyers in the private sector have to use this compensation to fund things like malpractice insurance and hiring employees.

It also only compares full time workers and excludes all of those that are not full time. I would guess that there are many more underemployed workers in the private sector than the public, just a hunch, and this would skew the results towards the result achieved by this study. I also do not believe that public workers get less time off for vacations than do private sector workers when every federal holiday around here results in my local offices and schools being closed and I find myself always having to work those days.

The study itself notes this:



Finally, there is a reason people go into government work: JOB SECURITY!

Liberals don't lie; it's called 'nuance'. Learn to love it.

Ah, so is it still about the budget?

Is it the primary reason?

Are you going to charge Scott Walker with a thought crime?

Just answer the question.

I'm not Scott Walker, nor am I republican lawmaker from Wisconsin, so I'm not qualified to answer that questions.

What I do know is that the proposed law addresses budget deficits both today and in the future.

There's other ways to infer motivation, but for now, screw that. Are there reasonable alternatives to addressing it?

Are you seriously expecting me to come up with a solution for Wisconsin's budget woes in this thread?

Nah, I don't think any of us have the time or insanity to dig through all of that. I just want to know if there's something else at work that really should be a more top priority in the buj, and you're a smart guy.