Tag Archives: Unions

Scott Walker: Wisconsin Recall

Posted on June 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

On almost double the volume today Intrade has Walker at 93% and going away …

Maybe the good people of Wisconsin really do understand that what he did has helped the state save money and save jobs.  Let’s hope so.

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Posted in Elections 2012, Government, Liberty

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Scott Walker: Wisconsin Recall

Posted on June 5, 2012 | 2 comments

Tonight is Wisconsin Eve.  The whole nation is watching the freakin’ Cheese Heads to see which way they’ll go.  Tomorrow is the recall election of Governor Scott Walker.

We all know the issues, we’ve all listened to the talking heads from both sides and most likely, we’ve all made up our minds.  I know I have; it was over before it started.  But what interests me is not only who SHOULD win, but who WILL win.

And I think I gotta give the edge to the Democrats.

The unions are going to be out in full force.  They’re gonna have every member from Green to Bay out shaking voters from anywhere they can find ’em.  Walker’s going away in the polls, but Barrett has the built in “feet on the street.”

I give it to the Unions by 3 points.

Sigh.

 

 

 

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Posted in Elections 2012, Liberty, Politics: National

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California Budget Cuts: Inevitable

Posted on June 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

California Is Broke

It’s not even really a question at this point anymore.  California doesn’t have any money and is losing more every year.  In fact, the situation is getting worse and not getting any better, it’s not even slowing down:

California’s budget deficit will swell to nearly $7 billion greater than expected due to weak tax revenues and slow progress in cutting spending, Governor Jerry Brown said on Saturday.

Brown said the shortfall for the state’s 2012-2013 fiscal year now stands at $16 billion, up from a previous estimate of $9.2 billion made in January.

“We are now facing a $16 billion shortfall, not the $9 billion we thought in January,” Brown announced in a video posted on YouTube. “This means we will have to go much further and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year.”

There’s little reason to believe that this trend isn’t going to continue.  Individuals from California earning incomes in the top 1% are delivering less and less tax revenue:

In 2007, the top 1% of California earners paid about half of the state’s income taxes. Now it’s around 37%

Is this because salaries are dropping for the very rich or is it because they are leaving the state?  It’s hard to say.

Revenue Or Spending

Whatever the reason, the top 1% are no longer the cash cow they used to be.  Going from 50% to only 37% is going to massively impact balance sheet.  But is that the only cause for California’s current condition?  Not at all.  Committed spending on public pensions is also to blame:

(Reuters) – A radical plan to slash public employee pension benefits gets voted on by the residents of Silicon Valley’s San Jose on Tuesday – a decision that could set an important precedent for many other cities, not only in California but across the nation.

The nation’s 10th-largest city is also one of the wealthiest, but over the past several years it has cut its municipal workforce by a quarter, laying off cops and firefighters, shuttering libraries and letting street repairs fall by the wayside.

The problem? Mayor Chuck Reed says it’s simple: Retiree benefit costs eat up more than a quarter of the city budget – and are growing at a double-digit rate.

So, the mayor has identified a problem specific to San Jose.  Is this systemic across California?

Public finance woes are nothing new in California. The state budget deficit stands at an estimated $15.7 billion for next year, requiring further cuts in state services and, if Governor Jerry Brown has his way, higher income and sales taxes. Local governments and school districts have struggled for years to make ends meet.

The pension problem, though, may be the mother of all budget issues – for California, for its cities and counties, and for other states and municipalities across the nation. The main California state retirement systems have a total shortfall in pension-plan funding of close to half a trillion dollars, a Stanford University study estimated. The bill is not due at once, but payments on it grow steadily and can eventually squeeze out even basic services. Public officials like Reed, and academics who have studied the issue, say the day of reckoning is nigh.

Yes.  California has created a condition that is set to consume public budgets very soon.  In efforts to pander to the unions and the public employees, the state and her cities have engaged in reckless commitments that is has no hope of meeting.  There is only one solution in sight:

The solution he is pushing at the ballot box, after city council approval, would slash benefits for workers, increase employee contributions – and almost certainly prompt a precedent-setting legal challenge from the public employee unions.

“The best metaphor is cancer,” said Reed, a Democrat known as more of a technocrat than a firebrand, who is now cast as public enemy No. 1 by public employee unions. “It started a long time ago, it goes for a long time, and then it becomes life-threatening.”

Of course that’s the solution.  California is already taxing her people so much that the freakin’ Buffalo is puking*  I don’t know how much of a leftist/statist individual Governor Brown is out there in California, but if he’s at ALL interested in fixing his state he should gaze east and look and see what a government can do as exemplified in Wisconsin.

 

* This is an old reference to someone who is so cheap in the days when the buffalo adorned the nickel.

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Posted in Debt - Deficit, Economics, Economy, Government, States Behaving Badly

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Public Education: Getting Closer

Posted on April 23, 2012 | 4 comments

Recently I’ve been on the North Carolina General Assembly.  For the first time in over a century republicans control both the state house and the state senate.  And in that time they’ve made two pretty big mistakes:

  1. Trying to overturn the Racial Justice Act
  2. Trying to pass Amendment One – Making a constitutional amendment that bars gay marriage.

Now, however, they have announced a new plan that would dramatically impact public education in North Carolina:

Raleigh, N.C. — North Carolina’s public school teachers would see employment tenure eliminated, but become eligible for performance bonuses under an education reform package rolled out Monday by Senate Republicans.

This is AWESOME!

The ability to fire under performing employees is critical in maintaining a productive and highly achieving staff.  By keeping archaic tenure laws on the books schools are forced to lose young and innovative teachers at the expense of retaining old potentially poor performing teachers when they are forced to make staffing decisions.  Rather than keeping, promoting and handing out bonuses based on performance, schools are forced to pay older teachers more for no other reason than the calendar turned.

“We’ve said for a long time that the policy needs to be right in order for us to expect the kinds of results the people of North Carolina and our kids deserve,” Berger, R-Rockingham, said.

The proposal would do away with tenure to veteran public schools teachers who now receive their permanent teaching license after a four-year probationary period. The current policy makes it difficult to fire the tenured teachers when administrators determine they are ineffective, Berger’s office said. Instead, the changes would allow local school boards to employ all teachers on an annual contract that doesn’t have to be renewed each fall.

“If a system determines presently that a teacher is an ineffective teacher, it is very difficult if not impossible for them to discharge that teacher,’ Berger said. “This would provide systems with tools that would allow a superintendent or a local school board to make decisions about hiring the best teachers for their kids.”

Mr. Berger is correct.  By allowing superintendents and school boards greater latitude in staffing decisions resulting in the very best teachers staying in the profession and the poor performing teachers would be let go.

This is long past due.

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Posted in Education, Politics: North Carolina

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Right To Work: The Negative Impacts Of Unions

Posted on March 13, 2012 | 8 comments

One of the benefits to the Tea Party election of 2010 has been the effort to reduce labor’s influence in America.  You’ve seen it in Wisconsin, you saw it in Indiana and now the results coming in from Tennessee.

States are turning to “Right to Work” legislation that allows employees to opt in or opt out of a union.  To be clear, some state allow you to opt out of a union, however, you still “get” to pay the union dues – wonderful option opting out is, yes?

So, how is Tennessee benefiting from their labor stance?

Michigan may be Motor City’s home in most people’s minds, but Tennessee has emerged as another major hub of auto manufacturing and related industries. Big domestic and foreign automakers have several facilities here and are expanding rapidly.

Tennessee, one of many Super Tuesday GOP primary states, has mostly been spared the trauma of mass layoffs, closures and bailouts that plagued the Rust Belt. Business and free-market groups cite a key advantage: It is a right-to-work state, effectively preventing Big Labor from being a major player there.

It’s growing.  And growing rapidly.

And the advantage of Right to Work laws are such that even shops that ARE union are forced to innovate, to invent to become more productive.  If they don’t, they fail.  This same incentive is not in place in full union states.  When all shops are controlled by the unions, the productivity of one slow plant isn’t different than the productivity of the other slow plant.

And why might businesses wanna come to these Right to Work states?

Tennessee’s law has held down labor costs. VW pays $27 an hour for new employees in wages and benefits, about half of the $52 an hour labor cost in Detroit. When the unionized GM agreed to reopen the Spring Hill plant last year, it forced the UAW to accept a starting wage of $15.78

It keep the cost of labor down.  Now, you may ask how that’s a good thing; how paying someone $27 an hour is better for that someone than paying them $52 an hour.

Critics cite the lower wages as proof that the laws hurt workers. But locals say that’s offset by lower living expenses. Nashville’s cost of living is 11% below the U.S. average, the Census Bureau reports. Detroit’s is only 1% below.

Tennessee isn’t immune to the auto industry’s ups and downs, but seems to weather them well.

“We got through the recession without major layoffs,” Woolley said. “There were a lot of curtailments and furloughs (for workers), a lot of short workweeks, but now we are back at full speed.”

When labor is less expensive, the things made with that labor are less expensive as well.  And, as always, while unions may increase wages for their members, they increase wages to the point that fewer and fewer workers are hired in the first place.

Big Labor’s place in America has gone by the roadside; and THAT is great news.

 

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Posted in Liberty, Lobby/PAC

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Teacher Evaluations: An Interesting Take On Value Add

Posted on March 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

Recently New York city published the results of a three year study on teacher’s scores.  The scores are based on the value-add mentality.  This is the idea that a teacher can influence a student in their class and the measurement of this value is tracked by how well a student does on tests in the years following having had that teacher in class.  From the perspective of someone who works in an industry that tries very very hard to measure the intangibles, I think this is a very clever method of determining impact.

Predictably the teachers and the teacher unions are objecting.  And the range of reasons is fascinating.

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Posted in Education, Government, Idiots on Parade, Uncategorized

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Right To Work: Indiana

Posted on February 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

We’re in a place where we need to create jobs.  We need to be able to take folks who are on the unemployment rolls and move them to the tax roles.  And to do that, we have got to make hiring someone a better option than not hiring someone.

Employees provide productivity.  They do this in the same way that machines and assembly lines do.  In the exact same manner and means that a company owner will seek out the cheapest source of copper or lumber or wool, she will seek out the cheapest source of labor.

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Posted in Economy, Elections 2010, Government

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Citizens United

Posted on February 1, 2012 | 3 comments

The 2012 election should be interesting.  If for no other reason than to see what the impact of corporations being on equal footing with labor unions and the press.

If, for example, the Teamsters are able to contribute and influence, if, for example, the New York Times can endorse  candidate, why cannot ACME Plumbing do the same?

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Posted in Elections 2012, Liberty, Lobby/PAC

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News And Observer Letters To The Editor: Teachers vs. Cuts

Posted on January 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

This Sunday’s News And Observer’s Letter To The Editor

This week the featured Letter to the Editor focuses on the Republican’s veto override of a bill that Governor Purdue.  If you remember, the Republican controlled House called a special midnight session in order to vote on the override.  That veto override was successful and now the bill becomes law.  In short, the North Carolin Association of Educators can no longer require that dues be collected straight from the paycheck of teachers.

Our citizen points out, correctly in my opinion, this:

I’m not a public school teacher, and I’m in awe of the job they do with my kids every day. Teaching should be an honored profession.

Very few people I know dispute this fact.  However, it’s a common setup for the real point:

House Speaker Thom Tillis and his Republican colleagues are targeting these hard-working public servants. They are punishing the N.C. Association of Educators for standing up against budget cuts to the public schools.

Point of fact, the Republicans are not targeting teachers.  Rather, they are working to prevent the state from acting as a private organizations bill collector.  Imagine if a church required the state to deduct weekly offerings from the paychecks of public employees.  Even if they didn’t belong to the church.

Our citizen continues:

To those of us who want high-quality public schools for our kids, however, this is far from a game. The NCAE stood up against budget cuts to our already underfunded schools, and now they are paying the price. Let’s stick up for the teachers who are sticking up for our schools.

The problem is that teacher’s unions don’t care about educating children.  They care about power.  They care about taking as much as they can while giving as little as they can.  These same unions prevent poor teachers from being fired.  They prevent merit pay.  They prevent innovation.

We all love excellent, proficient and capable teachers.  We do not love poor under performing teachers.  And we certainly don’t love organizations that are hell bent on protecting those poor performers.

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Posted in Education, Politics: North Carolina

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Merit Based Teacher Salary

Posted on January 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

I grew up the son of a teacher.  Then I became a teacher.  Though, to be fair, I only lasted a single year.  It was a small town, a “negotiation” year and I really didn’t like the whole incentive thing.  As a result of the negotiations, which were conducted by a small negotiation team made up of men, the compensation system in the contract changed.  Teachers are paid based on a grid.  New rookie teachers with no more education than a bachelors degree start in the upper left hand corner of that grid.  For every year of experience, they get to “step” down the grid and get a raise.  The further down you go, the more you make.  Teachers can also move across the grid.  They do this by obtaining more education.  When they acquire enough, they are said to change “lanes” and move from the left to the right.

The highest paid teachers are in the lower right corner of the grid.

I lost faith when I realized, very quickly, that I would never catch up to the old crummy teachers I worked with.  And when that negotiating team reduced the number of lanes from 9 to 3 in exchange for higher coaches salaries [the negotiation team consisted of mostly coaches].

I now have no ties to education save that my kids are in school.  Further, I am in an occupation where I am not in a union.  My continued employment is dictated by market conditions combined with my ability to produce value for my bosses.  Further, my salary is determined by the success of the firm and my contribution to it.

The better I do the more I make and the stronger my job security is.  The converse is true.

It is my love of teachers and the role they play in the development of our kids AND the power of market based incentives that makes me love this story of merit based teacher’s salaries:

WASHINGTON — During her first six years of teaching in this city’s struggling schools, Tiffany Johnson got a series of small raises that brought her annual salary to $63,000, from about $50,000. This year, her seventh, Ms. Johnson earns $87,000.

That latest 38 percent jump, unheard of in public education, came after Ms. Johnson was rated “highly effective” two years in a row under Washington’s new teacher evaluation system. Those ratings also netted her back-to-back bonuses totaling $30,000.

In my calculus, the district accomplished two things:

  1. It created a massive incentive to perform.
  2. It created a massive incentive to continue teaching.

“Lots of teachers leave the profession, but this has kept me invested to stay,” said Ms. Johnson, 29, who is a special-education teacher at the Ron H. Brown Middle School in Northeast Washington. “I know they value me.”

I love this statement:  “This has kept me invested to stay.”

EXACTLY!

When an organization values an employee it helps retain that employee.  When that value takes the additional value of added pay, that retention is even greater!

On the other hand, there is the opposite phenomena  , one that I consider more dangerous to the education of our kids; the incentives provided to the poorest performing teachers:

Under the system, known as Impact Plus, teachers rated “highly effective” earn bonuses ranging from $2,400 to $25,000. Teachers who get that rating two years in a row are eligible for a large permanent pay increase to make their salary equivalent to that of a colleague with five more years of experience and a more advanced degree.

Those rewards come with risk: to receive the bonuses and raises, teachers must sign away some job security provisions outlined in their union contract. About 20 percent of the teachers eligible for the raises this year and 30 percent of those eligible for bonuses turned them down rather than give up those protections.

There are teachers who are SO concerned with losing their jobs that they turned down the money.  Turned. Down. The. Money.

Two things:

  1. These are teachers we should work to remove.
  2. These teachers WERE compensated for their labor.  The fact that they value job security MORE than the money does NOT mean that they didn’t receive anything of value.

I look forward to continued market based, merit based teacher compensation.

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Posted in Economics, Education

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