By Kathleen Vinehout
We played the cards we were dealt," my colleague shared. "We really didn't have a choice." He was referring to his vote to support the state's two-year budget.
The story goes, "The state is broke. We had a $3 billion deficit. We had to make tough decisions. We had to cut education, universities, technical colleges, local governments, services to the disabled and seniors. We had no choice. We had to put the state back on a sound financial basis."
This sounds adult, even heroic and a little self-sacrificing. There is a small problem: The facts don't support the rhetoric.
If the state was ever broke, it was two years ago. The national economy was losing 700,000 jobs a month. In Wisconsin, we had a $6.6 billion deficit. State revenues were falling like a rock as we sank into the worst recession since the Depression of the 1930s.
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This comment from the orioginal site says it all:
ReplyDelete"This artical again avoids the facts such as;
The quantity of children is down to about 1.2 per family
So we have too many teachers and teachers certified in social
subjects ang K thru 5 grades which are useless.
We need to teach technical and science subjects = no teachers.
The Wisconsin School Performance Report published on the net shows
Milwaukee county = 17 students per teacher.
We need less teachers History shows 27 - 34/teacher is ok
Urban Wisconsin has 9 students per teacher.
Can anyone justify this cost?"
So the Republicans shifted spending priorities somewhat to fund infrastructure improvement. If the voters in WI think this was a mistake, they will speak at the next election. That's how democracy works.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/06/union-curbs-rescue-wisconsin-school-district
ReplyDeleteThe Kaukauna School District, in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin near Appleton, has about 4,200 students and about 400 employees. It has struggled in recent times and this year faced a deficit of $400,000. But after the law went into effect, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, school officials put in place new policies they estimate will turn that $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. And it's all because of the very provisions that union leaders predicted would be disastrous.
In the past, teachers and other staff at Kaukauna were required to pay 10 percent of the cost of their health insurance coverage and none of their pension costs. Now, they'll pay 12.6 percent of the cost of their coverage (still well below rates in much of the private sector) and also contribute 5.8 percent of salary to their pensions. The changes will save the school board an estimated $1.2 million this year, according to board President Todd Arnoldussen.
Up here in Canada, the teachers or posties or any mass labour group goes on strike, then they stomp around for a week or two with no settlement in sight-deadlocked. Lately the trend has been for the company to lock out employees, thereby creating an impasse which brings the whole exercise to a halt. Then along comes the feds who now declares them an essential service (yes, while they are still locked out!) and forces them back to work. Then they hire hot shot mediators who after tussling back and forth plop down some stupid offer like 0, 0, and 2% for a three year contract-they grind em down, in other words. Some of the workers end up worse off in the end. Go figure, eh?
ReplyDeletestarted this yr with 1.5 billion in estimated new revenue and they increased it over 500 million in new estimated revenue so with all the new revenue...all the new revenue?-turned actual hard revenue from paper estimates? estimated vs realized. big difference. estimates are part of the how's we got into this mess. maybe wait out the year and see what actually comes into coffers, spend whatever amounts next year. but no, we want today, now, we want it now. lol
ReplyDeleteThis article does not fit the facts...
ReplyDeleteRepublicans are but one side of the same coin. Unconstitutional government and unconstitutional money are to blame for ALL OF OUR COUNTRY'S PROBLEMS. Indirectly or directly. If gold and silver instead of ones and zeros where the basis of our money, most problems would not exist.
ReplyDelete