Eric Zorn of of The Chicago Tribune checks out the Indiana political landscape and discovers -- surprise, surprise! -- that not everyone in Indiana considers Gov. Mitch Daniels a political hero. Believe it or not, he manages to find a liberal editorial page, a left-leaning economist and the General Assembly's leading Democrat who are willing to say bad things about all the cuts made in state government. Who would have ever guessed?
"In part, he used federal stimulus money and accounting tricks to come up with this surplus," said Indiana House minority leader Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, in a phone interview Tuesday. "Then he took money from programs for the poor, children, veterans and the unemployed while cutting corporate taxes 25 percent."
Bauer's office provided me a long list of particular budget trims enacted by Indiana Republicans that included a $326 million reduction in K-12 education, a $37 million reduction in higher education, a $321 million cut to social service programs, a $62 million cut to the corrections and public safety budget, $44 million from economic development and roughly $15 million from environmental protection.
This is what those of who complain of a liberal bias are talking about. The writer makes the assumption that cuts are bad, then goes out and finds people willing to say that.
But, look, a balanced budget in troubled times does not just happen. It comes from fiscal disipline and results in real cuts to real programs that affect real people. Even conservatives get that, folks -- especially conservatives. Left out of the analysis is any discussion of what government should and shouldn't do in a rational world and what we should be willing to pay for it.
Comments
"Bauer
OK, here's one: Daniels is a fan of charter schools - privately run school unaffiliated with a church. They pay their teachers about $10,000 a year less than the public schools. Public school teachers aren't exactly raking it in, by the way.
Charter schools, based on standardized test scores, do a much worse job, on average, that public schools.
Daniels tries to keep this a secret, but being a journalist with access to information that Leo knows, but you don't, the governor is a fan of the utterly discredited book, "The Bell Curve." This gist is that schools don't improve kids knowledge base or thinking ability. In effect, they're just a waste of money.
At any rate, you ask for "just one" thing state Republicans support that hurts education. You just got it.
By the way, although I disagree with Daniels about education, I otherwise find him to be a pretty decent governor. (Oh, and he lies about his height, but most men under 6 feet tend to do that.) I don't automatically oppose everything he stands for just because he's in the "wrong" political party. Only people who don't think take that attitude.
Littlejohn, once again your comprehension skills prove woefully inadequate.
What I asked was: "I
Charter schools serve a different population than the regular public schools. If D students at public schools become C students at charter schools, they are better schools than a public schools which transforms A students into B students. The data exists, and we need statistics I've never seen.
I've never seen show teachers becoming more effective as they obtain advanced degrees and get paid more. In fact, I think you'll find that young enthusiastic teachers, the poorest paid in the public school system, are the most effective.
If charter schools educate kids that otherwise would have become dropouts, we should all strongly support them.
What is a balanced budget? Under President Clinton's term it was said he had a budget surplus, but when you check the national debt at the US Treasury Web Site that lists the debt to the penny as of each day for more than a decade, it has increased every year, clearly no surplus. They way they got a surplus was to count surpluses from Social Security and Medicare and even though these surpluses were loaned to the Government through the Treasury and were in fact debt on the books of the Treasury, the "Unified" Budget was able to show a surplus, even though the general budget by law is unable to spend any of the dedicated taxes for SS or Medicare on the general budget and neither of these program are allowed to be funded from general funds or borrow money. In simple terms it is no different than what Bernie Maddoff did with his ponzi scheme or Enron did.
Indiana does not have a surplus and anyone who truly believes this needs to wake up. For example the Toll Road lease provided over $4 Billion to the State of Indiana for 70 years. The problem is that they have spent over 70% of it on additional infrastructure. This new infrastructure if we want to maintain it will cost a considerable amount starting in just a few years. In addition instead of the $4 billion being spent over 70 years on an actuarial basis, it will be gone in under 15 years. During the next 55 years who pays the bills on Daniels new projects?
The property tax reform lowered property taxes, but at the same time the state took over all pre 1977 unfunded teacher, police and fire pensions. I have not see a single penny being allocated to funding these. A balanced budget means you pay for the items enacted in each year and not kick an empty promise or IOU down the street.
Then there is the more then $3 billion borrowed by the Indiana Unemployment program that has been hemoraging since 2000. Of course the cost of paying this borrowed money off is no where to be found and our Indiana Legislature has delayed any enactment to begin funding unemployment without borrowed money.
Where as the US budget where congress likes to use a Unified Budget to make things look far better than they actually are, the state of Indiana likes to separate out all the budgets and when they say they have a balanced budget look only at one budget, not all inclusively.
As for paying educators, it is up to the schools and teachers. Keep in mind teachers are professionals. As most professionals know, traveling on business is part of the job (no increase in pay or compensation), working Saturdays and late nights come with the job. Teachers do take work home and it is no different than any other professional. The only difference is that teachers have a schedule that closely matches any children they may have in school (holidays, summers, spring breaks). They also work fewer days and when an equivalent worth analysis is done based on hours worked and benefits, they are generally very well payed. The problem is they work a 1/3 fewer hours than other professionals.
My recommendation for teachers who think they are not paid enough is to find other employment. Most companies have frozen wages, cut benefits and teachers face the same thing now. Be thankful you have a job.
Mr. Larsen, the problem with paying professionals by the hour is that their living expenses are incurred by the week and by the month. If we want to retain good teachers (ones that will teach us that it's "paid", not "payed"), we need to increase their annual pay - and the most reasonable way to do that is not to tax landowners more, but to employ fewer teachers and use them 12 months a year.
(This isn't a spelling flame. Exposure to bad spellers online leads us all - including obviously intelligent writers such as yourself - to have brain farts. And please take note that I do not disagree with anything you've said. I'm just taking this item one step further.)
Harl & William, In r/e teachers pay, does anybody out there seriously think if we increased teachers pay by $5k or $10k a year that it would have the slightest bit of difference in student performance?
I personally have no problem with teachers making more money (a huge portion of my family is made up of teachers) but it's asinine to attribute the failure of public schools to teacher pay, that's a canard long used by teachers unions with absolutely no basis in fact.
so it wouldn't helo if you upped their pay to big city levels, say $25,000 grand a year? why do u get a better quality ball player mostly when u pay top dollar. same with a corp ceo.
Andrew, I honestly think if you bumped starting pay for teachers $25k, it might attract more applicants initially that may have gone into other fields with similar starting pay, but I think the majority that choose it for the money would then bail in a year or two. I believe wholeheartedly it would not do a thing to improve grades, graduation rates, and overall academic performance. Teaching requires a certain personality not everyone has, you can have someone extremely bright that's an abysmal failure in relating to students creating a lousy teacher.
In my experience (as I said the majority of my family are teachers) people don't choose that line of work based upon pay but because they feel called to teach others. Like any vocation, there will always be a percentage of frickstix and boneheads but by and large the people that choose teaching do so because they love it, and yes, just like the rest of us (everyone) they will complain about the pay and I submit they would even if it was $25k a year higher. That's just being human, none of us thinks we're being paid what we're worth on a given day.
Bottom line is, school corporations don't need more money, they need to get out from under federal control and union control, they have far too many rules and regs (fed) to adhere to. They have become waaaaay too administration top heavy. We have enormous staff in place to follow ridiculous federal mandates. They need far less complicated curriculum and the ability to discipline again. There needs to be a defined power structure again, teachers are the boss in class, Principals are the boss in the school. Period.
We've been throwing gazillions at them for decades and it hasn't helped one bit, in fact things are far worse. Too many chiefs syndrome.
"There needs to be a defined power structure again, teachers are the boss in class, Principals are the boss in the school. Period."
Tim, that's how you run a prison, not a school. Great teachers are salesmen. They're agents provocateur.
You would have teachers lead the horse to water, and beat the horse to get it to drink. Great teachers don't do that; they salt the oats instead.
When kids start school, they're excited at the prospect of learning. They want to decode this magical code that we call writing. They are fascinated by dinosaurs, amazed that you can whirl a bucket of water like a ferris wheel without spilling a drop. And it doesn't take very long for humorless disciplinarians to beat the love of learning out of them.
If you hear a bedroom that's deadly silent, nobody's engaged in friendly friction. If you hear a quiet classroom, nobody's learning anything. Learning is exciting and fun, and kids can't keep their mouths shut when that happens. And that's a good thing, because it encourages the other kids to get excited and have fun as well.
Mark Twain said that God invented jackasses for practice, and then he invented school boards. It's not just the feds that impose rules and regulations that don't advance the learning agenda.
ball players and top execs also choose their professions because they love it . if they feel called to it low pay proves to b a barrier to attracting quality. again, it works in other professions, including when more money and florida sun made me leave for fort myers.
FWIW, an interesting read on schools & money spent by Bill Gates:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903554904576461571362279948.html