John Stewart contrast republican attitudes towards teachers and wall street bankers.

Arizona legislature hits all time low: it is now proposing that the government pay taxes. When I get the details I'll post them.

Please do. The whole notion strikes me as magical thinking.

Can't watch it from here, but these are some of the wealthiest workers in the state, after all, making 20% or so more than the average worker, and it should be about time for them to pay their fair share. Nancy Pelosi herself is on record as saying she wants to "equalize incomes", so even with the Democrats the result will be the same. Those people need to pay more. A state government can't just print its own money like the Feds can. They need to balance the books.


As for Wall Street, wasn't it Obama in his first act as President, and not the Wisconsin state government that bailed them out?

Teachers among the wealthiest? What state is that?

Stewart's point is that those going after teachers "to pay their fair share" or to accept pay cuts are the same folks who defend the obscene salaries of wall street bankers.

Those who toss around the 20% number are also fond of telling us that those making $250K/year (500% - 700% of an average teacher's salary) are "not rich" and should not be made to pay a higher tax rate.

In Wisconsin, I understand that Union workers make something like 22% more than non-Union ones. If Pelosi is to believed, they're getting too much.

I get Stewart's point, it just doesn't seem to be valid, simply because Wisconsin didn't bail out Wall Street, Obama did. The people that he's claiming are "the same people" are in fact different, which kills the point.

I just don't see any reason here for a state to make bad fiscal decisions, all I see is an excuse (i.e. "Well, Washington does it too.") The difference between a reason and an excuse seems to be an important one to focus on since so many politicians find it impossible to grasp the difference. They'll collectively keep screwing us over forever, and imagine that it's somehow okay because they're both doing it. By that kind of thinking, Hitler and Mussolini each cancelled the other out, making the Axis the Good Guys.

Stewart wasn't focused on Wisconsin, there is a national anti-teacher movement in the republican party. He was showing the hypocrisy in those at the national level who criticize teachers for making too much while people making 500% more are "not rich" and continue to need tax breaks. That was what he was showing.

In regards to Wisconsin, you'd have a stronger point if 1) the teacher's union didn't agree to most of the cuts proposed and 2) the Governor apparently pushed through tax breaks for corporations at a cost of over $100 million. So major corporations making millions of dollars need a tax break while teachers need to get punished for excessive income?

The 20% more than the average worker sounds awful on the surface of it, but is it really? Who, exactly, are the average workers we are talking about? Do the figures include unskilled and semi-skilled workers? Of course they do. If you look only at people with comparable credentialing teachers typically make much less.

The current crop of republicans despise public education and want it dismantled, and the sooner the better. In this sense they have no concern for facts (not that any politician has any concern for facts) and will grab hold of any factoid they can in order to justify their position. (What they really despise is their inability to make teaching theology in place of science the law of the land.)


But you make an important point--it is the politicians screwing us over, not the teachers. It is the teachers that are taking the blame. This isn't about teachers or teacher pay, it is about a couple of generations of politicians who have failed to do their jobs. Rather than criticizing the elder politicians, the current crop blames the teachers.

Let me tell you what I know (or think I know) about Wisconsin, and you can tell me where I'm off base.

• Since I don't live there, if push comes to shove, I don't care what happens in Wisconsin, as long as they don't come to the other states for bailouts. From what I understand, Wisconsin, California and New York are all facing severe budget crises resulting from Federalesque overspending, and talk has been raised about the other states bailing them out. I don't mind helping another state with a short term crisis, but not to help them carry out long-term abuse. It's just not fair that the fiscally responsible states should help finance the irresponsible ones. But if they don't come to us (i.e. the Feds), then they can do whatever they want.
• Walker, the current governor, was elected to get the budget crisis under control, suggesting that a majority of his state wants it done (or did at election time). It doesn't seem to be something he's doing against the public will (like Obamacare, for instance).
• The bit about corporate tax breaks is a little apples and oranges. One is about money the state pays out, the other is about money the state takes in. My (baisc) understanding of Wisconsin's troubles is that, like the Feds, they have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Money is money, of course. In one sense, taking in one dollar more is the same as spending one dollar less. But the whole point of corporate tax breaks is to get corporations to do business in your state instead of somebody elses, and bring their jobs there. Again, how Wisconsin balances their need for jobs with their need for tax revenue is their own business, as long as they don't ask everyone else to pay for their mistakes. But if the argument is that "If you're going to try to bring jobs to the state, then, to be consistent, you must also support bad fiscal policy", then I wouldn't agree with that.
• The idea that corporate tax cuts cost money is a slippery one. They might or they might not. The Democrats always seem to think that it's a straight line; raise the rates and you raise your revenue. It often isn't, like when Jim Florio destroyed his state's trucking industry by placing a huge tax on new rigs. Everyone scurried over the border to Pennsylvania to buy their trucks, sales dropped to near zero, and his state got less money than they did when the rates were lower. It's a trade-off, to a certain point it works, and after that it doesn't, and I can't tell Wisconsin how to balance it. But in general, if you bring more jobs to your state you're going to gain money rather than lose it.
• I'm not too kindly disposed towards the Democrats who fled the state to keep from doing their jobs. Trying to cut them as much slack as possible, I can rationalize what they did as being similar to a filibuster. That's fine, I'm not agin the filibuster, as it's a good check against the tyranny of the majority (Imagine if a simple majority could have forced Obamacare on us). But a filibuster accompanied by an all-expense paid vacation at taxpayer expense is something I take a dim view of.
• I'm sure I've missed or misunderstood something here. I'd heard that the Dems left the state over a collective bargaining issue, that they got what they wanted, and then piled on another dozen or so demands. Yesterday, I hear that the collective bargaining bit is back on the table, and they suffered a defeat. So I'm missing a big piece of the puzzle on this.
• And again, I may be missing chunks here. You say the Teacher's union agreed to most of the cuts proposed, but I've seen clips of them getting quite upset at the idea that they should have to contribute to their own insurance, or that Viagra might not be covered.
• Are we sure what "the current crop" of Republicans want? So many of them are brand new. I think a lot of them would like an alternative to public education. And probably others feel that it's doing so badly that the mere act of providing an alternative to it would destroy it (which might be the same thing you're saying, indirectly). How many want to destroy it outright? I don't know, but either way, balancing the state's budget has to be done. California is about to go bankrupt, and I can't fault Wisconsin for trying to avoid the same fate. To me the biggest problem seems to be the failure of the Democrats to provide any alternative method of avoiding bankruptcy. Their own president admits that our spending is "unsustainable", yet look at the wailing and gnashing of teeth over cutting even the tiny fraction of the deficit that they're talking about now? They admit outright that they want to cut nothing at all. That, in conjunction with their admission that the current level is unsustainable makes me wonder if they have a death wish. Probably not, probably they've just been in power so long that they can't conceive of the spigot running dry even if they intellectually know it (which is probably another argument for term limits).

There's more, but that's more than enough. I'm sure I'm off base on some of this, but I've bullet-pointed it so you can spot the errors easier.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/world/africa/11libya.html?_r=1&hp

The U.S. is now being blamed for not helping overthrow Gaddafi. Read the rebel's comment on the second page of the article.

Big deal. They'd blame us just the same if we did. And whhy blame he US, of all people? Let France do it. They're closer and have a bigger interest. Besides, this could be their big chance to finally win one.