(via First Draft — thanks mds). Just to note, he’s been appearing here for a long time. Update: see also Nichols and BusinessWeek.
I forgot to say that the temperature barely rose above freezing on Saturday. More coverage, by popular demand, soon.
by Harry on March 15, 2011
(via First Draft — thanks mds). Just to note, he’s been appearing here for a long time. Update: see also Nichols and BusinessWeek.
I forgot to say that the temperature barely rose above freezing on Saturday. More coverage, by popular demand, soon.
{ 51 comments }
Witt 03.16.11 at 12:05 am
This is just terrific. Thank you so much for linking.
Substance McGravitas 03.16.11 at 12:15 am
Related to what is said at 1:35.
david 03.16.11 at 12:20 am
Lovely.
Substance McGravitas 03.16.11 at 12:29 am
And yes, thanks for posting.
Chris Dornan 03.16.11 at 12:33 am
Great speech. Thanks.
Daniel 03.16.11 at 2:03 am
Good luck with your recall. Walker will whip your ass……The people are fed up. Government workers are overpaid, no more so than y’all in BIG EDUCATION.
Miami-Dade mayor ousted in recall vote
MIAMI | Tue Mar 15, 2011 9:25pm EDT
(Reuters) – The mayor of Miami-Dade, one of the most populous counties in the United States, was ousted from office in a recall vote on Tuesday triggered by popular anger over a hike in property taxes.
With more than half the Florida county’s precincts reporting, official results showed 88 percent of voters backed an effort to remove once-popular Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez, marking the biggest U.S. recall since California voters tossed out Governor Gray Davis in 2003.
The Miami Herald and the local Fox television affiliate, WSVN, declared that Alvarez had been recalled.
Daniel 03.16.11 at 2:06 am
BTW, Miami, Dade!!!!! Can’t blame that one on the Tea Party, can ya!!!
Ahistoricality 03.16.11 at 6:52 am
The push to remove Alvarez from office was led by billionaire car dealer Norman Braman
Astroturf uprising funded by big-money interests who prefer a weak state so they can plunder at will and recieve the adulation of shortsighted dupes? Sure ya can.
praisegod barebones 03.16.11 at 7:53 am
Am I right in thinking that Democrat votes in the Wisconsin Senate are currently being regarded as invalid (because they are being held in contempt)? (I think I read this over on the Making Light thread on Wisconsin).
Brett Bellmore 03.16.11 at 10:30 am
Yeah, actually you would be wrong. They’re not being permitted to phone in their votes anymore. If they were present, they could still vote.
Brett Bellmore 03.16.11 at 10:33 am
I mean, really: Fleeing to another state to prevent a quorum, so that votes can’t be held, and then complaining that you’re not permitted to vote until you return? Pretty nervy if you ask me, it’s right up there with killing your parents, and then insisting on mercy from the court because you’re an orphan…
guthrie 03.16.11 at 10:42 am
Brett – it seems to have worked for the republicans so far…
Chris Bertram 03.16.11 at 11:04 am
it’s right up there with killing your parents, and then insisting on mercy from the court because you’re an orphan…
Glad to see Brett’s sense of proportion is intact.
Brett Bellmore 03.16.11 at 11:11 am
Chris, would you suggest that a legislator should be entitled to be absent in order to prevent a quorum, and get to vote anyway? There’s more than a little of trying to have it both ways in that… How can you be present enough to vote, but not enough to count towards a quorum?
Harry 03.16.11 at 11:36 am
Pay attention Brett. They were, indeed, still being held in contempt till yesterday, and told their votes would not be counted. Fitzgerald relented yesterday, but probably too late for it not to do the Reps any damage. Nor am I aware of any senate Dems complaining about the rule changes the Republicans put through after the fact solely for their own political advantage (though as a constituent I was pissed off that my senator was subject to this ad hoc rule when he was doing his job roughly as I and the vast majority of his constituents wanted him to — that is trying to get the best government that he could, and using the best legal means available to him). You make a lot of assertions of fact and as-if-of-fact, Brett, but you don’t seem to know much. I’d prefer you restrict yourself to your ideological ranting when you can’t be bothered to check your facts.
Daniel — yes, if anyone were proposing big property tax hikes they’d probably be unpopular. The only person who really wants this is the Governor, but he doesn’t have the power to do it. I continue to doubt that we’ll get him, but some of the 8 senators have had it, and idiotic antics like Fitzgerald’s refusal to count the senate votes increase the probable number of successful recalls (it is no doubt under pressure from his colleagues whose careers are being destroyed by this that he relented).
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb 03.16.11 at 12:17 pm
I am struck by the emptiness of the discussion here, specifically of those who are critical of the Democrats who struggled to sustain the right to free speech and fighting for the rights of a legislative minority. Denunciation replaces confrontation with alternative positions. A significant indication of a democratic crisis. I am a progressive, looking for conservatives who I can respect, not finding them. I wrote about this at Deliberately Considered (http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2010/10/where-are-the-conservative-intellectuals/)
Ben A/baa 03.16.11 at 2:58 pm
the emptiness of the discussion here
I don’t think this is the venue for the type of discussion you are seeking. Rather, this is a place for commiseration, building momentum, consciousness raising, whatever. I don’t mean that negatively at all.
In my own state, I see public sector employee unions using political power to craft deals every bit as lop-sided and against the public interest as those large agribusiness concerns and defense contractors have made at the federal level. So I suppose I’m inclined to see moves that ratchet back political power of public sector unions in a positive light. I suspect we’d all agree that public sector employee unions are in principle capable of striking deals against the public interest, in the same way that we’d all probably agree regulatory capture can exist as a phenomenon. So there’s a discussion to be had there on where Wisconsin is on the merits, and whether Walker’s approach to the issue is legitimate or not. But this isn’t the place.
Jeff 03.16.11 at 3:33 pm
I see public sector employee unions using political power to craft deals every bit as lop-sided and against the public interest as those large agribusiness concerns and defense contractors have made at the federal level.
I doubt it. No one ever has a good example of this claimed extreme power, abused by public employees.
Mara 03.16.11 at 3:35 pm
Harry,
Thanks for posting this — and for all your updates, which locals are enjoying too.
It’s too bad the clip doesn’t run for 30 more seconds. I originally watched this live (via wiseye.org) and Mason’s words weighed all the more heavily when followed by Fitzgerald’s response. He chastised the audience for the outburst and threatened them with removal from the chamber if it happened again.
Stewart 03.16.11 at 3:53 pm
Thanks for posting this, Harry. It has been very uplifting to see how passionately the Wisconsin Dems (especially Rep. Mason, Sen. Erpenbach and Rep. Barca) have been fighting during this whole mess.
JM 03.16.11 at 3:56 pm
Public sector employee unions, by virtue of being both public and union, are evil. Just because.
Repeat until you’re through stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.
Then move on to the next state.
JM 03.16.11 at 3:58 pm
Substance McGravitas 03.16.11 at 12:15 am
Related to what is said at 1:35.
That probably made more sense in the original drool.
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb 03.16.11 at 4:00 pm
Perhaps this isn’t the place for the discussion I am seeking. And yes, I am trying to develop such a place at DeliberatelyConsidered, but it would be tragic if serious discussion itself was ghettoized. We spend too much time commiserating, not enough time debating and exploring, and considering the judgments of others. Thus there is the Fox News phenomenon and its left wing imitators. I explore this in http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2010/10/obama-v-fox-news/ and other posts.
JM 03.16.11 at 4:10 pm
We spend too much time commiserating, not enough time debating and exploring, and considering the judgments of others.
What’s this “we” shit, kimosabe? People debate here all the time. Conservatives like Frum are at war with epistemic closure on their own side. None of that matters.
You can’t debate a liar and it’s useless correcting the cant of the various privatized pravdas because their audience will return to them even after they know they’ve been lied to. Legal bribery has sufficiently disenfranchised citizens that ideological content is just another form of entertainment, especially for those who for whatever reason identify with their abusers among the bribing and the bribed.
Harry 03.16.11 at 4:20 pm
In fact my posts on education in particular tend to be exactly the sort of thing you are looking for Jeffrey, and frequently the subsequent discussions are of very high quality. (Other may have favourites, but I’ve written a fair bit about school improvement and school reform that you’ll find quickly if you look for the education posts). I have given a lot of thought over a life to the various arguments about the value of unions, of public sector unions in particular (which, as I’ve said in earlier threads, do indeed engage in rent-seeking). This is just not the time for further exploration of that — you are welcome to do it yourself but I do not believe that most of the Republicans are giving any of this the kind of thought you want us all to give. I have. I’ve known Cory Mason a long time, and, to be honest, he has too — he is about as far from being an ideologue as you can be, nor is he especially partisan, interestingly. But here we are involved in the political fight of our lives, and those of us who have considered and well informed (and, yes, even nuanced) opinions are, at the moment, devoting ourselves to building a political movement that can shift things so that more of the gains of future growth go to the people who actually produce it, and less to those who enjoy the rents that they have sought through contributing to the coffers of politicians who cut taxes, hate the state, and seek to undermine public institutions for the sake of increasing the profits of, well, their rent seekers.
Brett Bellmore 03.16.11 at 4:32 pm
Harry, I was aware of the instance I linked to, of Republicans refusing to let absent Democratic Senators vote over the phone. Until this morning, I was unaware of the (Thankfully short lived.) venture into not letting them vote in person.
While I think declaring them in contempt was not unwarrented given their behavior, the penalty levied was inappropriate. Even people I generally agree with can over-reach at times.
Gene O'Grady 03.16.11 at 5:14 pm
I find it hard to reconcile the talk about the excessive power and lop-sided deals of the public sector unions (and let’s be clear, this is about downgrading teachers and administration and support workers in education) with the life I have led and observed, where the single most notable social change I ever saw was the large scale move of school teachers, almost all women, into selling real estate in California in the 70’s.
chris 03.16.11 at 5:38 pm
I suspect we’d all agree that public sector employee unions are in principle capable of striking deals against the public interest
That’s an interesting question. If you allow “in principle” to include “if public employees made a million dollars each, then their union would naturally have Koch-sized piles of money to fling around”, then sure. But as long as their members make not much (if at all) more than anyone else and not nearly as much as the overclass, any political muscle public unions have would have to be electoral: in other words it would have to come from at least as many members of the public being with them as against them. And the employees themselves, although they certainly are members of the public, aren’t nearly numerous enough to pull this off; they need lots of non-public employees agreeing with their position.
But in that case their goals *aren’t* against the public interest — the public says so, and they oughtta know. (Or, at least, you’d have to be very careful how you define the public interest so that you can claim to know what it is better than the public does.) If the people, after listening to the teachers’ arguments, decide they *want* to pay their teachers better, how can you be so sure that that is against their interest? Maybe they value better-paid teachers above lower taxes or smaller deficits.
If public unions don’t have the money and they don’t have the people, then it’s hard to see how they could make any deals either for or against the public interest — what do they have that’s worth dealing with?
Regulatory capture is a poor comparison because the industries that successfully capture regulators *do* have huge piles of money to fling at the problem, which is precisely what unions of low- to moderate-paid people don’t have.
Maybe you’ve seen a few too many ads from a billion-dollar astroturf organization (hint: not funded by people who got rich in the public sector, because there aren’t any) warning about the ominous million-dollar budgets of unions, but that first letter makes a big difference.
dr ngo 03.16.11 at 6:02 pm
FWIW, I didn’t get around to watching this video yesterday, and it’s gone today – also from “First Draft,” which was the immediate source. Too bad (I gather).
Russell Arben Fox 03.16.11 at 6:33 pm
Harry, your comment at #25 is simply golden. Thank you.
Harry 03.16.11 at 6:58 pm
Thanks Russell.
dr ngo –its back here now. Don’t know what happened.
musical mountaineer 03.16.11 at 7:13 pm
What an extraordinary admission. It forces me to take everything you say a little more seriously.
piglet 03.16.11 at 8:31 pm
I liked this in today’s NYT:
Russell L. Carter 03.16.11 at 8:36 pm
“What an extraordinary admission.”
What’s extraordinary about it? Nobody here worships unions. They are imperfect in well understood ways, and when they get corrupted, lordy, they’re almost as bad as the Republican Party.
They just happen to be one of the few remaining power centers pushing back against the oligarchical raping and pillaging of this country, and you go to war with the army you got.
bh 03.16.11 at 8:50 pm
#32. If it seems extraordinary, you haven’t been paying attention to the discussions Harry mentioned.
Jeffrey C. Goldfarb 03.16.11 at 9:11 pm
The problem with discussions such as these is that one says one thing in response to a reply and then it looks like an overall judgment that applies beyond the intended response. I think that this site has a great deal of interesting discussion and information, and that the discussion goes beyond name calling and the establishment of closed solidarity. This is why I come and read the posts here regularly.
JM 03.16.11 at 9:31 pm
I can’t count the number of students I’ve turned away from the teaching profession over the years, for those very reasons: little money and less respect.
Salient 03.16.11 at 9:33 pm
Pretty nervy if you ask me, it’s right up there with killing your parents,
If legislative delay tactics equate to murder in your mind, Brett, I think it’s you who should be held in contempt.
musical mountaineer 03.17.11 at 1:33 am
You’re right. And perhaps it’s impolite of me to characterize as “extraordinary” what is really a pretty banal and necessary observation. But I have paid attention to other discussions where the topic of union rent-seeking came up, and based on that reading I didn’t expect much good faith and honesty from the pro-union side.
Also, coming from the pro-union side, this banal observation about rent-seeking has some extraordinary implications. Unions do bad things, but these are acceptable in return for the goods. Well, there’s a proposition one can actually think and argue about, instead of just making sheep noises. This is the right way to think about all institutions, up to and including civilization itself. The question, “how much bullshit are we willing to put up with, and why?” turns out to be fruitful – and difficult. I’ve enjoyed mulling it over today.
There are a lot of highly-debatable assumptions packed into that, but this is kind of a designated non-debate thread. I appreciate your forthrightness about the corruptibility of unions.
rightie 03.17.11 at 4:59 am
Oh, come on, Harry, you’re more honest than this. You could at least admit that the Walker-backed proposals will cost your family several thousand–perhaps as much as $10,000–each year, and that you think it’s a matter of social justice that your family, with an income in the top decile (oh, I know, you’ll insist you’re in the second decile), continues to have the income it had last year. That’s the sort of event that makes a man do some hard thinking, right? That you get to relive your left-wing protesting youth while protecting your comfortable lifestyle is a bonus for you, but absurd from any reasonable perspective.
Brett Bellmore 03.17.11 at 11:00 am
” Pretty nervy if you ask me, it’s right up there with killing your parents,
If legislative delay tactics equate to murder in your mind, Brett, I think it’s you who should be held in contempt.”
If you think cutting off half of THE classic definition of chutzpah makes my remark into one about murder, rather than arrogant presumption, you’re assuming the other readers are idiots.
Harry 03.17.11 at 12:30 pm
rightie
yes, it’ll probably cost us $10k or so — in fact likely more. Because a fair amount of my income comes from consulting, etc, it is a lesser percentage than for many of my lower income colleagues. And the truth is that if I were willing to move from Wisconsin I could easily have a considerably higher income (and if my wife were willing to quite teaching and work in the private sector, in which she would have a salary double or more what she currently receives, we probably could get into the top 1% that are radically unfair beneficiaries of injustice). It may be hard to believe (I don’t really, even though I frequently get evidence of it) my particular skill set is in high demand and short supply — and yes, like everyone else in the top 10% of the income distribution I get a huge rent from that bit of luck without even seeking it. In fact, as a matter of social justice, our family (which is easily in the top decile) should receive a good deal less than we will even after the cuts. Though nowhere near as much less as people in the top 0.5%. That’s why I have argued (e.g. to more than one legislator) that cuts should be progressive, not regressive — state workers earning up to 35k, eg, should pay nothing for their healthcare or to their retirement with a sliding scale up to around my salary at which we should be paying more than the full retirement amount, and, say, half our health benefits. Of course, I would prefer a system in which health-care were paid for out of a national insurance scheme, so costs could be controlled, and corporate profit and inefficiency did not rake off such a high percentage of spending (you think the public sector is inefficient? Compare the American healthcare system with…. oh, I don’t know, any other rich world public system). And I’d prefer more a steeply progressive personal income tax, in which private sector workers could share some of the costs, and incomes overall would be more equal. But there is no way people like you would stand for that.
You’ll be glad to know, though, that in 15 years working for the school district my wife has never once taken a penny of health care insurance, and that she has argued (successfully) that teachers like her should be docked the full 4 days of pay that they were off, despite the fact that during those days she continued to work more than contract hours (though, I admit, not the 150% that she usually does). You might also want to look at the contract that the Madison teachers just signed.
So basically, the cuts will not noticeably affect my comfortable lifestyle, and anyway I could easily have a yet more comfortable one if I wanted. Whereas I have friends (because my friendships cross class lines) who may be driven into bancruptcy by this.
So, your ad hominem falls a bit flat. Maybe you’d like to give us details of your income and how it will be affected. Oh, and your name perhaps — when you accuse people of dishonesty or bad faith please do so under your own name — it really is cowardly and pathetic to fling around such accusations anonymously.
Harry 03.17.11 at 1:53 pm
MM — I think that the point I’ve made before is that the political system is designed to promote rent-seeking (its no accident that Anthony Downs was American!) so it would be amazing if it didn’t happen. I agree with the people who say that corporate interests rent-seek through political contributions and lobbying — sometimes to the detriment of their competitors, sometimes to the detriment of other sectors, sometimes to the detriment of their workers or other workers. Unions are their to protect their members’ interests, and it would require self-abnegating angels not to play the game that is the only game in town. Some unions (AFT comes to mind, if Leo’s reading) put a great deal of time, thought, and energy, into improving the quality of the services their members provide; some don’t (mentioning no names). In this case, as I say upthread, in my judgment (and you are welcome to disagree) because the effect of strong public sector unions is to bid up the compensation packages of similar private sector workers, and because the public sector, while it has lots of inefficiencies, produces vital goods and services which I think the private sector would not provide and a weakened public sector would provide worse, I support public sector collective bargaining rights.
Does this mean I favour the status quo ante in the provision of public services? No. Anyone who has read my posts on education (both k-12 and higher ed) will tell you that I am a reformer. Christ, the way I initially got to know Cory well was when he discovered I’d written entire book defending school choice (he was not delighted by it — but, and this tells you a lot about him, despite disagreeing with me, he helped me get publicity for my ideas by arranging for me to be on an hour-long WPR call in show in morning prime-time). I am probably more radical even than my regular comments sound — I think that the standardized salary schedule is bad news, almost as bad news as the idiotic idea of evaluating teachers and rewarding them according to how their students perform on standardized tests. I would like to see merit pay which was distributed according to the actual judgments of principals about how successful their teachers were (there are easy ways of doing this, without causing dissention among teachers, I’m not going to go into detail here). But, I confess, I’d like to wait until schools had principals who were selected on the grounds of their capacities for management of people and judgments about instructional quality, rather than on the basis of how well they coached a cross-country team, or how well they have joined the boys club that congregates at every basketball game. And unions that don’t want people who know nothing about teaching making judgments about teachers are not just protecting their members, but are protecting the children they teach too. I’m sure if I knew as much about the provision of other public services I’d be just as ready to find fault in the way they are designed.
But notice this: Walker actually has no proposals at all about the reform of public schools. He has a vouchers and charter agenda, sure, but that’s not about reforming schools or the teaching profession or, more importantly, the management of schools. FWIW, my guess is that vouchers are at worst neutral, but his changes will make them worse than neutral, and as for charters, I just think we know basically nothing about whether charters improve public schooling, or whether they are better than public schools. And by nothing I really mean that — I don’t take it to be a reason not to have them, just a reason to try and figure out better what their effects are — but Walker shows no interest in that, he is just pursuing that agenda with no information at all, because he is an ideologue.
And before anyone points out that I am affiliated with a School of Education — yes, I agree they are rent-seekers too, and I think that the competition that teacher education has been exposed to by the emergence of TFA etc, is a very good thing. And, in my defense, though I work for them they don’t pay me, and in their defense they knew perfectly well all the irritating things I believe and would continue to say when they invited me to affiliate.
Kristen 03.17.11 at 2:51 pm
Rightie,
This is exactly the issue that people outside of WI don’t seem to be grasping: the protests were NOT about a bunch of whiny public-sector workers who don’t want to pay more for their health insurance. (And I’m still waiting to see a union thug!)
My husband and I both work for the private sector, so we aren’t directly hit in our individual paychecks through this budget bill. But the entire state will be hit with these draconian cuts to education, healthcare (through Wisconsin’s Badgercare program) and other services to the poor.
The teachers started the movement. They got out right away and loudly protested Walker’s bill. But as they did so, they inspired the rest of us to join them.
Harry 03.17.11 at 3:58 pm
Rightie — just to be clear, future accusations of bad faith or dishonesty will be posted under your actual full name, and some verification of who you are, or will be deleted. And future comments of any sort will be deleted unless you provide a valid email address (as you didn’t for this). I have a lot of respect for a lot of right-wingers, but none for you.
piglet 03.17.11 at 3:59 pm
MM: “Unions do bad things”
Is that “unions sometimes do something wrong because they are composed of humans that make mistakes, just like any other social institution”, or is that “unions do bad things in principle”? Because nobody here denies the first statement. The second however is idiotic. Unions are by definition interest groups. That they pursue the interests of their members is not wrong. That’s what they are here for.
Of course, you may belong to those who believe it is okay for financial industry execs to bring down the economy in pursuit of their own private gain because seeking profit is not wrong in principle; only selfish behavior of unionized working people is bad in principle. That’s pretty much the opinion of the Republicans and the Tea Party. Own up to it.
musical mountaineer 03.17.11 at 5:15 pm
Thanks, Harry. I’d pretty much inferred everything in your first paragraph; the rest is interesting but I don’t have anything to say to it at the moment. This stuck out:
This implies that it’s possible to design a political system such that rent-seeking is not promoted. I can’t think of any reason to believe this is possible. Weakening the government does reduce the incentives to rent-seekers, but to actually eliminate the incentives you’d have to eliminate the government. Formal constraints to prevent rent-seeking may work in instances (in this instance, Walker is formally eliminating the rent-seeking institution), but another rent-seeker will either find a workaround or (more likely) use the existing formal constraint to bludgeon competing rent-seekers.
So I would say that rent-seeking is built into this system and all possible systems, and we’ll never be rid of it. It may be an absolute moral wrong, but in practical terms it’s not a matter of principle but of degree. All we can really do is be vigilant and politically engaged enough to cross the bastards off when they go too far; “too far” being subjective.
I’m not equipped for a debate on whether the Wisconsin teachers’ union has gone too far. But my general sense of the situation is that ALL the rent-seekers, from the mighty financiers to the guy who sweeps the gymnasium, have gone too far. Put another way, government has abdicated its core responsibilities so as to give 100% to its rent-seeking clients. At this point, if you took out the special dispensations to politicians’ special friends, hardly anything would remain of the law. Whole government departments would have nothing to do.
Something approximately that radical may be under way. Right now the wrecking-ball is smashing a Democrat client. But it will continue to swing in all directions. The Republicans’ clients (and the Republicans themselves) will not be spared.
piglet 03.17.11 at 5:19 pm
Russell L. Carter 03.18.11 at 12:12 am
“The Republicans’ clients (and the Republicans themselves) will not be spared.”
This is wishful thinking. I wish it would happen, but if wishes were ponies…
musical mountaineer 03.20.11 at 1:00 am
We’ll find out in a year or three. stendec croatoan mxyzptlk
piglet 03.20.11 at 10:12 pm
“The Republicans’ clients (and the Republicans themselves) will not be spared.â€
Of course not. They are getting tax cuts.
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