Pacing!
Actually, your actually substantive post is a great antidote to my personal anecdote.
Not all that substantive -- more substanceless shilling for a candidate.
(I feel that I should say, much as I love this guy, that he's unenthusiastically pro-choice. As in, Catholic anti-abortion, but not in favor of legal restrictions on abortion. That's within my comfort zone for supporting a candidate, but if it's not within your comfort zone, it is what it is.)
See, by preempting any, uh, familiar trolling, you've guaranteed no discussion at all.
Here, let's try again:
Geoghan==DeLay, and anyone who says otherwise probably kills rare songbirds with his bare hands for pleasure.
Yes, Yes, We're All Doomed And Nothing Will Do Any Good
Yes, yes, we're all doomed... so we might as well go out in style.
Geoghan==DeLay, and anyone who says otherwise probably kills rare songbirds with his bare hands for pleasure.
I sing the McManus fantastic: Obama == babykiller.
max
['Bipartisan.']
I just contributed, and I probably wouldn't have remembered to do it without this post. LB MAKES A DIFFERENCE!
(The actual process involved going to his web site and listening to a half hour interview about his positions....wow, a really smart and really uncompromising progressive, made me realize how rare that is and how we need as many of those voices as we can get on the national scene).
probably kills rare songbirds with his bare hands for pleasure
Proving their essential oneness with Dick Cheney.
They're doing us a favor. Once all of the rare songbirds are dead, man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
Ooh, yeah, count me in. Is he competitive?
I think he is -- there's a whole lot of people in the primary, but Geoghegan has the advantage of having a nationwide profile. He's the only one likely to be attracting much attention from people outside the district.
Without that, he wouldn't have a shot in hell; he's not the local party structure's favored candidate. So I can't tell how it's likely to play out, but I think he's got a chance.
Everyone I trust says he's awesome. I'm just a little freaked out about donating into a seventeen-candidate primary or whatever that is. I don't want to Naderize the situation and, say, make it so that he takes enough votes from Feigenholtz for Quigley to win.
I don't think it makes sense to worry about that, in any but the clearest (Nader in swing states) of situations. If you're not sure what meta-effect it's going to have, go ahead and support whoever you want to support.
OT: The title of this thread and it's relative inactivity make it seem like a good place to discuss the financial markets. I have nothing more intelligent to say than that they really aren't looking good right now, in a way that's (no doubt irrationally) making me more nervous than I previously had been about all the stuff that's happened since mid-September. Someone please say something to make me feel better.
That tie is a fetching color on you and you coordinated it well?
Shiller's computation of P/E using long term trailing earnings is now at 13, the long-term average value.
12: Don't worry, Brock. Money can't buy you love, anyway.
12:For Brock, Tim Duy Fed Expert from Thoma today
We gave AMEX 3.4 billion to start lending and they are using it for incentives to shut down credit card accouts.
Whatever news comes out of Washington regarding the plan of the day for the banking system, I hope one thing is soon made clear to the public - fixing the financial system is not the same thing as expanding lending. We are way past that point; you can't fix the system with more bad loans. If Treasury Secretary Geithner tries to sell his plans as the solution that will revive credit growth, I suspect he will further test the already strained credibility of the government. A more honest approach: We are simply trying to prevent the financial system from outright collapse. ...Tim Duy
Me, I'm studying Lenin. We won't need no stinking finance in the People's Soviet Socialist Republic.
No really, tell me why exactly we need to give T Boone Pickens, his stock & bond holders, his financiers whatever, 10-30% off the top to get wind energy from the plains. We need renewable energy, but we have to create a new set of billionaires to get it?
Over at CT, people reacted to "democratic socialism" like it was filthy language. I think social democracy...begging the crumbs of a welfare state from the capitalist feast...is a filthy evil idea.
60 billion more, on top of the 150 billion we have already given this zombie insurer. They would trade for equity, but the US Gov't already owns 80% of the company. And, well, Commercial Real Estate, which is the newest problem. is just beginning to crater.
210 billion in one year to prop up a zombie finance company. We are not getting it back.
15 billion over ten years for high-speed rail.
Fuck yeah, I'm reading Lenin.
Hah, I got fundraised by the Geoghegan campaign last night. I was so tickled I gave another $50.
I'm not sure if you'll regard this as good or bad, but Kaus is also pushing for the guy big time.
19: Kaus supporting Geogeahghouhhgaen is akin to those people who wave big puppets around at anti-war rallies*. Even if you dislike Kaus or DFHs, that says basically nothing about whether a particular candidate or cause is worthwhile.
*with apologies to those people, since there's nothing particularly wrong with them, aside from some of them being a little annoyingly oversmug, while Kaus is a complete idiot (and incredibly annoyingly oversmug).
20: Also, the giant puppet people do not (AFAIK) blow goats.
I like Kaus and don't know anything about Geoghegan aside from what is here and what Kaus has said.
19: Oh, how depressing, but I won't let it put me off.
22: Do you get how peculiar it is that Kaus is supporting Geoghegan? At this point Kaus has two issues: 1) immigration -- he's against it! and 2)unions -- they are bad! I haven't looked into Geoghegan's stance on immigration, but Geoghegan is a union lawyer and is best known for his writing in support of unions. If he makes to Congress he will be the biggest supporter of unions in the legislature.
Upon reconsideration, I realized that strange as this seems, it is pretty normal for Kaus. During the 8 years of the Bush administration he barely criticized the Republicans -- his only major criticism of Bush was from the right on immigration. At the same he used his blog to spread every possible negative rumor and innundo about the Democratic candidates. And yet he claims to have voted for the Democrat in every presidential election.
21: 20: Also, the giant puppet people do not (AFAIK) blow goats.
But they don't don't (AFAIK).
I like Kaus . . .
Ogged, is that you?
But on a more serious note: DEAR GOD WHY? HOW??
24: On a quick google, Kaus seems to be supporting him on the basis of personally thinking he's a good guy. And he's a charming writer, which argues that he might well be interpersonally charming. So there's nothing really weird about a conscienceless, unprincipled hack like Kaus supporting him on the basis of liking, despite the fact that they disagree about almost everything substantive.
I'm definately not Ogged. But come on, teachers unions really need the smack-down.
I'm leaving the UAW alone because they have enough problems right now.
And he's a charming writer, which argues that he might well be interpersonally charming.
Geoghegan, or Kaus?
[ASCII drawing of giant teacher puppet looming over MH]
28: Dude, you're on the wrong blog to say shit like that unless you have a fact-based, coherent argument for why you think it makes sense. And you're still going to draw a lot of fire for it.
In other news, this is actually shaking my support. I'll recover, but it's weird.
30: Geoghegan's charming. Kaus makes me want to smack him.
Watching things linked to from Salon are driving me to bob-level depths of pessimism and beyond. In my lifetime all sensible economic policies have been simply off the table because they are "socialism." Rants like this will take sensible economic policies off the table again. The government will not be able to impose any control over the banks--that would be nationalizing them! Since the government can't let the banks fail, we are simply going to pump more and more money into them with no strings attached, until the government itself runs out of credit.
But there's not point in reading Lenin. Left wing revolution is impossible in this country. The first and only people to stoop to violence will be the far right. The militia movement is already laying out plans.
I see no future for anyone. Also, I can't find my cup of coffee.
I can't wait to come back from teaching and read what happened when MH tried to blast the teacher's unions.
teachers unions really need the smack-down.
Why?
I'm leaving the UAW alone because they have enough problems right now.
Feel free to make your case. I'm sure the UAW will be able to handle a few blog comments here.
(After the last several comments, I feel the need to say to MH that no one's going to firebomb your house for saying rude things about unions. I'm just not going to affirmatively agree with those things without argument.)
But there's not point in reading Lenin.
Ok. I'll switch to Bukharin
Think is, with most of the modern lefties, including the frogs, the despair & pessimism is not only palpable, but delivered with a bad conscience. They all seem guilty and enbarrassed to offer up such futile impotent projects & plans. How's that 75 year old Gramscian project going anyway?
The Russians may have been guilty, but I don't think they felt that guilty. And if I am going to embrace absurdity, it might as well be a joyous hopeful honest authentic absurdity.
The contrast between Swedish trials and US trials is pretty striking. It's a lot more freewheeling, and also feels less structured than it is, I think. Everyone sits at the same table, and speaks freely, including defendants. It feels a bit like regular round table negotiations. Lawyers can't really make US style performances in those circumstances.
And if I am going to embrace absurdity, it might as well be a joyous hopeful honest authentic absurdity.
And, yet, I always get the feeling that you are pretending, bob.
And of course there are no juries to perform for.
Googling takes time.
My argument against teachers unions is local and performance based. I'm not opposed to unions in principle.
This link has the drop-out rate for Pittsburgh Public Schools (35%): http://www.pps.k12.pa.us/14311051715526407/lib/14311051715526407/randgradstudynr7-11-06.pdf
Enrollment in PPS dropped by 25% from 1998 to 2006. The population is dropping, but not that quickly:
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/06311/736277-298.stm
This link gives the budget for 2007, and it works about to close to $18,000 per pupil per year. http://www.postgazette.com/pg/06314/737192-298.stm
Locally, teachers have resources but the aren't doing anything with them. I blame the school board more, but the school board isn't exactly independent of the teachers' unions. It is very difficult to win a local election in Pittsburgh without the backing of public sector unions, including the teachers' union. If you get the unions, you get to be the endorsed Democratic candidate, which usually means you win the primary. And the winner of the primary always wins the general election. Maybe it is better where you live.
44: How does any of that get you to a conclusion that the problem is the union, or that things would be better in the absence of a union?
I mean, is the argument that "The schools are bad, therefore the problem has to be the teachers. And the entity that represents the teachers is the teachers union, so that's the problem."? Because there's a real difference between blaming the teachers, and blaming the fact that the teachers are allowed to collectively bargain. (There are problems with both methods of assigning blame, of course. But the first is at least a little more coherent.)
I don't have the time or inclination to get deep into this debate right now (so why am I commenting?), but I'm not sure unions have any legitimate business in the public sector. Their is no capitalist looking to oppress them, and anyone public official who tries to do so should be removed from office. And there are no "profits" to be divided with management, only public funds to be appropriated.
Their is no capitalist looking to oppress them, and anyone public official who tries to do so should be removed from office.
Who's supposed to notice it's happening if not the union?
re: 47
And what makes you think the state isn't going to exploit or oppress people?
45: It's in the Bible, Liz.
The non-union states of the Republican South have absolutely the worst schools, but for some reason this never come up in this debate. I think that most of the best public school systems are unionized, but I can't find a link.
Dissatisfaction with education comes from many sources: e.g. anti-evolutionists, people who hate public spending and tacation, ideological free-marketers, people who hate modern pop culture, and people who want government money to go to religious schools, and people who just hate unions. (There are even some legitimate reasons.)
Bad urban schools are the poster child, however, because they allows conservatives to drive a wedge between two major Democratic constituencies: African-Americans and teachers. There have been disputes between these two groups intermittently back to the Sixties. Furthermore, the media are concentrated in urban areas, and the NYC and DC schools aren't very good.
With honorable exceptions, the anti-teachers-union people talking about decaying urban schools do not have a record of caring about African American issues otherwise, except insofar as they believe that Jesus and/ or privatization would solve all problems for everyone in the world, even the lineage of Ham.
The ingrained American tendency to blame everything on schools and to believe that education will solve all problem, a tendency tracing back to Progressivism, is not at all realistic, but it plays a big role in American politics.
And following on 49, sure, a union could notice this was happening (and respond to it) more effectively than individual teachers could. I'm not ideologically wed to this position. But it does seem that there are real costs and benefits to any union, and that, while the benefits clearly outweigh the costs in the private sector, the benefits are dramatically lower and the costs likely higher in the public sector. And it's no longer clearly a net positive.
49: How is Joe Individual Teacher supposed to go about removing his oppressive public-servant boss from office all by himself?
Their is no capitalist looking to oppress them,
But there are managers, who are just as susceptible to being unfair and abusive as private sector managers. Not to mention that taxpayers are perfectly capable of oppressing people, as are public officials, and elections or other means of removal from office are really only an option when there is widespread public awareness and support for an issue/cause.
When you have time to comment further on this, Brock, I'll try to be there to heap abuse on your head.
53: call the local newspaper and tell them about the oppression? It would make a good story, especially once a reporter gets confirming quotes from a dozen other teachers. Or, hell, if that doesn't work: pass out fliers on a street corner? Give contributions to politicians topromise to appoint people who'll treat the teachers better? I don't know. How do any of us effect change in government?
How do any of us effect change in government?
By banding together into big powerful groups. Like unions. Next question.
the benefits are dramatically lower and the costs likely higher in the public sector. And it's no longer clearly a net positive.
How about some specifics about what you mean, Brock? How and why are the benefits dramatically lower and the costs higher? For that matter, what benefits and costs are you talking about?
My point is that the teachers' union has a great deal of power and the system in which they exercise this power is failing to serve the city. My evidence that the union has enough power to be blamed for problems in the system (aside from the fact that they are the ones teaching) comes from the success they have had at protecting their own interests. Salaries are high. The median is $70,000 (http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A40739). The median household income for the city is something near ½ of that. That high salary comes with very low payments for their health insurance and retirement. The teachers also fought (successfully) for the right to live outside their own school district. They get what they want often enough for it to be clear that if they wanted to try for improvement, they could.
I have no direct experience of public school teachers unions, and I generally have a high opinion of teachers since my Mom is one. However, the one close friend who worked as a teacher was completely abandoned by the union in the interests of maintaining the status quo. She gave a student a C on a paper, the student and parent (PTA parent, of course) protested, the administration backed the student and the union rep did jack shit when the grade was changed by the admin. It left such a bad taste in my friends mouth that she quit teaching.
Anecdata, worth what you paid for it.
Togo, that's hardly an objection to teacher's unions. If she'd been unionized, would things have been better?
59: Any reason you're comparing median salary for a teacher to the population as a whole rather than to those with comparable educational qualifications?
The teachers also fought (successfully) for the right to live outside their own school district.
Geez. The bloated plutocrats.
They get what they want often enough for it to be clear that if they wanted to try for improvement, they could.
This seems to imply that the policies that would improve the schools are obvious -- the only problem is the will to implement them. Management must know what those policies are, then, and presumably should be trying to implement them as well, but I guess they're losing the battle with the powerful teacher's unions. Do you, offhand, know what these policies are that the union is resisting?
(The sarcasm got a little heavy there, but I hope you take my point. If you can't figure out what the reforms are that the teachers are blocking, blaming them for things not being better seems undersupported.)
For starters, how about firing a teacher (just one) for something short of sleeping with a student.
The teachers also fought (successfully) for the right to live outside their own school district.
It would be legal to require them to live in their own school district? I'm surprised.
64: The Pittsburgh school system hasn't fired any teachers at all in the last [whatever period of time you're talking about]? Seems unlikely -- what's your source on that?
65: I've actually never heard of that for teachers. Requirements that cops live in the communities they serve aren't unusual -- I can't remember if NYC currently has that or doesn't, but I'm pretty sure it at least used to.
MH - the problem in 59 is not that teachers have these benefits. The problem in 59 is that everyone in Pittsburgh doesn't have them. Don't use some baseline to drag down the people who have more, especially if "more" is "a middle class standard of living". Set the baseline where you actually want people to be, and figure out what is behind the deviations from it.
(I take it you do not object in principle to a middle class standard of living.)
58, see 47.
You mean the part where you say you don't have the time or inclination to bother supporting your blithe statements? Okay.
how about firing a teacher (just one) for something short of sleeping with a student.
June 4, 2008: "The Penn Hills School Board accepted the resignation of the superintendent during a meeting Tuesday in which 34 teachers were fired as part of an effort to plug a $5 million hole in next year's budget. "
I'll note that most of my "experience" with public sector unions comes not from the teacher's union but from the NTEU (which my mother was a member of for years). Not sure that matters much.
62 - I think you mean un-unionized, but no it's not an objection to teachers unions, it's an observation that at least one part of them needs fixing.
I'm pro union pretty much across the board, but it's important to actively work to make them effective.
59, 60: I don't know what it's like where yinz live, but here in California the public sector employment relations laws protect collective action to further the workplace interests of the workers. This means that unions have the right to work for better hours, wages, benefits and other working conditions for their members. They don't have the right to take collective action to further other interests.
Sure, they could try to work for more stringent grading systems, or better books for their students, or more interesting curricula, but good fucking luck with that when the district knows that the union has no power to enforce its demands, and that the union is in fact putting itself at risk of an unfair practice charge if it tries to take its demands to the wall.
Now maybe your own state has some more progressive and union-friendly labor relations statute. But I kinda doubt it.
Meanwhile, at one of the those great, privately run charter schools that freed administrators and teachers from the shackles of onerous union work rules, seniority, etc. -- thus allowing good teachers to shine and be rewarded for merit -- rather than longevity the teachers are organizing.
74: Pretend the em dashes and commas are in the right places, please.
47
Their is no capitalist looking to oppress them
That's right, because no Republican ever runs for a seat on the school board. Or any position in state or federal government that would give them authority over the Department of Education. Jesus.
Now that piling on is out of my system, though, I think how you phrased this is revealing. "Looking to oppress them." But is that really the problem? That's how the pro-union rhetoric goes, especially a few decades ago when strongly left-wing politics were more common. And no doubt there exists somewhere some plutocrats who believe for ideological reasons that working conditions should suck for the people on the bottom, and there are plenty of swindlers who do it for fun like Madoff or the guys at Enron. More often, though, the oppression is incidental. Managers and CEOs want wealth and success for themselves and/or for the business. They might not go out of their way to do it by making things miserable for workers, it's just that they don't go out of their way to make things better for workers either.
Sometimes employers are evil bastards, but even if they weren't, unions would still be needed simply because employers aren't great altruists. Which is true in both the public and private sector.
70: Pittsburgh's suburbs (which is what Penn Hills is) are a whole different animal.
My theory: the only reason teacher's unions get the majority of the complaints is that they're the only union many people have any kind of serious contact with, and that's when they're on strike and their kids' school is delayed. Their behavior isn't particularly bad. No violence, no extended work stoppages, no ridiculous demands ($70K is a median over a career; what's the median income of someone who has master's in Pittsburgh?)
56: You know, the idea that you could call the media to solve a problem with your boss makes about as much sense here as it did as a solution to SEK's problem years ago getting his tuition paid. E.g., none at all.
77: So, when was the last Pittsburgh teacher fired for reasons other than sleeping with a student?
I'm pro union pretty much across the board, but it's important to actively work to make them effective
I don't think anyone would disagree with that.
81: They're unionized in Penn Hills, afaik.
76: no, I completely agree with this. I don't think employers generally want their employees miserable, they just want them to be maximally-profitable (at whatever level of misery that might incidentally entail). But:
Managers and CEOs want wealth and success for themselves and/or for the business.
How exactly does this apply in the public sector?
79: Apparently 2001.
http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20010921subp3.asp
And yes, Penn Hills is unionized. As I said above, I'm not against unions in general.
re: 83
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Promotion and reward does exist in the public sector, you know.
Maybe the issue is school administration, rather than the teachers' union, then.
That was my point. I'll say it more clearly. If a union gets strong enough, it is the administration.
84: Sorry, you're assuming that every time a teacher gets fired, it's reported in the news? That seems unlikely.
83: How exactly does this apply in the public sector?
Success in the public sector still consists of achieving goals with limited resources. Which can involve squeezing the people who work under you.
Honest, it's just like the private sector -- in both cases most decisions are made by managers without an ownership interest in the success of the larger organization.
It's obvious that the problem with our schools system is the kids. We need better kids!
85: but it's not a system oriented around maximizing profits. "Profits" aren't even a meaningful concept in the public sector. "Reducing expenses" is the closest analogue, which can certainly be rewarded, but it's (generally?) very far from an overriding goal. And so that's not the measure by which wealth and success is bestowed on managers.
That's a good point. Pittsburgh is surrounded by lots of nice little suburbs with high-performing schools that all have teachers' unions (and the parents in those districts bitch every time the contracts come up.) This suggests that the teachers' unions are likely not the primary problem.
Yet, even my managers at the state would like us to produce work. They don't then sell the work, but they value having more work from their employees. They value it so much that even as they plan to layoff a fifth of all workers, the Legislature creates more tasks!
But there are managers, who are just as susceptible to being unfair and abusive as private sector managers.
Word. Have you ever worked in an hourly job where your time was closely monitored? Doesn't matter where you work; managers can be petty and play favorites.
The fundamental point of unions isn't to beat back the capitalist oppressor; it's to redress the inherent imbalance of power between boss and worker. Civil service systems can provide some of that, but those systems aren't created equal because they're subject to the power of the state.
If a union gets strong enough, it is the administration.
Teachers in Penn Hills and in Pittsburgh are members of the same union, aren't they?
OK, off to fix the state Constitution. I'm socializing everything.
91: Some of the suburbs have nice school districts. Plenty of Pittsburgh's suburbs have school districts just as bad as Pittsburgh.
And incidentally, if you drop teachers' salaries in Pittsburgh the good teachers are just going to get hired in one of the nice suburbs. ( Seriously, make $35K the median salary for teachers. What do you think would happen. The quality would go up? No? Then the cost argument is a red herring.) I suppose its possible that Pgh's teachers' union is much stronger than the same unions in towns of 35,000, but I suspect the real problem with the city's schools is that the tax base moved to Cranberry.
re: 90
Again, are you being obtuse? Why should the production of financial profit for shareholders be the prerequisite for a system being oppressive or badly managed?
You know, lots of Pittsburgh schools are in fact NOT terrible.
96: Again, suggesting that the problem isn't the union or lack of union, but, basically, if you have a rich district with lots of funds, the school is probably doing well. If you don't, the school is probably sucking.
97: The city's tax base moved to Cranberry because you can get better schools for much lower taxes.
99: Yeah, I know. Middle of the county in terms of test scores or something like that. And not every suburb is North Allegheny. Problem still isn't the union, most likely!
you can get better schools for much lower taxes.
Is the difference in costs attributable to the Pittsburgh teachers union? If your answer is yes, what's your basis for it?
101: Agreed. But now we're not talking about unions at all.
100: Pittsburgh schools have lots of funding. See 44. That why I'm upset. We're paying alot for little return.
re: 105
And what makes you say that's a lot of funding? How does it compare to national averages for similar urban environments? How do those environments compare vis a vis educational outcomes?
Right, but what would getting rid of the union change about the mismanagement of funds?
83
How exactly does this apply in the public sector?
Even if promotions and rewards didn't exist in the public sector, as ttaM points out, the administrators and officals still wouldn't be familiar with working conditions on their own. Principals don't work directly with students (not as much or in the same way as teachers do, at least), school board members may only see teachers at board meetings, being a superintendent is a year-round job but being a teacher is cyclical, salaries and benefits are day-to-day issues for teachers but don't come up nearly so often for their bosses... Again, even if all those people were magically altruistic, how would they know what their employees want without some kind of employee-directed organization that could bring problems to their attention?
(Surveys on a regular basis, maybe? I know a system like that wouldn't have worked very well at any employer I've ever had...)
103: Partially. Some of the difference in costs is attributable to the declining population in the city. But, Pittsburgh's cost structure is the result of a one-party political machine that wins by patronage and is anchored in public sector unions (since the private sector unions went down with steel). Costs are lower in other areas where there is actual political competition and union demands are held in check by voters.
Why don't the people who object so strenuously to public school teachers being unionized ever object to cops being unionized? If the union protects a bad teacher, some kids get a substandard education (for 1/6th of their day). When the union protects a bad cop, people get killed and tortured.
Furthermore, the idea that unionized public school teachers have some kind of perfect job security is ludicrous. As apo points out, it is common to the point of being expected that urban school districts will lay off a bunch of teachers every spring. Sometimes they get rehired in the fall, sometimes they don't. Beyond that, the panic about teacher/student sexual contact has reached absurd heights. A friend who is a teacher in the roughest high school in the city stepped in to break up a knock-down, drag-out fight between two girls in the lunchroom a couple of years ago. His principal reprimanded him and advised him to lay low for some time, because the next time he touched a female student that would be the end of his teaching career.
Look, I am, as an anarchist, not a fan of compulsory public education. But as a worker, I can only see these attacks on teachers' unions as part of a broad-based and largely successful effort to dismantle pretty much every useful working-class institution in our society. I know which side my bread is buttered on, and it's clear to me that the people who attack teachers, unions and public schools are in fact no different from the people who attack abortion clinics.
Costs are lower in other areas where there is actual political competition and union demands are held in check by voters.
I'm not going to buy this easily. Cost-per-pupil in some of the wealthy school-successful suburbs is less than half of that in the city. But we are dealing with a self-selected group (parents who moved somewhere for the schools) that is likely to have college-educated or college-valuing parents, a stable home environment, food, etc. That makes a school cheaper to run (and means you get to spend the money on things like chemistry labs.)
It's certainly not because school board elections in the suburbs are heavily contested bipartisan affairs.
109: You're assuming your conclusions. Are Pittsburgh teachers paid more than suburban teachers? I doubt this is the case. But if it's not the case, then what makes the cost structure the fault of the teachers' union?
I know a system like that wouldn't have worked very well at any employer I've ever had...
Has every job you've ever had been unionized? If not, how did your employers know what employees wanted without some kind of employee-directed organization that could bring problems to their attention?
If not, how did your employers know what employees wanted without some kind of employee-directed organization that could bring problems to their attention?
In most of the non-unionized jobs I've had, the employers didn't know, didn't want to know, and didn't care. Of course, in some of the unionized jobs I've had, the same applies.
Furthermore, the idea that unionized public school teachers have some kind of perfect job security is ludicrous.
Indeed. I don't know the situation in Pittsburgh, but my mother is an elementary school principal in Missouri, and she has fired at least one teacher every year.
To fire a teacher takes a substantial amount of paperwork, but nothing too onerous if you've done the necessary classroom observations and tried to work with the teacher. That is, if you've documented why they should be fired, and how your attempts to improve their performance have failed. Even for the couple of terrible senior people she got rid of after her first year at the school: it wasn't that they couldn't be fired, it was that the administrators before her hadn't bothered.
113: A quick Google suggests their salaries are comparable for the region.
Here's the thing: We can't confuse the effects of craft unions with the effects of industrial unions. The left wing of the labor movement has been pointing out the problems with craft unionism for over a century. (Bureaucratization, centralization, competition among workers, nativism and protectionism.) Not surprisingly, it is craft unionism that has been allowed to flourish, while industrial unionism clings on in a few generally low-wage, low-importance industries. Capital does not want labor represented in the most effective manner. A system where the interests of rank-and-file public school teachers were allowed to align with the interests of parents, students, voters and other school employees is a system that would work much better than what we've got. But capitalists divide and rule, pitting people who should be allies against each other in order to produce the greatest profits for the 1% at the top. This isn't rocket science, it's not even a secret, it's what the capitalists recommend to each other every day in the pages of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.
119: Here. Pittsburgh salaries are within the suburban range, nearer the high end. Given that salaries are within the suburban range, what makes the higher costs in Pittsburgh attributable to the teachers' union?
119: And seriously, if you didn't have data on that point, what made you think (that is, not reasoning from the data I gave you -- how'd you come to the conclusion before I did the googling for you) that any difference in costs was the fault of the Pittsburgh teachers' union?
I just Googled a couple of districts. Mid-sixties isn't crazy. And, of course, there's a wide range even within districts. One might start at $38K with a bachelors but top out at $95K with a master's and years of experience.
I can see where you're coming from given the extra political power of the teacher's union, but your proposed explanation of the problem and the solutions (can't fire teachers, they make too much) don't seem to target the problem with the political machine.
120: Because they strike or threaten to strike to get that salary.
The situation is changing a bit in recent years. When you've lost 1/4 of your student population, it gets harder to escape public ire.
Just to be clear, I'd gladly pay $70,000 a teacher for an effective school system.
123: Um, huh? Can you spell that out at all?
Walter Block agrees with me. This must be how LB felt when she wrote 32.2. Except I'm not sure I'll recover.
121: You may not that I based my conclusion on the problems in the district and the ability of local taxpayers to fund them.
They strike out in the suburbs, too!!!! Every time the contract was up we knew we weren't going back to school till October. The amount the teachers are being paid really isn't the problem here.
re: 125
I don't even know what you are saying now. Other than 'unions are bad, man'.
126: I've spelled out quite a bit. You're asking me to prove that the teachers aren't responsible for the salary that they've organized and negotiated for? Or to spell out recent public ire?
128: Let me get this straight. You're simultaneously saying that that Pittsburgh taxpayers are poor, so they shouldn't have to pay teacher salaries comparable to those in the suburbs, and that Pittsburgh schools are of unacceptably low quality. And that the Pittsburgh teachers union is at fault for this state of affairs.
I give up, dude. I don't know what to tell you.
I give-up to. I should get more work done today.
If you come back to this conversation, figure out if you can conceive of a state of affairs that would leave you not blaming the Pittsburgh teachers' union for all problems with the school. (No points for "If they didn't exist" or "If they weren't so powerful.")
114: No, I've never been in a union. But almost all of my employers (seven to nine, depending on how long I have to have stayed there for it to count) have been at small businesses and/or in small, close-knit communities. In fact, my previous two bosses were both parents of various friends of my sister, and yet I was more of an outsider at those offices than most. Not hard for "the man" to keep his finger on the pulse of the working stiffs, there.
I've only really worked at one big business. (Not counting my current one, but I basically work for an unusually apolitical federal regulatory agency as a contractor, so it's very different from what we're talking about.) At that previous business, conditions did indeed suck. I was a temp employee to begin with and I'm glad of it, and I'm told turnover was ridiculously high anyway.
So the point is, no, I don't have much experience with unionization. But to the extent that I have experience, it matches what I would assume and what I've read from pro-union sources.
130, 135: I can't find a link at the moment, but this conversation reminds me of nothing so much as that guy a while back who was complaining that he felt excluded from Unfogged because he was asked, often by LB, to back up raw statements with actual arguments. "It's just so unfair!"
Oy. That was not a happy conversation.
||
Today we cut off service to one of our clients for nonpayment. There's nothing particularly special about it except for the type of business they're in.
They're a collections agency.
|>
139: Are you going to turn their debt over to a collection agency?
36 couldn't have panned out any more deliciously.
141: What about if we added bacon?
140: Exactly. Nothing says "hard times" like a collections agency being sent to collections.
143: It's like rain, on your wedding day.
Speaking of hard times, any of you in the New York area want to hire me? I have no skills or qualifications.
She's got some mesmerizing dance moves, as has been noted.
Hm. I'm in a union, am pro-union in general, but I too have some residual dislike for the teachers' unions (in California). I think it is because my step-father, a life-long teacher, actively hated his chapter of the union (they had some pretty awful stances) and resented the fact that he had to belong without being able to make any changes (the powers that be were deeply entrenched). I suspect that some of this dislike also comes from the political power they wield in elections (which seemed to be part of MH's original complaint), which I see as different than having the power to negotiate effectively to get what they want. However, I definitively do not want a world where teachers are non-unionized, I can just see how they rub some people the wrong way, even those who seemingly agree with their existence and power.
145: What I always say when this comes up is "have you tried looking for work as a paralegal"? I don't know what it's like getting hired in this climate, but it pays pretty well, and it's work that you don't need to know much for -- general purpose brains, communication skills, and willingness to work are about it.
150: You're putting the thread on fast-forward?
151: Ha! Heebie sounds comically high-pitched now!
152: She's growing from an infant to a young adult right before our very eyes!
153: I'm set to honky-tonk music!
WOMEN LIKE YOU GIVE ME THE HONKY TONK BLUES!!!
What I always say when this comes up is "have you tried looking for work as a paralegal"?
Not a bad suggestion. I'd just say that if you're looking for work as a paralegal, make sure you ask plenty of questions about what the job will entail. Paralegal work can range from doing legal research to spending your days doing nothing more than filing and collating papers, and you want to know which end of the spectrum you're going to end up on.
Oh, it's a deeply sucky job, involving doing lots of boring, mindless stuff (I'm only familiar with the suckier end of the spectrum; I've never worked with paralegals who do legal research). But the pay is good, my sense is turnover is pretty high, and you don't need a lot of qualifications beyond brains generally.
Paralegal work can also range from 9-5 to much longer hours and you'll want to know about that, too.
105
Pittsburgh schools have lots of funding. See 44. That why I'm upset. We're paying alot for little return.
Do you think Pittsburgh schools are low quality? Based on what?
Somehow the law firms have resisted hiring me so far.
One of the difficulties with demanding that the schools solve all of the problems of poor areas is that they can't afford good schools. A second problem is that the schools couldn't solve all of their problems anyway.
Lew Rockwell is, by and large, not a credible source.
Huh. I can see that -- the tendency is to go for either shiny fresh new college grads or people with experience. Nonetheless, I'd keep applying if you see openings, and look at legal temp agencies.
158: At least in Illinois, and probably nationally, paralegals are hourly (is that exempt or non-exempt? I forget) & thus get overtime pay.
Also, immigration law, especially employment-based immigration, is a very bad place to be looking for a paralegal job right now. I claim no insight into any other field.
They've been hourly everyplace I've ever worked as well.
I've heard that Harvard Law first-years are having trouble finding summer jobs this year.
industrial unionism clings on in a few generally low-wage, low-importance industries
It's not quite that dire. Auto (two-tiering sucks, but auto isn't going to turn into a low-wage industry), steel, construction, most public sector unions, and my own fair telecom union still have millions of good, unionized, middle-class jobs. The AFT, despite its name, operates as an industrial union, organizing clerical, janitorial, and other school employees, though the NEA generally doesn't.
Really, SEIU is the only significantly sized industrial union that represents mostly low-wage jobs. (Is there another I'm forgetting?)
I guess UFW doesn't count as industrial.
169: that's nothing new. When the second years start having trouble finding jobs, though, that's cause for alarm.
171: No, it does. Good call.
For folks who are mystified by this discussion of craft v. industrial unions:
Industrial unions represent everyone in a given company/industry: e.g., CWA & IBEW represent all (union-eligible) workers at Verizon and AT&T: clerical, technicians, service reps, truck drivers, HVAC, etc.
Craft unions represent one job title, e.g., pilots.
Historically, industrial unions were more militant, further left, and more inclusive on gender and race.
Yay! I wasn't sure whether an agricultural union was in its own category.
158: At least in Illinois, and probably nationally, paralegals are hourly (is that exempt or non-exempt? I forget) & thus get overtime pay.
Ah, the days of doubletime after midnight. (That part isn't legally mandated, though, just the OT.)
(Non-exempt, as in not exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act, though you could structure a paralegal job to be exempt.)
174: apo the labor scholar!
(Agricultural unions are in their own category in non-abstract respects, because they're excluded from many labor and employment laws, which is why conditions are so shitty.)
They've been hourly everyplace I've ever worked as well.
Maybe I was getting screwed, but I was salaried when I was working as a paralegal.
Dude. Did you get out of the office at five, or was that salaried with late hours?
It was pretty much a 9-5 job, although the first case I worked on was headed to trial and the expectation was that I would suspend my life if it actually got there. We never talked about what would happen if that came to pass, and it turned out to be moot; the case settled not long before the trial date.
From what I recall when I was looking for a job, at least in SF salaried jobs were the norm.
177: Hm, that seems illegal, unless the work you were performing under the title of "paralegal" was totally atypical of that profession.
Geez. If I were a salaried paralegal assigned to a trial, I'd simply quit. Or, at least, walk out at a reasonable hour each night and see if they fired me. Working a big trial without additional pay for it is not a reasonable expectation for someone who isn't a professional being paid as such.
Or file a wage claim against my employer with the DLSE.
27
... So there's nothing really weird about a conscienceless, unprincipled hack like Kaus supporting him on the basis of liking, despite the fact that they disagree about almost everything substantive.
I realize Kaus drives liberals nuts but why exactly do you think he is conscienceless? Unprincipled? A hack?
180: At least at first, it was all document managment: filing and organizing new discovery, retrieving documents the attorneys needed from our existing hoard, that sort of thing. (One of my main responsibilities was making copies of documents and collating exhibits to court filings. At one point one of my billing statements was rejected because I'd been a little too clear that I'd billed for making copies; they said that they'd pay for "clerking" work, not "clerical" work.)
Later I graduated to doing preliminary discovery review, going through incoming documents and categorizing them, reviewing outgoing documents for attorney-client communication, etc. By the end of my time in the job (about 2 years), I was doing deposition reviews and public-records searches, as well as some basic Lexis-Nexis work and taking care of the library (mostly updating court rules).
What would have been illegal about that?
181, 182: Like I said, it turned out to be moot. IIRC, I would have been eligible for overtime, notwithstanding the fact that I was salaried. (This article suggests my recollection is correct.)
185: Under FLSA and the California Labor Code, an employer is required to pay each employee an hourly wage, with time and a half after 40 hours/week and double time after 60 hours/week, unless the employee is exempt. An employee is exempt only if his or her duties are primarily managerial, executive, creative or professional. The theory is that if your duties fit into one of these categories, the value of your work is not measurable by the number of hours you put in. A paralegal's work typically wouldn't qualify as exemptable.
184: I'm not going to put in the effort to find examples; I wrote him off for good long enough ago that I don't have any at my fingertips. My global impression of him, though, is that he lies all the time, and not so much about individual stories as about what his own biases are.
It's all moot now. I long ago left law for a much less exploitative industry: now I work in tech!
The theory is that if your duties fit into one of these categories, the value of your work is not measurable by the number of hours you put in. A paralegal's work typically wouldn't qualify as exemptable.
A nice theory, AND YET, a lawyer's time is tracked and billed in 15-minute increments. Or shorter.
On Kaus, this and this might do for a start.
191: It also has to do with, among other things, the amount of discretion and judgment you use in performing your job.
I long ago left law for a much less exploitative industry: now I work in tech!
Finally, a voice of reason. The vast flow of people in the other direction boggles my mind. And as long as you stay out of video games, tech isn't so bad...
193: I know. But although IANALL, I believe those are factors primarily because they're thought to help inform whether or not the value of your work is measurable by the number of hours you put in. So.
Although I was mostly just bitching.
tracked and billed in 15-minute increments. Or shorter.
Yeah, right before I left the law firm, they got billing software which allowed us to track our time in tenths of an hour. I really don't need to track what I've been doing down to increments of 6 minutes, thanks.
And as long as you stay out of video games, tech isn't so bad...
It's almost like you've never heard the phrase "death march" before...
(I kid, I kid. Tech has its frustrations, but it's still a hell of a lot better than working in law as a non-lawyer.)
Yeah, right before I left the law firm, they got billing software which allowed us to track our time in tenths of an hour.
I find this really baffling—is there something so hard about noting when you begin a new task, and then noting when you end it, and inferring that you spent the interval on that task? If you started at 1:33 and finished at 2:47, you spent 74 minutes on it—why should you have to break that down into smaller intervals?
198: The idea is that constantly keeping track of what you're doing is onerous and time-consuming. Like, if you're writing a brief and answering calls and writing e-mails and reading documents, you don't want to have to stop to write down the time every time you switch between tasks, and then add up all of the time at the end of the day. If you can click a button every time you switch tasks, it's faster. And then the software adds up all your time for you. I've never actually used the software, and I'm always forgetting to write down my time, with the result that a lot of my billable hours vanish into ether.
The idea is that constantly keeping track of what you're doing is onerous and time-consuming.
And the solution to this is keeping track of what you're doing in six-minute increments. Gotcha.
I would think you'd do better, I mean better work and more efficient work, if in writing a brief you read only documents relevant (or reasonably potentially relevant) to that brief (so that, reasonably, the reading is part of the writing), checked your email only if you were expecting something pertinent to the brief, and answered the phone only if you couldn't not and, were it not relevant to the brief, said "I'm writing a brief; I'll get back to you later".
189
... My global impression of him, though, is that he lies all the time, and not so much about individual stories as about what his own biases are.
Lots of people are obtuse about their own biases without being liars (assuming lies have to be deliberate). Do you think Kaus is lying about voting for Kerry and Obama? Anyway Kaus comes across to me as fairly aware of his various obsessions.
Sounds like a good reason for you to keep on reading him and taking him seriously, then.
192
A liberal blogger's rant about Kaus prompted by Kaus being right about Edwards (while she was wrong) seems to be more evidence that Kaus drives liberals nuts than a convincing case against Kaus.
It's almost like you've never heard the phrase "death march" before...
I have, but I don't know that I've ever been in one. Assuming you don't count the "deadline in two weeks, do nothing for a week and a half, finish project via two days of nonstop work" case.
I would think you'd do better, I mean better work and more efficient work, if in writing a brief you read only documents relevant (or reasonably potentially relevant) to that brief (so that, reasonably, the reading is part of the writing), checked your email only if you were expecting something pertinent to the brief, and answered the phone only if you couldn't not and, were it not relevant to the brief, said "I'm writing a brief; I'll get back to you later".
It's a scheduling problem. Larger time slices reduce context-switching overhead, but increase latency and prevent parallelization when the task depends on high-latency external services.
70: June 4, 2008: "The Penn Hills School Board accepted the resignation of the superintendent during a meeting Tuesday in which 34 teachers were fired as part of an effort to plug a $5 million hole in next year's budget. "
As pointed out, Penn Hills isn't Pittsburgh, but it is worth noting that Penn Hills is the working class suburb in which Rick Santorum had his "primary" residence and which spent something on the order of ~$60,000 for his children to attend cyberschool from their McMansion in exurban Northern Virginia.
Oh yes, that McMansion. How did the line go? "If you take the money out of politics you'll get a much worse class of man in office — men without ambition!"
I have no skills or qualifications.
Hey JM, don't you speak at least two foreign languages?
Yeah, sorta. Everyone wants Spanish, though.
Labor law question: Suppose a workplace wants to volunteer employees - sorry, I mean, wants employees to volunteer to work outside of normal work hours on a project. Salaried employees aren't going to be paid extra. But what about hourlies working full-time already? Should they get overtime? If they refused to show up without pay, would they be on the side of the law?
Sorry, meant to note that 210 is not in California.
210: IANALL, but yeah -- if it's required, it's work, and if it's work and you're hourly, they have to pay you for it. Now, there are practical difficulties above and beyond the legal difficulties -- if I were going to refuse to work without pay, I would play dumb. "Hey, how do I fill this out on my timesheet? Oh, we don't put it on our timesheets? That's great, I thought it was required, but I have a family event I need to go to instead. Wait, we don't put it on our timesheets but it's required? I don't understand, how do we get paid for it?" It may not be possible, given individual circumstances, to play dumb enough to be useful, but it's the way I'd try to handle it.
203: Did you read her piece? She made a pretty good case. Kaus is like Chris Matthews, from time to time he says the right thing, but he has so many weird, sick fetishes and obsessions, and he's so erratic and gamy, that he's effectively worthless. Most people decided this years ago.
212: Some companies (e.g. UPS) declare as many as a third of their workers to be salaried management. Salaried workers don't have a forty-hour week, and management is required to cros picket lines. UPS is union, but if there's a strike, they still deliver by having a "manager" drive the truck.
re: 212
Heh. I'd be much more inclined to go with, "You want me to work for free? Just how crazy are you?" but then again, I work in an environment with reasonable job security.
FWIW, I can't even imagine what circumstances would have to be true in which you could say that people who refused to work without pay would be on the wrong side of the law.
In the US you can be on the right side of labor law and still lose for years.
It's a salaried/hourly distinction; if I work all night, I'm not working without pay -- my pay covers whatever hours I work-- but an hourly paralegal would be working without pay if they worked an eighteen hour day and only got paid for eight.
But generally, at-will employment is no fun at all, particularly in a recession. Depending on individual style, though, you can smoothly transition from playing dumb up through belligerence; whatever you think you can carry off without unintentionally getting fired.
re: 217
I'm salaried, too. And I'm OK with working the odd extra hour here and there. On the other hand, if I worked in a job that regularly expected hours well beyond the standard 38 or so a week, I'd expect to be REALLY well compensated.
But when I worked hourly jobs, there is no WAY I'd have worked without money, and I'd have immediately filed anyone who asked me to in the 'bastard' file.
102: I need to learn Spanish too for just this reason. Haitian Creole is also in demand in areas working with low income people, but despite knowing French I think it would be harder to learn Creole.
I can easily decipher surveys written in Spanish or Portuguese, but Creole is really tricky. Luckily, I had the sasme survey in other languages. Unfortunately one of teh questions as accidentally wrong: it said "week" where it meant to say "month." That one was pretty easy to figure out.
Congressman Oberstar is fluent in Haitian Creole, if you need help.
210
IANAL but it is my understanding that hourly workers cannot waive their right to be paid. So you can agree to work for nothing and then at some later time (probably subject to a statute of limitations) demand your pay. It seems like Walmart is always getting sued on those grounds. Of course if you are just talking about a few hours collecting may be more trouble than it is worth.
221: I can't confirm this in detail, but my guess is it's generally right. Unfortunately, the bit of it that I'm sure is right is the 'more trouble than it's worth' bit.
They clarified, when asked, that it's optional for the hourlies. Which is good because it meant the pay question didn't have to enter the conversation. And good because they weren't really asking for work without pay - it was just a case where someone had to ask specifically about the hourlies (the vast majority are salary).