Some sort of deal

Well some sort of deal passed through Congress and was signed by the President. I don't know what it says as I have not had time to read anything much about it. However, I do know from the rhetoric in the news that it was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY! In order to, you know, stop the markets from panicking (i.e. going down).

Well well well..."unexpectedly" the markets went down today, the day the deal was past/signed (GASP!). The DJIA was off almost 266 points and basically all gains for the year are gone.

I am well aware that correlation does not always mean causation, but this whole "debt-ceiling" debate has been ridiculously immature and nonsensical.

Debt talks

Oh man, all these debt talks are sure boring. Why don't we just print a bunch more money pay for everything?

...It's like when a board of directors authorizes a stock dividend: you're not really getting anything and each share you own is now worth less! Hooray!

(hopefully any readers caught the sarcasm in my initial question)

Education Reform (part 1 of several)

I have been giving thought to how I would approach education reform for a long time. It was, however, the recent budget battles here in Wisconsin and elsewhere across the country that have really brought this issue to the foreground of my mind again. To reduce the arguments to the bare essentials on both sides it always seems to come down to the money (no matter how much you dress it up with 'For the Children' slogans). Speaking generally, those on the Right think we're spending too much on public education and those on the Left think we are spending too little.

I would argue that we're spending too much because we're not spending the money we have efficiently. National mandates remove almost all, real local control and failing districts are sinkholes for cash and have no way to usher in reform. The issue of teacher salaries is another big factor in this argument on spending, but I'm going to avoid making any blanket statements about teachers being paid too much or too little. To say that really trivializes the issue because there are definitely cases that could be found to go either way. To be completely honest, however, I just don't really know what a teacher would be worth. There is essentially no market evaluation for a teacher's salary. By that I mean that the government holds an effective monopoly on education. Teacher pay and benefits are closely tied to what various legislative bodies decide should be the norms. A freer system based more on the merits of teachers, rather than seniority or other mandated factors, would do a better job separating the teachers worth their salaries from those returning less value for the money spent.

Walkerville

Since I now live on the west side of Madison I miss out on a lot of the goings on downtown. Case in point, the new tent city of protesters, dubbed "Walkerville." From what I gather this stunt is meant to bring attention to the real issues and hearken back to the days when  people were really poor and had to live in not much better than cardboard boxes...

What I see, however, http://www.facebook.com/walkerville are a bunch of really nice, new tents. The kind people take on fun, outdoorsy trips (i.e. expensive tents). sigh...I guess will never understand how the hypocrisy goes right over some people's heads.

To be fair, I haven't really been following the whole recent budget battle as closely as I should. Even with that admission I can say that both sides did really poor jobs in making their arguments going all the way back to Jan/Feb when this whole thing started. I've essentially given up on all, but a few politicians to be real statesmen who can govern justly.

Link!

Still trying to get settled in the new place/deal with projects at work so not a lot of time to really put together a decent post. Therefore, I will link to this bit of awesomeness...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc&feature=player_embedded

New Apartment

Finally all moved in to my new apartment with interwebs and everything. New posts soonish.

Unacceptable to Cut

So public opinion polls show it is "unacceptable" to cut social security, medicare, and medicaid. Fine. How about we introduce transitional programs to let people who want to opt out do so. We wouldn't fully cut the programs right away by any means. No one wants the poor and elderly just put out on the streets as proponents of these programs say would happen if they didn't exist. As a young professional I'm looking at my paycheck and cringing at having to pay taxes into programs that will probably not be round for me to even use in the future. I would rather be in charge of myself. Or at the very least, I want to pay into a privatized, personal account (look to Chile's example for good guidance).

Atlas Shrugged Part 1, post 2

A new thought dawned on me while I was considering how this endeavor could have been done better: an HBO  series on the book instead of a movie. Sure, releasing only on premium cable channels to start does have a couple drawbacks, but I think I've been pleased with 90% of the programming I've seen on HBO. HBO doesn't seem to mind doing niche productions and has the time/budget to do something like this well.

Atlas Shrugged Part 1

Just saw Atlas Shrugged Part 1 (right after work so I could take advantage of matinée pricing) and I'd probably give it 3 "Netflix stars." As a die-hard Rand fan I was hoping for more, but given the really low budget I thought it on par with what I could reasonably expect. Some of the acting seemed too stiff or "unheartfelt" and there were weird freeze frame bits to announce when someone else disappeared, or went on strike as people familiar with the story would call it. Aside from that I thought it was OK.

The primary problem now, as well as for the last 50 years, is still the scope and complexity of the project. There were a lot of things I understood that were happening in Part 1 that people unfamiliar with the story would not understand. I think it would also be extremely difficult to get this book, which is basically a school of philosophy wrapped in a little bit of story, to translate well to a film for the masses.

I refrained from reading more than just a couple of critics' blurbs before going to see the movie for myself, and now that I have seen the film and have been reading more about it most of the reviews against the movie really didn't seem to understand what they were commenting on. They almost always portrayed a simplistic view of a "movie about trains" or "a couple rich, white people." A couple reviewers did latch on to a lot of technical stuff that could have been done better with either more time or a larger budget. This project will probably be more appreciated once the other two parts are completed and the entire story can be seen.

Happy Birthday (even though you're dead) Thomas Jefferson!

"With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow citizens -- a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities."

- Thomas Jefferson
   First Inaugural Address
   March 4, 1801

WI Supreme Court Election

To be completely honest I didn't follow this one that much. Too much other stuff going on in my life. I know Kloppenburg was the "not Prosser" candidate. Other than that I didn't know too much about her. A lot of people I read headlines from or heard on the radio were making this out to be a referendum on Scott Walker. If that's the case it was an interesting referendum. Aside from a few counties the state was evenly split (actually DESPITE the work of a few counties the state is evenly split) and a recount is surely to be the next step. I guess when both sides frame their arguments as poorly as has been done over the issues here you can't really expect to get a clear majority.

Addendum: Hmmm...Guess Waukesha county didn't get all their votes in, now maybe Prosser won.

"Single-Issue" Catholic Voter

A few short blurbs that deserve expansion, but were pulled from the "drafts" file and posted anyway...

As a Catholic I am usually pegged as being a single-issue voter. It is usually assumed by people I talk with that I will blindly pick whichever candidate advertised themselves as being the "most pro-life/anti-abortion" candidate. Perhaps this was the case years ago, but even now I would feel myself tugged to vote the same way. My choice now, however, would be the result of careful thought and study about what would ultimately be at stake. Respect for each individual life is what acts as the basis for the validation of all of other rights. Without such a fundamental respect for life nothing else really matters.

Addendum: To make this more current, I'm glad to see plans to cut funding for Planned Parenthood. Some will probably cry out about "all the good" they do aside from abortions and that no federal dollars were ever spent on abortions, but that doesn't change the fact that it is basically a eugenics program whose founder espoused some extremely vile ideas. If people want such an organization to survive it will have to do so without federal help.

To Madison's Protesters:

Blind devotion to an ideology is never a good thing; no matter what side a person is following. Man clearly has an advantage in being able to fall back on reason and most times a degree of rationality to solve problems and develop ideas. Blind devotion, however, utilizes neither and we run the risk of being controlled by any somewhat-compelling voice that comes along. If you really believe in something, know what it is you are believing in and be able to defend it without resorting to just being able to out-shout the other party.

Potential walk-on role in an Althouse video

While jogging around the capitol today I happened to notice Meade and Ann Althouse taking video of and conversing with protesters. I didn't stop long enough to interrupt their conversation, but I might show up as "that guy in the background" in some of their footage later.

Awards won too soon

So now that Obama is embracing even more of the Bush Doctrine does he have to give up his Nobel Peace Prize or does the committee just have to award one to Bush as well?

This is a great time for the anti-war crowd to show that they really meant it and weren't just another anti-Bush group of people. I was personally not a fan of the most recent President Bush, but I like hypocrisy even less.

Old News in Wisconsin

Getting back into this, forgive me if i ramble...

Going into the fourth or fifth week of protests against Governor Scott Walker and his endeavors to limit the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions here in Wisconsin. As a resident of Madison I must be excited to be right in the thick of things, right? Quite the opposite. I can certainly get fired up about this issue, but outside of altering my running route to avoid throngs of people chanting the same tired slogans they came up with on day one I haven't been too concerned. My attitude essentially stems from disappointment in representatives of both sides of this issue. Governor Walker didn't make the right or strong enough case for his position early on, and the protesters show a real lack of understanding in what they are really doing.

Governor Walker should have done a better job explaining how collective bargaining works for public employees and how it is fundamentally different from what goes on with unions in the private sector. In the private sector, the unions sit down at the bargaining table with management and negotiate over how to share corporate profits. The unions represent the employees and management represents the board of directors and shareholders of the company (two groups almost certainly to be at odds). In the public sector, the unions sit down with legislators and negotiate over apportionments of tax revenue. The elected officials, more often than not, were put in office with the help of union backing so when it comes to negotiating both sides are really already on the same side. Also, neither side is negotiating with their own money and by the time real bills come due the politician probably won't be in office anymore to answer for misusing the people's money. The only time the tax payer is really represented is when a majority of the legislators are not buddies with the unions.

The protesters themselves don't seem to understand this and have, in numerous ways, really begun to annoy me:
1. Chants of "this is what democracy looks like." Democracy also looks like legitimate elections. This goes along with the mindset of majority rules which I've noticed is really only popular if you're in the majority. Elections have consequences, people. I hate to be bitter, but democrats stayed home or switched back to republican and now you should just wait for the next election to fix it. Recall efforts for everyone eligible now just make it seem like the first election had no real meaning. Is this even a recall-worthy offense? Even the very pro-union FDR didn't think union rights extended to public employees.

2. The outright hypocrisy of Democrats complaining about how the Republicans are handling the issue. It's the exact same thing that democrats did when they held majorities after the 2008 elections. And don't forget Doyle trying to "ram things through" while he still had power in the state.

3. Private sector unions joining in. You are different. You are, in my mind, hurting your already tenuous standing by mixing with this. Especially when you bus people in from out of state. It's your right to assemble, but it seems silly to me.

4. Class warfare. If you really wanted to bring up class warfare you would find the public employees, who have it pretty nice, on the "bad guy" side of the aisle pretty quickly. i.e. more hypocrisy. By association...the fascination with/hatred of the Koch brothers. The public employee's retirement fund owns Koch industries bonds. Shouldn't you want them to do well so they can keep paying on those bonds? Utter hypocrisy. Another, though distant, example. Union retirement funds are also some of the largest holders of blocks of Walmart and Exxon stock. Lambast the hand that will feed you when you don't feel like working to feed yourself any longer. sigh.

5. How they've treated the building and surrounding areas around the capitol. Seriously, the ground is shit now and much of it will probably have to have new sod put down. The rotunda was covered with signs. Stuck on walls with the wrong type of tape and needing to be scraped off. War memorials were covered with protest crap (disgraceful).

6. This will be the end of this list for now and speaks to part of the ideology of the protesters, especially the teachers who have become the focus of all this hubbub. It's not really "for the children" just admit it. Although, I am thinking of using that as my ideologically ambiguous protest sign for when I march around the capitol.

A parting question to public employees (mostly the teachers because they made it all about themselves, not public employees in general over the last few weeks) because it's late and I do have to work tomorrow: Do you really think so little of the services you provide that you must force people to buy them through government mandates and subsidies? If they insist on being paid more why not let the market decide? To be very hard and logical we don't really know the value of a school teacher because no true market exists. Once that is actually established I bet teachers especially would be compensated a lot better.

If this whole debacle opens up some real discourse on education reform it will have been worth it.