It's Katherine again today. We just got back from our regular Saturday morning breakfast at the ballpark Snooze. This is our favorite weekend ritual. We wake up early (just happens), drive through uncrowded streets and highways, and head into downtown on 20th where the sunrise is in just the right spot to make the city glow. We hang a left at the newest medical marijuana shop (walk-ins welcome) and head a bit north to find a free parking spot and get to Snooze in time to beat the line that will inevitably start forming before we leave.
We love this Snooze. So many reasons. The obvious reason is the food, but for me it's the pancakes. I don't like pancakes. They are never quite right at altitude. They are sometimes tough or spongy or crusty or soggy--but rarely good. It's a miracle I even tried a pancake at Snooze. I credit 5280 for championing the pineapple upside down pancake next to an excellent photo of one. We tried it. It's the best pancake in the world. Our granddaughters would disagree because they're voting for the chocolate chip pancake, but what do they know--they're just little kids.
I'm not a great food reviewer because I get in such food ruts. Good reviewers try everything and present the ups and downs of what they've ordered over the course of several months. I've been eating at Snooze for over three years now and I've really only gone through three ruts.
I started with an eggs benedict rut. I like the traditional kind best, but I've sampled any number of their unique approaches. The duck confit on polenta version was pretty darn yummy, but not there long enough for me to get too stuck on them. I've been through a wonderful corned beef hash rut as well. I recommend it. Now I'm on having a plain pancake, crispy bacon and one egg over easy rut. Simple. That plain pancake is so incredible.
We also order Bloody Mary's and coffee. We take Snooze coffee home and it's what we drink each morning. There's a nice story behind the coffee and the owner, but mostly it's really good coffee and I don't get scary jitters if I drink an extra cup. There's a wide range of cool drinks, but we always have Bloody's and coffee. Big rut there.
We like the people there. Jim and I are fairly recognizable--he's a big guy and my haircut seems to make me memorable. The folks at Snooze know us now and various staff members stop by and we share the exciting stories of our weeks. We are happy and excited for them when they go skiing or go on vacation to Bali or have beautiful baby girls. A real reviewer would have to be anonymous and objective and have to notice if parsley was ever mis-sprinkled. We are not very objective people.
At the end of March, we made an unexpected trip down to Snooze in the middle of the week after trying to change the password on my Metro computer. it turned out to be a happy accident because Snooze had a few tickets left for their Colorado Rockies Opening Day and Five Year Anniversary Party. We bought two tickets even though we suspected we might be the oldest people there. We were older than most of the folks and probably a lot more interested in the actual baseball game than most of the Snooze guests, but it was incredibly cool to be there.
We took Light Rail downtown and had a cool visit with a couple who had been to spring training in Scottsdale. We picked up some tips about getting around in Arizona since we're doing the spring training thing next year and we all agreed that RTD needs to figure out how to keep the ticket vending machines operating better.
After a brisk walk over to Snooze, we entered and got our hands marked up like I remember from frat parties in college. There were bars in various spots with cool new drink items (I had three of something full of vodka and something not too sweet that I obviously liked a lot) and there were shot stands. I kept wanting a blood orange shot like Jim got, but had three green things on my unsuccessful quest. That was enough of the college life for me. I had plenty of appetizer size pancakes and sausages and hash browns and all sorts of goodies to keep me stable. After a goodly time at Snooze (we even saw one real live wedding proposal), we walked over to the ballpark.
The weather was glorious and the stadium was beautiful. The line by the Helton Burger stand was outrageous and there's a new Italian market back by home plate. It's a gorgeous ballpark. There were tons and tons of people--in and out of the ballpark and it's hard to imagine the amount of liquor consumed just as we walked around the concourses.
This was not a crowd interested in watching baseball. This crowd liked drinking and talking. By the point the game started we were done with drinking and more into the baseball thing. We were unusual in this. We watched the game, wondered why the stat guy never got anyone's batting average calculated accurately, and people watched. A lot of women have great big boobs--more than I remember. It was a bit unsettling. Overall, it was a really good time.
I'm grateful to Snooze for a lot. For the food, for feeding the Rockies before day games, for including us last Friday for the opener, for paying attention to us, for being the right sort of place for us.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sleeping Alone in Phoenix, PV, and Parker
Katherine today
A while back the "Dear Amy" advice column in The Denver Post followed letter writers debating the merits of couples sleeping in separate quarters. A few promoted their separate but equal bedrooms and others even championed separate homes. There was also an interview with Sophia Loren I breezed through at the dentist's office where she said she believed her marriage to Carlo Ponti survived because they had separate bedroom suites on opposite sides of their villa. Somewhere in there I watched Frida again and there was the bright blue home of Frida and Diego with it's bridge of love between their two separate dwellings marginally held together by the tiny path from one side of their home to the other. It was kind of a perfect storm of messages all telling me that togetherness and love endured because of separate sleeping quarters.
I didn't think too much about it at the time. Sleeping is a tricky subject. The only times I've slept deeply and hard without waking and playing my own version of The Princess and the Pea was when I had cancer and now a good night's sleep can scare me. Jim rarely sleeps because his mind rarely stops. Somehow, however, we've managed to keep our life together despite our sleep challenges and we've done it in the same bed, in the same room, and in the same house.
All of this background noise about sleeping came into focus in December when I went to Phoenix without Jim. It expanded when we both went to Mexico with Bud and Janet and spent two weeks in twin beds. Then there was time spent at Chris and Christine's house staying with our grandkids and learning to navigate their gigantic bed and Sammi's need to climb into bed with us at 3:00 in the morning. I've learned a lot about sleeping alone in the last several months.
Phoenix in December had been a really good idea in May of last year. Janet called with news of a really reasonable timeshare at the same time the Broncos were playing a game down there. With the immigration laws down there, Frontier was giving away flights and we had frequent flyer miles to burn. Warm weather and a Bronco game sounded like a good time.
When it was time to go, everything fell apart. Jim was incredibly sick, but hadn't seen a doctor. I misread the flight schedule and we missed the plane in the morning. Jim was so sick he couldn't even think about trying to go back to the airport and I was pissed he hadn't called the doctor and seen to his illness sooner. I went back to the airport alone and flew to Phoenix without Jim. I rented a car alone. I drove to the timeshare alone in the dark with the trusty GPS thing as my chatty companion.
Bud and Janet gathered me in at the timeshare, shocked that I'd actually come alone. We had cold pizza and we drank and I vented. Then we went to bed. I went to bed alone for the first time in about 20 years. It was awful. I don't care what all those "Dear Amy" writers said, I don't care what Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti and Frida and Diego thought--sleeping alone sucks.
Each of my 6 nights there I took an ineffective over-the-counter sleeping pill. I'd pick up a book and read. I'd turn out the light and after a lot of Princess and the Pea action, I'd get up at 5:00 in the morning and read or take care of work emails. I'd thought I might actually use some of the bed-space the solitude provided me, but each morning I'd only messed up my side of the bed. On the other side of the bed, the comforter and fancy pillows hadn't moved a bit even though I'd been moving constantly it seemed. I hadn't realized how much Jim I grazed each other during the night. I hadn't realized how empty a bed feels when he isn't there.
I had a good time in Phoenix. It was warm and gorgeous and my separation from Jim and the stupid Broncos were the only drawbacks of the trip. The Broncos sucked and I hate the Cardinals stadium because they won't open the roof on a gorgeous day to keep the obnoxious sound loud and I don't care what anybody down there says, the stadium does not look like a barrel cactus. Besides the crappy game, we took a lovely hike in the hills outside of Phoenix, shopped at some gigantic mall where we kept running into former students, and I spent a delicious day alone at the Camelback Inn's amazing spa getting scrubbed and tanned. I also learned how much fun texting can be since Jim and I did a lot of that while I was there. I had one texting setback. I was beginning to feel a bit like a high school girl with a major crush and sent a sweetish romantic text meant for Jim to Chris. I'm sure Chris was filled with some Barney Fife feeling that I hope has passed by now.
Puerto Vallarta with Bud and Janet was the second time we slept alone in recent history. The second bedroom of Bud and Janet's timeshare had twin beds this time. Normally we'd just shove them together and that would be that. Not this time. The beds were mounted on two foot high concrete platforms. Though we gave it a whirl for about ten minutes, we are both too big to stay long in a little twin bed. We've always thought tropical climates were lovely and romantic. Tile floors and single beds were kind of romantically challenging, but that's all I want to say about that.
Sleeping in PV, though challenging, wasn't as bad as it was in Phoenix. At least I could hear Jim through the night and we could cuddle up for short times at night and in the morning. Still not good though.
I learned a lot in PV besides recognizing my increasing desire to always be in the same big bed with Jim. I learned that reading lots of short books feels better than reading one gigantic book as I did this time. I learned that when we walk the beach and Jim says, "Follow me," that I should follow him EXACTLY or I'm apt to take a big plunge in the ocean. I learned that the Rhythms of the NIght Beach experience beats the hell out of the Pirate Ship extravaganza from a year ago. I learned that Sayulito is a wonderful little town up north from PV. I've learned that people in PV think that if a bird shits on you it's good luck although my experience recently makes me think they are wrong about this. I've learned that no matter what the rules say, people who look like me can have their knitting needles taken away by cranky Mexican authorities while a woman who looks more grandmotherly than I do can carry over 20 needles onto a plane without a problem (she sat next to me on the plane back to Denver knitting away while I fumed about the injustice of it all and my two lost knitting needles). I learned the art and the Artwalk on Wednesday nights in PV are truly wonderful.
The last sleeping episode is a yearly thing, but it took on new weight this year because of the timing. Each year we take care of Chris's kids while he and Christine go on vacation for a bit. They live in Parker and we move into their house and sleep in their bed. It's a huge bed. I think it's a king that they've set up sideways. It's too short--even for me, but the width is beyond belief. You might as well be in separate beds because it's so hard to find each other in it. Also, Sammi likes to climb into bed with her mom and dad (or with us if we're there) in the middle of the night. She kicks and moves constantly. She comes to my side and I plant her in the middle so she won't fall off and so the kicks can be shared between Jim and I. Again--it's a lot like sleeping without Jim.
Our time in Parker taught me that Sammi is sneaky and she loves the chocolate chip pancakes at Snooze and that Brooklyn can sleep better than anyone. B. can be in the middle of her favorite princess movie and simply look up and say, "Night, night--now!" and that's it. You carry her upstairs to her bed and she literally dives in and goes instantly to sleep. Ahhhhh. She also said, "Granny, you aren't old--just beautiful." What a kid.
I'm about done. I find myself treasuring every moment in bed with Jim these days. If his leg drapes over mine in the middle of the night I shiver with delight. My head nestling on his chest when we drift off to sleep embodies joy. For what it's worth, if the "Dear Amy" writers start up again or if any famous person champions the virtues of separate beds, rooms or villas--well, I plan to ignore them in the future. Right now nothing is more wonderful than just getting in the same bed as Jim does every night.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
No beginning, middle, or end
A lot of things have conjoined lately to lead me to this post, so I will just dive in.
I continue to reel over the criticism of public sector workers from the right. The idea promoted by all of the libertarian pundits, but from Mike Rosen in particular, is that public worker unions are in fact funded by tax dollars and yet tax payers don't get much of a say in how those workers are compensated or what kind of health and retirement benefits they have. I find this position so distressing and so out of left field that I wrote a letter to The Denver Post about it. It was too sarcastic and a little late, so it never made the paper, but it did make the web site.
First, the idea that unions are supported by tax dollars, if taken to its logical conclusion, is absurd. When I taught, my compensation package was of course paid for by taxes. The dues I paid JCEA-CEA-NEA came from my tax paid salary, so I suppose you could argue that unions are supported by the tax payers. Of course, that means everything I own and everything any other public employee owns is paid for by tax payers.
For example, my brother-in-law was a highly successful officer in the Air Force. He went on to run the main computer at the Air Force Academy, a public institution supported by taxes. During that period, he bought a beautiful home in Colorado Springs. He also bought a couple of cars, a Toyota and a Subaru. I wonder if Chuck would be surprised and maybe even a little indignant to learn that his house and his cars (foreign cars I might point out) were paid for, not out of his money, but by the tax payers.
John McCain, currently living off his wife's massive inheritance, has always been in the public employ. When he was a POW in Nam, he continued collecting his salary. I wonder if it ever occurred to him that he was not earning that money, but was instead on the public dole?
The fact of the matter is that the public unions I belonged to were supported by dues deducted from my income and from the incomes of all the other public school teachers who CHOSE to sign up for the union. When those dues came out of my check every month it always felt like it was my money and my choice.
Second, the argument that tax payers have no say in public employee compensation is completely off the mark. I think the process under which public employees and their employees agree to contracts is called democracy. School board members get elected, more often than not for how they stand on employee compensation. State legislators are elected by and accountable to their constituencies. My experience after 35 years as a public employee is that tax payers have a disproportionate control over compensation packages and all other aspects of working conditions: Class size, required number of days, what kinds of things you would be dumb to put in an email, etc. I wonder, when John Boehner had the House read the constitution at the beginning of this session, did anyone listen?
Do you remember the heroic teacher who tackled a crazed shooter at Deer Creek Middle School a year or so ago? He was on The Today Show and Good Morning America. He was praised by newpaper pundits on both sides of the political divide. However, the same week his heroism galvanized the nation, The Denver Post ran a "fast-breaking news" alert about fiscal waste in public schools. It seemed, according to the article, that schools were spending thousands of dollars on pizza, donuts, and muffins for faculty meetings and the like. Tax payers were outraged. I'm sure a headline writer or two had a hard time resisting the urge to use the term "Pizzagate."
The very next day after the pizzagate article ran, there was another article in The Post letting us know that Deer Creek Middle School was going to have a party honoring their hero after school. Members from the community were encouraged to attend. What do you want to bet that tax payer money was used to spring for a pizza or two? The only thing really scandalous about all of this is that heroism in public schools (anything of note in public schools actually) should be honored by discounted pizza and day old muffins. I think the district should have booked The Brown Palace for the night and shamelessly funded the whole thing with tax payer dollars.
And now while all this Wisconsin stuff is going on, we hear about the heart breaking story of the basketball star in Michigan who died suddenly after shooting the winning shot on the team's way to the state playoffs. Is it possible to see the coach's despairing tears and the love for that young man written all over his face and still think that public employees, which for most people means teachers, are lazy, selfish oafs who only think about having three months off every summer? The disconnect here makes no sense to me. Is it any wonder that teacher morale is at an all time low?
Finally, I read a piece in The New York Review of Books earlier today entitled "Our Universities: How bad? How good?" by Peter Brooks. It was actually refreshing because Brooks does a nice job dismissing a quartet of new books all devoted to showing us how disastrous the state of higher education is in the good old USA.
He concentrates on the irony of education bashing that everyone seems to ignore. We extol the liberal arts; we praise critical thinking; we are in love with creativity; we decry mere vocationalism; but when we assess a school's performance we ask what students can produce, what they can regurgitate, how prepared they are for a career. Has it occurred to anyone in a position of power that those kinds of skills can't be measured accurately upon getting a degree. Maybe they can be measured after about twenty years out of school. Maybe they can't be measured at all. This is yet another example of the powers-that-be in this country knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
That idea leads me to one more shot. In a Mike Rosen column a few days ago, he admitted that when taking education into consideration upon comparing public sector compensation to private sector compensation, the private sector wins handily. But then he added this caveat: (I'm paraphrasing) Educational comparisons like this are misleading because an MFA, for instance, is not as marketable as an MBA. That was his argument against educational comparisons! I am just a lowly English teacher, but it seems to me the comparison of an MFA to an MBA (never mind the obvious point that if recent history is any indication we would all be a lot safer with an MFA in charge of Goldman-Sachs than an MBA) doesn't fully address the discrepancy. Mike Rosen has proven yet again that he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I'm sorry if this doesn't have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But it did feel good to write it all down.
I continue to reel over the criticism of public sector workers from the right. The idea promoted by all of the libertarian pundits, but from Mike Rosen in particular, is that public worker unions are in fact funded by tax dollars and yet tax payers don't get much of a say in how those workers are compensated or what kind of health and retirement benefits they have. I find this position so distressing and so out of left field that I wrote a letter to The Denver Post about it. It was too sarcastic and a little late, so it never made the paper, but it did make the web site.
First, the idea that unions are supported by tax dollars, if taken to its logical conclusion, is absurd. When I taught, my compensation package was of course paid for by taxes. The dues I paid JCEA-CEA-NEA came from my tax paid salary, so I suppose you could argue that unions are supported by the tax payers. Of course, that means everything I own and everything any other public employee owns is paid for by tax payers.
For example, my brother-in-law was a highly successful officer in the Air Force. He went on to run the main computer at the Air Force Academy, a public institution supported by taxes. During that period, he bought a beautiful home in Colorado Springs. He also bought a couple of cars, a Toyota and a Subaru. I wonder if Chuck would be surprised and maybe even a little indignant to learn that his house and his cars (foreign cars I might point out) were paid for, not out of his money, but by the tax payers.
John McCain, currently living off his wife's massive inheritance, has always been in the public employ. When he was a POW in Nam, he continued collecting his salary. I wonder if it ever occurred to him that he was not earning that money, but was instead on the public dole?
The fact of the matter is that the public unions I belonged to were supported by dues deducted from my income and from the incomes of all the other public school teachers who CHOSE to sign up for the union. When those dues came out of my check every month it always felt like it was my money and my choice.
Second, the argument that tax payers have no say in public employee compensation is completely off the mark. I think the process under which public employees and their employees agree to contracts is called democracy. School board members get elected, more often than not for how they stand on employee compensation. State legislators are elected by and accountable to their constituencies. My experience after 35 years as a public employee is that tax payers have a disproportionate control over compensation packages and all other aspects of working conditions: Class size, required number of days, what kinds of things you would be dumb to put in an email, etc. I wonder, when John Boehner had the House read the constitution at the beginning of this session, did anyone listen?
Do you remember the heroic teacher who tackled a crazed shooter at Deer Creek Middle School a year or so ago? He was on The Today Show and Good Morning America. He was praised by newpaper pundits on both sides of the political divide. However, the same week his heroism galvanized the nation, The Denver Post ran a "fast-breaking news" alert about fiscal waste in public schools. It seemed, according to the article, that schools were spending thousands of dollars on pizza, donuts, and muffins for faculty meetings and the like. Tax payers were outraged. I'm sure a headline writer or two had a hard time resisting the urge to use the term "Pizzagate."
The very next day after the pizzagate article ran, there was another article in The Post letting us know that Deer Creek Middle School was going to have a party honoring their hero after school. Members from the community were encouraged to attend. What do you want to bet that tax payer money was used to spring for a pizza or two? The only thing really scandalous about all of this is that heroism in public schools (anything of note in public schools actually) should be honored by discounted pizza and day old muffins. I think the district should have booked The Brown Palace for the night and shamelessly funded the whole thing with tax payer dollars.
And now while all this Wisconsin stuff is going on, we hear about the heart breaking story of the basketball star in Michigan who died suddenly after shooting the winning shot on the team's way to the state playoffs. Is it possible to see the coach's despairing tears and the love for that young man written all over his face and still think that public employees, which for most people means teachers, are lazy, selfish oafs who only think about having three months off every summer? The disconnect here makes no sense to me. Is it any wonder that teacher morale is at an all time low?
Finally, I read a piece in The New York Review of Books earlier today entitled "Our Universities: How bad? How good?" by Peter Brooks. It was actually refreshing because Brooks does a nice job dismissing a quartet of new books all devoted to showing us how disastrous the state of higher education is in the good old USA.
He concentrates on the irony of education bashing that everyone seems to ignore. We extol the liberal arts; we praise critical thinking; we are in love with creativity; we decry mere vocationalism; but when we assess a school's performance we ask what students can produce, what they can regurgitate, how prepared they are for a career. Has it occurred to anyone in a position of power that those kinds of skills can't be measured accurately upon getting a degree. Maybe they can be measured after about twenty years out of school. Maybe they can't be measured at all. This is yet another example of the powers-that-be in this country knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
That idea leads me to one more shot. In a Mike Rosen column a few days ago, he admitted that when taking education into consideration upon comparing public sector compensation to private sector compensation, the private sector wins handily. But then he added this caveat: (I'm paraphrasing) Educational comparisons like this are misleading because an MFA, for instance, is not as marketable as an MBA. That was his argument against educational comparisons! I am just a lowly English teacher, but it seems to me the comparison of an MFA to an MBA (never mind the obvious point that if recent history is any indication we would all be a lot safer with an MFA in charge of Goldman-Sachs than an MBA) doesn't fully address the discrepancy. Mike Rosen has proven yet again that he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I'm sorry if this doesn't have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But it did feel good to write it all down.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Mike Rosen is at it again.
I broke a promise and read Mike Rosen's column today. Today's topic was an attack on all of those evil liberals out there protesting in Wisconsin. Is anyone surprised that Rosen has taken a stand against teachers? I'm mad at myself because the main reason I have stopped reading his stuff is that it is so predictable. He uses the word "liberal" as a perjorative with such frequency that it actually begins to sound like a bad thing. Then he peppers his argument with half truths and loaded language because he knows he has an audience that eats propaganda and political naysaying like mother's milk.
His article is titled "Push has come to shove" to suggest that all the largesse our country has irresponsibly showered on public employees has finally reached critical mass and the world as we know it is on a fast track to Hell. Using illegal immigrants as the source of all ills has lost some of its clout, so I guess right-wingers like Rosen and Governor Walker in Wisconsin have shifted their focus to public employees. Conventional wisdom says that government is too big; the obvious solution is to weed out those people employed by government. You know, the ones who sit back doing nothing while collecting exorbitant salaries and obscene retirement packages.
At least that is what Rosen would have us believe. He admits that "once upon a time" a person entering public service (Rosen, apparently incapable of straight reporting, derisively put the term PUBLIC SERVICE in quotation marks) expected to trade lower pay for job security and benefits. But that is not the case any more, Rosen argues, stating that "government employees are better paid than the private sector average. . ." He even goes on to say that these ever increasing compensation packages are the result of the "incestuous" relationship unions have with the "politicians they fund and elect."
It would be a great argument if it were true. But it is patently false. When you compare public sector employees with ALL private sector employees, taking into account both salary and benefits, as The Wall Street Journal recently did, you will discover that the public sector does indeed receive more compensation on average. But hold on a minute. Public sector employees as a group have more education than the average private sector employee, so it stands to reason that they would make more money. When you compare public sector workers with those private sector types who have equivalent education and experience, as The Wall Street Journal also did (but which Rosen failed to point out), the private sector wins the compensation comparison handily.
How do people like Rosen get away with these blatant errors of omission?
He expands his argument to say that since states are not allowed to run budget deficits like the EVIL federal government under Obama, they are facing a shortfall crisis--fueled by public labor unions' increasingly unfair demands--that is becoming so huge that tax increases will not close it. I guess he said that as a sop to his conservative friends who see anything resembling a tax increase as anathema, but again his statement, while having the ring of truth (conservative pundits are good at that), is not true. If state income taxes were raised in California, the most beleaguered state deficit-wise, by just one percentage point, California's deficit would disappear. Again, Rosen conveniently ignores this fact because presumably, since it comes from the Congressional Budget Office, it can't be trusted.
Isn't it interesting that republicans scoff at the CBO's findings when they don't support republican positions, but never fail to cite the CBO when it projects economic doom for anything Obama proposes? For example, toward the end of his column he mentions that Obama's forecasts for economic growth are unrealistically optimistic. For support, he cites the CBO's estimate of 2.2 percent, a slightly more pessimistic forecast than Obama's. That is why I sometimes envy conservatives. They can believe anything they want and still sleep at night.
He says some more outrageous things. He points out the "theatrical" nature of the protests and directs our attention to protest signs and placards with swastikas and comparisons of Walker to Mubarak. He thinks it ironic that it is okay for liberals (there is that "L" word again) to use hateful slogans and signs, but those same liberals jump on any incivility among Tea Partiers. I don't disagree, but I find it even more ironic that Rosen calls the hateful tea party slogans and the rifle sight graphics examples of "incivility." It seems me that they are at least as "theatrical" as the Wisconsin protestors.
He makes two more patently dishonest points. The "angry throngs in Wisconsin are self-righteously delusional, paying no heed to their state's fiscal reality." Has he been reading the papers? The unions have agreed to all the components of the financial package. Their salaries will remain frozen. They will pay more for their benefits. The only thing they are not agreeing with is the systematic attack on collective bargaining, as if collective bargaining is the reason Wisconsin's budget is in dire straits.
What is happening in Wisconsin is clearly an attempt to scapegoat public employees and break unions. If it was only about money it would have been resolved weeks ago.
Rosen ends with two statements. In his second to last paragraph he maintains that we are all going to see a decline in our standard of living in the future. "We'll still enjoy one of the best lifestyles on the planet, but we'll have to get along on a little less. And that includes those who work for the government." He fails to add that it doesn't include those of us who are clever enough to be in the top one percent. Those folks, as long as they have apologists like Mike Rosen, will just keep raking in the money.
Finally, he says that we will be in for some tough times if the "virus" in Wisconsin spreads and unions in other states "go to war with taxpayers. But they'll ultimately lose that battle. They're greatly outnumbered by those in the private sector on whose taxes they feed."
He makes public sector employees sound like ravening wolves feeding on the unwary private sector tax payers and then blatantly lies when he suggests that the majority of the country are against the unions. Not true. A recent Pew survey showed that over sixty percent of the country favor unions and decry the blatant political power play that Governor Walker and his republican cohorts are trying to push.
I wonder, does The Denver Post employ fact checkers?
His article is titled "Push has come to shove" to suggest that all the largesse our country has irresponsibly showered on public employees has finally reached critical mass and the world as we know it is on a fast track to Hell. Using illegal immigrants as the source of all ills has lost some of its clout, so I guess right-wingers like Rosen and Governor Walker in Wisconsin have shifted their focus to public employees. Conventional wisdom says that government is too big; the obvious solution is to weed out those people employed by government. You know, the ones who sit back doing nothing while collecting exorbitant salaries and obscene retirement packages.
At least that is what Rosen would have us believe. He admits that "once upon a time" a person entering public service (Rosen, apparently incapable of straight reporting, derisively put the term PUBLIC SERVICE in quotation marks) expected to trade lower pay for job security and benefits. But that is not the case any more, Rosen argues, stating that "government employees are better paid than the private sector average. . ." He even goes on to say that these ever increasing compensation packages are the result of the "incestuous" relationship unions have with the "politicians they fund and elect."
It would be a great argument if it were true. But it is patently false. When you compare public sector employees with ALL private sector employees, taking into account both salary and benefits, as The Wall Street Journal recently did, you will discover that the public sector does indeed receive more compensation on average. But hold on a minute. Public sector employees as a group have more education than the average private sector employee, so it stands to reason that they would make more money. When you compare public sector workers with those private sector types who have equivalent education and experience, as The Wall Street Journal also did (but which Rosen failed to point out), the private sector wins the compensation comparison handily.
How do people like Rosen get away with these blatant errors of omission?
He expands his argument to say that since states are not allowed to run budget deficits like the EVIL federal government under Obama, they are facing a shortfall crisis--fueled by public labor unions' increasingly unfair demands--that is becoming so huge that tax increases will not close it. I guess he said that as a sop to his conservative friends who see anything resembling a tax increase as anathema, but again his statement, while having the ring of truth (conservative pundits are good at that), is not true. If state income taxes were raised in California, the most beleaguered state deficit-wise, by just one percentage point, California's deficit would disappear. Again, Rosen conveniently ignores this fact because presumably, since it comes from the Congressional Budget Office, it can't be trusted.
Isn't it interesting that republicans scoff at the CBO's findings when they don't support republican positions, but never fail to cite the CBO when it projects economic doom for anything Obama proposes? For example, toward the end of his column he mentions that Obama's forecasts for economic growth are unrealistically optimistic. For support, he cites the CBO's estimate of 2.2 percent, a slightly more pessimistic forecast than Obama's. That is why I sometimes envy conservatives. They can believe anything they want and still sleep at night.
He says some more outrageous things. He points out the "theatrical" nature of the protests and directs our attention to protest signs and placards with swastikas and comparisons of Walker to Mubarak. He thinks it ironic that it is okay for liberals (there is that "L" word again) to use hateful slogans and signs, but those same liberals jump on any incivility among Tea Partiers. I don't disagree, but I find it even more ironic that Rosen calls the hateful tea party slogans and the rifle sight graphics examples of "incivility." It seems me that they are at least as "theatrical" as the Wisconsin protestors.
He makes two more patently dishonest points. The "angry throngs in Wisconsin are self-righteously delusional, paying no heed to their state's fiscal reality." Has he been reading the papers? The unions have agreed to all the components of the financial package. Their salaries will remain frozen. They will pay more for their benefits. The only thing they are not agreeing with is the systematic attack on collective bargaining, as if collective bargaining is the reason Wisconsin's budget is in dire straits.
What is happening in Wisconsin is clearly an attempt to scapegoat public employees and break unions. If it was only about money it would have been resolved weeks ago.
Rosen ends with two statements. In his second to last paragraph he maintains that we are all going to see a decline in our standard of living in the future. "We'll still enjoy one of the best lifestyles on the planet, but we'll have to get along on a little less. And that includes those who work for the government." He fails to add that it doesn't include those of us who are clever enough to be in the top one percent. Those folks, as long as they have apologists like Mike Rosen, will just keep raking in the money.
Finally, he says that we will be in for some tough times if the "virus" in Wisconsin spreads and unions in other states "go to war with taxpayers. But they'll ultimately lose that battle. They're greatly outnumbered by those in the private sector on whose taxes they feed."
He makes public sector employees sound like ravening wolves feeding on the unwary private sector tax payers and then blatantly lies when he suggests that the majority of the country are against the unions. Not true. A recent Pew survey showed that over sixty percent of the country favor unions and decry the blatant political power play that Governor Walker and his republican cohorts are trying to push.
I wonder, does The Denver Post employ fact checkers?
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Technology: The Perfect Storm
We've just undergone a major technological perfect storm at our house. I am typing this on a new iMac. Next to me is my new iPhone. Kathie is in some school classroom typing her observations on her new MacBookAir. We have signed up and paid for a full year of lessons that we can schedule as needed. We have already taken three and I am building up a reservoir of questions for another session next week.
This is an uncomfortable feeling--this obsession with technology--because I have always had a shaky relationship with it at best. When VCRs were first becoming prevalent I thought they were a work of the devil and proclaimed that certainty at every opportunity. Then we got a new VCR to go along with our new Fisher stereo television and I changed my tune. The video tapes in our house multiplied like rabbits, until CDs came out and then the burgeoning CDs in our house pushed out the tapes. I'm still not sure where they all went. Now we have "My DVR" on our 60" Panasonic plasma and so CDs are quickly going the way of the tapes. I think we have managed to avoid the Blue Ray stage.
Since I am and will continue to be an English teacher, computers have always posed a special problem. There are spell checks to contend with and grammar checks. My great lesson plan about using the card catalogues and Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature have been made irrelevant by Google and Data Bases. The mindless hours I am now spending compiling photo slide shows have happened because of my new computer. I'm not reading as much. I'm not playing the guitar as much. Just imagine how much worse that wasted time must be for a high school kid.
I remember way back in the fledgling stages of our technological storm, I brought one of those miniature arcade game things you could buy with Frogger on it to the Fite-Garland household to mess around with before and after dinner. Jerry, who is even more of a dinosaur than I am (he is horrified if high school marching bands play anything more avant garde than "On Wisconsin"), didn't much like Frogger and the constant attention it demanded. "It's relentless. Like life," I told him.
Anyway, here I am bathing in my technology. Yet I am worried that it is doing bad things to my brain which is already slowly eroding because of the mental indolence I am enjoying in my retirement. I read Marshall McLuhan. There was even a time when I thought he was on to something. The Medium is the Message and all that still holds true for me.
I read a great article in this week's New Yorker by Adam Gopnik ("The Information") where he cautions us to be aware of "How the Internet gets inside us." It is basically a group review of a lot of books that all discuss how books are obsolete. He groups the books into three categories based on their reaction to the proliferation of technology: The Never-Betters; Better-Nevers; and "Always-Wasers."
The Never-Betters maintain that we are all privileged to be in the midst of a world that becomes more accessible by the nano-second. So what if no one reads Tolstoy anymore, they say. Tolstoy sucks anyway. We dinosaurs have to get over it. Sorry Jerry, the days of college fight songs and "Hold that Tiger" are over.
There are obvious problems with this approach. Part of the Never-Better argument is that each new wave of technology brought with it positive progress. The printing press is this group's most reliable example. But, according to Gopnik, the idea that the printing press brought about all that is good about western civilization is intellectually dishonest. Sure, the printing press might have propelled the Reformation, but it also propelled Martin Luther's anti-semitic writings. For every free thinker who used the printing press, there were plenty of petty despots and opportunists who used it to suppress rights every where.
The Never-Better position maintains that contraptions (printing presses, televisions, computers) don't change our consciousness; contraptions are part of our consciousness.
My computer and all of its connectedness is like, Gopnik explains, a spouse or a friend who you ask for help if you can't remember the first episode of The Lucy Show or the major exports of Brazil. It is like we are living in a library with everything in its collection. This might be bad if you never get out of the house or talk to someone with a differing point of view, but that is certainly not caused by the medium itself.
As Gopnik says, "Our trouble is not the over-all absense of smartness, but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that."
The Better-Nevers write more emotionally powerful arguments. They are, after all, wallowing in nostalgia for a world long gone. The Net seems to parcel out information in short spurts and bits and pieces of data. At first search there isn't much depth and this medium, the Better-Nevers warn, alters our brains at the neurological level. Well of course it does. How else would the brain be effected but on a neurological level. Gopnik uses a clever comparison to make his point. Lamenting the fact that the Net affects changes in how our brains work is like complaining that football doesn't just affect a kid's fitness, but the muscle tone that creates his ability to throw and catch a football. DUH.
Even though Gopnik does a nice job of pointing out the absurdity of their position, I find myself allied with the Better-Nevers. Kids don't read as much. People who go to the YMCA to work out go home frustrated on those rare days when the computer keeping track of their progress is down. Families gathered around the table for dinner are all looking down on their tiny screens, texting a message, catching up on that day's scores, or checking on a stock. Where parents used to tell the kids to pry themselves from the TV screen to join them around the fire for some family time, now they tell them to get off their computers or cell phones and join the family around the TV screen to watch Survivor or something equally horrible.
The problem is progress. There has always been some new machine that acts like our mind and there has always been some entertainment derived from that machine which threatens our mind.
Which brings us to the Always-Wasers. Their argument is self-evident and probably more than a little true.
Gopnik ends with a terrific thought:
"Thoughts are bigger than the things that deliver them. Our contraptions may shape our consciousness, but it is our consciousness that makes our credos, and we mostly live by those. Toast, as every breakfaster knows, isn't really about the quality of the bread or how it's sliced or even the toaster. For man cannot live by toast alone. It's all about the butter."
This is an uncomfortable feeling--this obsession with technology--because I have always had a shaky relationship with it at best. When VCRs were first becoming prevalent I thought they were a work of the devil and proclaimed that certainty at every opportunity. Then we got a new VCR to go along with our new Fisher stereo television and I changed my tune. The video tapes in our house multiplied like rabbits, until CDs came out and then the burgeoning CDs in our house pushed out the tapes. I'm still not sure where they all went. Now we have "My DVR" on our 60" Panasonic plasma and so CDs are quickly going the way of the tapes. I think we have managed to avoid the Blue Ray stage.
Since I am and will continue to be an English teacher, computers have always posed a special problem. There are spell checks to contend with and grammar checks. My great lesson plan about using the card catalogues and Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature have been made irrelevant by Google and Data Bases. The mindless hours I am now spending compiling photo slide shows have happened because of my new computer. I'm not reading as much. I'm not playing the guitar as much. Just imagine how much worse that wasted time must be for a high school kid.
I remember way back in the fledgling stages of our technological storm, I brought one of those miniature arcade game things you could buy with Frogger on it to the Fite-Garland household to mess around with before and after dinner. Jerry, who is even more of a dinosaur than I am (he is horrified if high school marching bands play anything more avant garde than "On Wisconsin"), didn't much like Frogger and the constant attention it demanded. "It's relentless. Like life," I told him.
Anyway, here I am bathing in my technology. Yet I am worried that it is doing bad things to my brain which is already slowly eroding because of the mental indolence I am enjoying in my retirement. I read Marshall McLuhan. There was even a time when I thought he was on to something. The Medium is the Message and all that still holds true for me.
I read a great article in this week's New Yorker by Adam Gopnik ("The Information") where he cautions us to be aware of "How the Internet gets inside us." It is basically a group review of a lot of books that all discuss how books are obsolete. He groups the books into three categories based on their reaction to the proliferation of technology: The Never-Betters; Better-Nevers; and "Always-Wasers."
The Never-Betters maintain that we are all privileged to be in the midst of a world that becomes more accessible by the nano-second. So what if no one reads Tolstoy anymore, they say. Tolstoy sucks anyway. We dinosaurs have to get over it. Sorry Jerry, the days of college fight songs and "Hold that Tiger" are over.
There are obvious problems with this approach. Part of the Never-Better argument is that each new wave of technology brought with it positive progress. The printing press is this group's most reliable example. But, according to Gopnik, the idea that the printing press brought about all that is good about western civilization is intellectually dishonest. Sure, the printing press might have propelled the Reformation, but it also propelled Martin Luther's anti-semitic writings. For every free thinker who used the printing press, there were plenty of petty despots and opportunists who used it to suppress rights every where.
The Never-Better position maintains that contraptions (printing presses, televisions, computers) don't change our consciousness; contraptions are part of our consciousness.
My computer and all of its connectedness is like, Gopnik explains, a spouse or a friend who you ask for help if you can't remember the first episode of The Lucy Show or the major exports of Brazil. It is like we are living in a library with everything in its collection. This might be bad if you never get out of the house or talk to someone with a differing point of view, but that is certainly not caused by the medium itself.
As Gopnik says, "Our trouble is not the over-all absense of smartness, but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that."
The Better-Nevers write more emotionally powerful arguments. They are, after all, wallowing in nostalgia for a world long gone. The Net seems to parcel out information in short spurts and bits and pieces of data. At first search there isn't much depth and this medium, the Better-Nevers warn, alters our brains at the neurological level. Well of course it does. How else would the brain be effected but on a neurological level. Gopnik uses a clever comparison to make his point. Lamenting the fact that the Net affects changes in how our brains work is like complaining that football doesn't just affect a kid's fitness, but the muscle tone that creates his ability to throw and catch a football. DUH.
Even though Gopnik does a nice job of pointing out the absurdity of their position, I find myself allied with the Better-Nevers. Kids don't read as much. People who go to the YMCA to work out go home frustrated on those rare days when the computer keeping track of their progress is down. Families gathered around the table for dinner are all looking down on their tiny screens, texting a message, catching up on that day's scores, or checking on a stock. Where parents used to tell the kids to pry themselves from the TV screen to join them around the fire for some family time, now they tell them to get off their computers or cell phones and join the family around the TV screen to watch Survivor or something equally horrible.
The problem is progress. There has always been some new machine that acts like our mind and there has always been some entertainment derived from that machine which threatens our mind.
Which brings us to the Always-Wasers. Their argument is self-evident and probably more than a little true.
Gopnik ends with a terrific thought:
"Thoughts are bigger than the things that deliver them. Our contraptions may shape our consciousness, but it is our consciousness that makes our credos, and we mostly live by those. Toast, as every breakfaster knows, isn't really about the quality of the bread or how it's sliced or even the toaster. For man cannot live by toast alone. It's all about the butter."
Mockingbird and the NRA
Have you ever wondered about that part in To Kill A Mockingbird where Scout and Jem and Dill sneak under the Radley's fence and Jem gets his pants caught in the barbed wire? He goes back to get them because it would be too hard to explain his lack of pants to Atticus, and Mr. Radley fires a shotgun at him. Of course, all the houses on the block empty to find the reason for the gunfire and Mr. Radley simply says that he heard a prowler. Everyone accepts this explanation and, satisfied, walk back to their houses. Even Atticus lets it pass as if to say any sane man would have acted just as Mr. Radley had and emptied his Winchester into the hydrangeas.
Nothing like that scene could happen today, or if it did it would supply talking points for both sides of the gun-control debate for at least two or three news cycles, or until Bret Favre announced his un-retirement.
Being steeped in a liberal tradition of wanting to register and regulate, I would have reacted differently than Atticus in that situation. YOU DON'T JUST GO FIRING YOUR GUN INTO YOUR BACKYARD WHEN YOU HEAR A NOISE! Maybe the neighbor kids are playing hide and seek. In any event, that kind of behavior ought to be regulated and controlled.
It is like a similar scene in Hoosiers. Gene Hackman goes out to Dennis Hopper's place to ask for coaching help and Hopper fires a hunting rifle out the back door. Gene Hackman's response was to raise his hands and laugh. I would have whipped out my iPhone and called the cops.
What is someone like Dennis Hopper doing with a gun anyway?
I have a feeling that the "idyllic" small town America depicted by the Indiana and Alabama of those two films is the very America the NRA is so desperately keeping a grasp on, an america with the values the Tea Party is so nostalgic for.
Nothing like that scene could happen today, or if it did it would supply talking points for both sides of the gun-control debate for at least two or three news cycles, or until Bret Favre announced his un-retirement.
Being steeped in a liberal tradition of wanting to register and regulate, I would have reacted differently than Atticus in that situation. YOU DON'T JUST GO FIRING YOUR GUN INTO YOUR BACKYARD WHEN YOU HEAR A NOISE! Maybe the neighbor kids are playing hide and seek. In any event, that kind of behavior ought to be regulated and controlled.
It is like a similar scene in Hoosiers. Gene Hackman goes out to Dennis Hopper's place to ask for coaching help and Hopper fires a hunting rifle out the back door. Gene Hackman's response was to raise his hands and laugh. I would have whipped out my iPhone and called the cops.
What is someone like Dennis Hopper doing with a gun anyway?
I have a feeling that the "idyllic" small town America depicted by the Indiana and Alabama of those two films is the very America the NRA is so desperately keeping a grasp on, an america with the values the Tea Party is so nostalgic for.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Hick's New Cuts
When I first started teaching at Green Mountain High School in the mid-seventies, I remember being struck by the relative largesse of the place. The place had a new building smell; the carpet was orange and clean and cheery; the library was well-stocked and centrally located. The language arts department had its own secretary. So did every other department. There were secretaries in the library and the main office and the counseling department. And to top it all off, I was pulling down a cool $8500 a year. This, compared to the $6300 I was making at Marycrest, a catholic girls' school, was almost too good to be true.
Things didn't stay that way. The story of my 34 years as a public school teacher is the story of yearly emergency budget talks responding to potential or real cuts. It was only a year or two after getting hired that we lost our departmental secretary. A new ditto machine was placed on top of her old desk where the pictures of her family used to sit. Pretty soon the number of library secretaries was pared by one. Eventually, the wonderful lady who acted as the single secretary for the entire factory, her position having been cut by yet another budget crunch, was moved into the main office as a secretary for one of our four assistant principals and two administrative assistants. When I first came to Green Mountain, we only had three A.P.s and one of them just sat in faculty lounge all day. All through this succession of lean times where we were annually enjoined to pitch-in and share the burden, I noticed that as faculty secretaries shrunk in number, the number of secretaries and administrative help in the main office--you know, the one that is the furthest away from kids--grew.
Other things grew during this constant cutting back. The list of teacher responsibilities grew. The time it took to do the paper work that our departmental secretary used to do grew. Our constantly evolving computerized system for taking and tracking attendance made the time it took to do the reporting grow. The amount of blame teachers got for low test scores or the apparent lack of preparation of our students grew. The worries about getting sued, monitoring email communication, being careful not offend any one, or drive anyone to suicide because of too much homework, all of that stuff grew exponentially.
And every year we would read in The Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News that Jeffco was in the worst budget crunch of its history and we were given a list of options for cutting costs that we needed to prioritize, first in private, and then in groups during a day long faculty meeting complete with coffee and donuts in the morning, pizza and soft drinks for lunch, and enough butcher paper to stretch from West Alameda Drive to the Ad Building.
Then we would have emergency union (oops I meant to say Association) meetings where we were told how this was yet another example of the powers that be trying to balance the budget on the backs of teachers. And we were told about phone banks to man and strike plans to create. We would root for our negotiation team and spread nasty rumors about the administration's negotiation team and something would get settled--always too little money, too few benefits, and too many concessions. We would, amongst lots of loud, tough talk, finally ratify the thing and get back to the business of teaching kids.
Here I am many years removed from the whole thing looking at the front page of The Post: "Schools bear brunt of Hick's new cuts." Since school spending amounts to some 40% of Colorado's budget and since states, unlike federal governments, can't run deficits, something has to go. Three hundred and thirty-two million slashed from k-12 funding. Another $36 million from higher ed. According to the article, that translates to a $497 cut per student in k-12 and $877 less for each college student. We're talking 40 kids in first grade classrooms. Hundreds of teachers will join the ranks of the unemployed. But as Hickenlooper said "balancing this budget would be a painful task." Painful for whom? Hickenlooper also said that "we have to find ways to make the entire culture more pro-business." Call me stupid, but I don't see how cutting funding on a higher educational system that already ranks in the bottom three in the country is a pro-business decision. I see it as a decision that will convince even more companies (like ProLogis for example) to move their headquarters elsewhere.
Will there eventually be a politician out there with the guts to point to what is fast becoming the only budget fixing alternative left? Will Warren Buffet continue to be the only public person out there to say we need to raise taxes, particularly on the rich, the very people the budget cutting republicans in Washington fought for when it came to rolling back the Bush tax cuts? How can these people sleep at night when they take funding away from schools, but don't tax the wealthy. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know that the wealthy currently pay most of the income tax in this country. Why should I apologize for that when the top 1% of the country account for more wealth than the rest of us put together. Adam Smith, all you neo-cons out there, said in The Wealth of Nations that the wealthiest would have to contribute more than their share for the benefit of society. Smacks of socialism doesn't it? I suppose Smith's masterwork is now part of the liberal plot to ruin the country.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to pay more taxes any more than any one else does. I also don't like going to the dentist (no offense, Dr. Arendt) or waiting on the highway for lane painting, or having to spend ever increasing amounts of money on food, but somethings are simply necessary.
Why do budgets get balanced on the backs of those groups least able to pay? For the third year in a row Colorado government workers will get no cost of living raise. On top of that they are facing the second year in a row where more money will be taken out of their checks to pay for rising health insurance costs for retirees.
Hickenlooper's reaction: "There are people all over the state that have no job."
What does that have to do with anything? That answer doesn't work for the wealthiest 1% does it?
I wouldn't mind trading places with one of the wealthy one per centers, even if I did have the threat of a tax hike hanging over my head, keeping me from hiring, ruining all my plans for innovation, research and development. I know it would be tough, but someone has to bear it.
Things didn't stay that way. The story of my 34 years as a public school teacher is the story of yearly emergency budget talks responding to potential or real cuts. It was only a year or two after getting hired that we lost our departmental secretary. A new ditto machine was placed on top of her old desk where the pictures of her family used to sit. Pretty soon the number of library secretaries was pared by one. Eventually, the wonderful lady who acted as the single secretary for the entire factory, her position having been cut by yet another budget crunch, was moved into the main office as a secretary for one of our four assistant principals and two administrative assistants. When I first came to Green Mountain, we only had three A.P.s and one of them just sat in faculty lounge all day. All through this succession of lean times where we were annually enjoined to pitch-in and share the burden, I noticed that as faculty secretaries shrunk in number, the number of secretaries and administrative help in the main office--you know, the one that is the furthest away from kids--grew.
Other things grew during this constant cutting back. The list of teacher responsibilities grew. The time it took to do the paper work that our departmental secretary used to do grew. Our constantly evolving computerized system for taking and tracking attendance made the time it took to do the reporting grow. The amount of blame teachers got for low test scores or the apparent lack of preparation of our students grew. The worries about getting sued, monitoring email communication, being careful not offend any one, or drive anyone to suicide because of too much homework, all of that stuff grew exponentially.
And every year we would read in The Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News that Jeffco was in the worst budget crunch of its history and we were given a list of options for cutting costs that we needed to prioritize, first in private, and then in groups during a day long faculty meeting complete with coffee and donuts in the morning, pizza and soft drinks for lunch, and enough butcher paper to stretch from West Alameda Drive to the Ad Building.
Then we would have emergency union (oops I meant to say Association) meetings where we were told how this was yet another example of the powers that be trying to balance the budget on the backs of teachers. And we were told about phone banks to man and strike plans to create. We would root for our negotiation team and spread nasty rumors about the administration's negotiation team and something would get settled--always too little money, too few benefits, and too many concessions. We would, amongst lots of loud, tough talk, finally ratify the thing and get back to the business of teaching kids.
Here I am many years removed from the whole thing looking at the front page of The Post: "Schools bear brunt of Hick's new cuts." Since school spending amounts to some 40% of Colorado's budget and since states, unlike federal governments, can't run deficits, something has to go. Three hundred and thirty-two million slashed from k-12 funding. Another $36 million from higher ed. According to the article, that translates to a $497 cut per student in k-12 and $877 less for each college student. We're talking 40 kids in first grade classrooms. Hundreds of teachers will join the ranks of the unemployed. But as Hickenlooper said "balancing this budget would be a painful task." Painful for whom? Hickenlooper also said that "we have to find ways to make the entire culture more pro-business." Call me stupid, but I don't see how cutting funding on a higher educational system that already ranks in the bottom three in the country is a pro-business decision. I see it as a decision that will convince even more companies (like ProLogis for example) to move their headquarters elsewhere.
Will there eventually be a politician out there with the guts to point to what is fast becoming the only budget fixing alternative left? Will Warren Buffet continue to be the only public person out there to say we need to raise taxes, particularly on the rich, the very people the budget cutting republicans in Washington fought for when it came to rolling back the Bush tax cuts? How can these people sleep at night when they take funding away from schools, but don't tax the wealthy. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know that the wealthy currently pay most of the income tax in this country. Why should I apologize for that when the top 1% of the country account for more wealth than the rest of us put together. Adam Smith, all you neo-cons out there, said in The Wealth of Nations that the wealthiest would have to contribute more than their share for the benefit of society. Smacks of socialism doesn't it? I suppose Smith's masterwork is now part of the liberal plot to ruin the country.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to pay more taxes any more than any one else does. I also don't like going to the dentist (no offense, Dr. Arendt) or waiting on the highway for lane painting, or having to spend ever increasing amounts of money on food, but somethings are simply necessary.
Why do budgets get balanced on the backs of those groups least able to pay? For the third year in a row Colorado government workers will get no cost of living raise. On top of that they are facing the second year in a row where more money will be taken out of their checks to pay for rising health insurance costs for retirees.
Hickenlooper's reaction: "There are people all over the state that have no job."
What does that have to do with anything? That answer doesn't work for the wealthiest 1% does it?
I wouldn't mind trading places with one of the wealthy one per centers, even if I did have the threat of a tax hike hanging over my head, keeping me from hiring, ruining all my plans for innovation, research and development. I know it would be tough, but someone has to bear it.
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