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.