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I was willing to look the other way on your previous posts and chalk them up as youthful indiscretions. But this? This cannot stand. Your status here is under review by the Executive Committee for Human Decency and Harbaughness. Don't leave town.
The Doolittle raid sequences with Alec Baldwin were really good IMO. His lines delivered in response to being asked what he'd (Col. Doolittle) do if forced to bail over Japan:
"I'd order my crew to bail out, find the sweetest military target I could and drive my plan right into the middle of it and kill as many of those bastards as I possibly could."
100% Weapons grade bullshit. Have anything factual to add or are you too busy destroying public education and bulldozing landscapes? Pensions for state of Michigan employees phased out in the early 90s. Federal employees pensions for new workers probably won't equal their social security payments (if it's still around). Everything has been switched to savings plans. There is nothing wrong with that but let's speak factually.
My Gracious. Sounds like I may have hit a nerve. You sound like the UNISERV rep who wrote a death threat to me in the 1990s subsequent to a speech I gave supporting choice in education. Milton Friedman and his wife Rose (two eminent Libertarian economists) spent the last 20 years of their lives trying to allow poor children to escape awful schools. All charter schools in Michigan are public schools. One of the big problems with charters is that they typically are oversubscribed. That means that a school may be designed to hold 600 students, but 1,700 students may register. Charters then have to hold a lottery to pick the students who are allowed in. Waiting For Superman is a movie that deals with this lottery process, with tenure, and the rubber rooms in NYC.
You say pensions for state workers were phased out in the early 1990's? Really?
Critics of similar reports analyzing public pay at the state and federal level have questioned the credibility since it is difficult to compare job classifications in the public and private sectors.
What I say that is incendiary is for folks to trust their own eyes and ears. Do they know of poor teachers who keep their job because of tenure? Do they know people who are certified teachers in MI but are unable to find a teaching job in MI? Do they know that Detroit teachers are the highest paid in the US? Do they know many tenured teachers who could make a living in the private sector?
Michigan spends $ 14,000 per student in the government schools. That is $ 350,000 in a classroom of 25. $ 100,000 goes to the teacher. What is incredible is that this leaves $ 250,000 per classroom for other expenses such as administration, building, and hired labor. Charters get 1/3 less money and provide their own buildings. Again, are you going to believe what the unions say or your own lying math.
So the average public sector job vs. the average private sector job that includes McDonalds's workers. That's the data you're going by? Brilliant quantitative analysis.
That may be a fair criticism. The recent assertion that 1 in 6 Americans works for the government seems based on a similarly unique definition of very common terms.
I'll just trust the Cato Institute over my own reality. What do I know about the non-raises people in my office have received for the last 4 years? Thank you Geezer for bringing to my attention the huge financial gains we've been making!
Apparently one can find sources on the Internet to support any argument. And here this whole time I thought if someone wrote an article or a partisan think tank conducted a study, it was iron-clad truth.
Virtually everything you post about this stuff, Geezer, flies in the face of what I and friends/family have experienced. It's almost a complete 180 degree opposite alternate reality.
I love reading back and forth discussions like this. It sounds like arguments I listened to growing up in my family. My Dad hated teachers and all unions and felt they were all vastly overpaid if not totally corrupt. But some of his siblings were teachers, and worse, DEMOCRATS!
I started out pretty much on my Dad's side but over the years gradually tilted left. Beloved Ronald Reagan turned me against the right wing with his advocacy of military spending and pushing the nuclear arms race. But he finally came to his senses and worked out rapprochement with Gorbachev. Not such a bad president in hindsight.
So today my number one priority is anti war. In the current presidential landscape there is nobody I can support, and Hillary makes me want to puke! So I'm not an R or a D at the moment.
I went to a UM golf fund-raiser a few years ago where much of the football staff attended. As the group gathered that evening for dinner I saw Lloyd Carr coming in the room, a late arrival. I went up to him and said I have heard he is a Democrat (something unusual I would say in the football coaching profession). With a twinkle in his eye he looked down at me said, "no I'm not a Democrat, I'm a Progressive". So now that is where I identify.
Liney took a gamble in allowing a political thread to evolve here. Hurt feelings can harm this wonderful web site. So we all need to be careful.
Yeah, teachers are so corrupt. Get paid $50K to babysit some shitty parents' kids, get docked if they don't teach toward a shitty standardized state test and lose their pension on their crappy salary because our government sucks. They are the bain of our existence.
Apparently one can find sources on the Internet to support any argument. And here this whole time I thought if someone wrote an article or a partisan think tank conducted a study, it was iron-clad truth.
Mike: I'd appreciate it if you could find one partisan study that says that government pay has been frozen. Now or within the last 25 years.
I suppose if you choose to compare yourself to workers at McDonalds, that is an admission I wouldn't expect. I was comparing government workers doing similar work as the work folks do in the private sector. I also said that government workers rarely know what their compensation actually is, particularly the cost of health insurance and of retirement benefits. Teacher pension "contribution" this year is 34% of base. Insurance is, at least, $ 20,000 per year for a family.
Federal employees pensions for new workers probably won't equal their social security payments
Also, you need not worry about those federal workers you speak of whose pension is only part of their social security. Federal Employees do not pay social security tax, nor are they part of the SS system. Do you really think our overlords would dain to be involved in the same system as we proles?
Last edited by Da Geezer; February 13, 2016, 07:05 PM.
Yeah, teachers are so corrupt. Get paid $50K to babysit some shitty parents' kids, get docked if they don't teach toward a shitty standardized state test and lose their pension on their crappy salary because our government sucks. They are the bain of our existence.
Indeed. Teaching has become, in many instances, de facto parenting. And based on some comments here, one can imagine the challenges that entails. And now some want teachers to be armed.
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