Monadnock School Taxpayers Association News

When I was chancellor, I was told confrontation was bad. Not so.

Teachers are extremely effective messengers to parents, community groups, faith-based groups and elected officials—and their unions know how to deploy them well. Happy unions can give a politician massive clout, and unhappy unions—well, just ask Eva Moskowitz, a Democrat who headed the New York City Council Education Committee when I became schools chancellor in 2002.

Smart, savvy, ambitious, often a pain in my neck and atypically fearless for a politician, Ms. Moskowitz was widely expected to be elected Manhattan borough president in 2005. Until, that is, she held hearings on the city teachers-union contract, an extraordinary document, running for hundreds of pages, governing who can teach what and when, who can be assigned to hall-monitor or lunchroom duty and who can’t, who has to be given time off to do union work during the school day, and so on.

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The Wall Street Journal warned the US today that we are carrying too much debt. This caused the markets to fall.

Read more at the WSJ…

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Wisconsin Salaries
by Raymond Spitzer

Well I guess it is easy to see how the poor public servants have a tough time making ends meet. (My heart really bleeds for them).

2010 Wisconsin Teacher Actual Wages – Wisc Govt wages exposed

AVERAGE WAGE AND BENEFITS (for about 9 months of work)

TEACHERS:,
Milwaukee $86,297
Elmbrook $91,065
Germantown $83,818
Hartland Arrwhd $90,285 (highest teacher was $122,952-lowest was $64,942)
Men Falls $81,099
West Bend $82,153
Waukesha $92,902
Sussex $82,956
Mequon $95,297
Kettle Mor $87,676
Muskego $91,341

STAFF:
Arrowhead – Bus Mng – Kopecky – $169,525
Arrowhead – Principal – Wieczorek – $152,519
Grmtwn – Asst Princ – Dave Towers – $123,222
Elmbrk – Burliegh Elemetary – Principal Zahn- $142,315 (for a primary school!!)
Madison – Asst Principal – McGrath – $127,835

UNIVERSITY of WISCONSIN STAFF (2009) (salary alone):
Michael Knetter – Prof of Bus – $327,828
Carolyn Martin -Chancellor Mad- $437,000
Hector Deluca – Prof of Nutritional Science – $254,877 (really??)
(source:Madison.com -as the UW removed salaries from being posted online in 2007- why if they are so low?)
Madison Garbage men (2009) (salary only):
Garbageman, Mr. Nelson earned $159,258 in 2009, including $109,892 in overtime and other pay.
Garbageman, Greg Tatman, who earned $125,598
7 Madison garbagemen made over $100,000, 30 Madison garbage men made over $70,000

MILWAUKEE CITY BUS DRIVERS (salary only):
136 Drivers made more than $70,000
54 Drivers made more than $80,000
18 Drivers made more than $90,000
8 Drivers made more than $100,000
Top Driver made $117,000

These poor people. Working for such paltry wages and benefits. Kind of brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

(The average private bus driver makes $9-13 an hour (about $20,000yr) with no pension, or healthcare.)
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AND WE ARE SUPPOSED TO CONTINUE PAYING 100% OF THEIR GENEROUS RETIREMENT ? THEY HAVE SHUT DOWN SCHOOLS AS THEY DON’T WANT TO PAY 5.8% OF IT THEMSELVES ….REALLY?

It would be nice if this message would reach those that are feeling sorry for them, an eye opener.

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The SAU 93 kicked off on Tuesday March 22, 2011. Dick Thackston was voted in as chair; Jim Carnie is the vice-chair. There was quite a bit of discussion of the policy manual.

SAU 93 includes the towns of Fitzwilliam, Gilsum Richmond, Roxbury, Sullivan, Swanzey, and Troy.

Their website is: http://www.mrsd.org/board_education.cfm?subpage=522562

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Note: Contact your Senators about SB 3. We will post date, time and location for committee hearing when we get it.

Below are some of the main issues involved in the NH Retirement Reform Legislation moving through the legislature. The is SB 3 sponsored by Senator Jeb Bradley and his 20 other co-signers.

Coalition of NH Taxpayers members and supporters have been active in local and state politics for years and have always warned about what government over-spending would do to our communities and country. That day of reckoning has arrived here in our state. We have an almost BILLION dollar deficit for the next biennial budget.

Luckily we have many friends in the NH Legislature due to the last historic election. Now is the time to set our fiscal house in order.

Read more at CNHT…

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Big banks don’t want you to know which of them went to the Fed for emergency help.

Americans remain bitter about federal bailouts, even after every penny of the $309 billion rescue of banks and insurers was returned at a profit. Why? Because our government refuses to disclose all of the facts and, until it does, every poll will continue to show a lack of confidence in the government and in the companies that finance America.

More than a dozen books have been written about the collapse of the world’s biggest credit market and the government’s unprecedented steps to protect hundreds of banks from certain ruin. Yet we still don’t know: Who made the decisions? Under what circumstances? When and where was public money disbursed, and how was it allocated?

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The 111th Congress fits a familiar Democratic pattern.

Democrats and their allies are already rationalizing their likely defeat next Tuesday, variously blaming the economy, GOP obstructionism, corporate money, or an inexplicable collapse in President Obama’s communications skills. Whatever minor truth lies in these excuses, they obscure the larger reality: Americans appear ready to repudiate Democratic governance for the fourth consecutive time.

Far from being a unique historical event, a GOP victory on Tuesday will repeat the pattern we have seen since the 1960s. Four times Democrats have won control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and four times they have attempted to govern from the left. Each time Americans saw that agenda and its results, and they rejected it at an early opportunity. Maybe there’s a lesson here.

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There were no world-wide financial crises of major magnitude during the Bretton Woods era from 1947 to 1971.

When it meets next week, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is widely expected to signal its desire to increase the rate of inflation by providing additional monetary stimulus. This policy is based on a false—and dangerous—premise: that manipulating the dollar’s buying power will lead to higher employment and economic growth. But the experience of the past 40 years points to the opposite conclusion: that guaranteeing a stable value for the dollar by restoring dollar-gold convertibility would be the surest way for the Federal Reserve to achieve its dual mandate of maximum employment and price stability.

From 1947 through 1967, the year before the U.S. began to weasel out of its commitment to dollar-gold convertibility, unemployment averaged only 4.7% and never rose above 7%. Real growth averaged 4% a year. Low unemployment and high growth coincided with low inflation. During the 21 years ending in 1967, consumer-price inflation averaged just 1.9% a year. Interest rates, too, were low and stable—the yield on triple-A corporate bonds averaged less than 4% and never rose above 6%.

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Why Barack Obama gave the Supreme Court a public tongue-lashing.

Taking office in January 2009 as president, Barack Obama’s achievement was everywhere called historic. He was at the pinnacle of American life. Two years later, he may be on the cliff’s edge of another historic achievement—the electoral wipeout of his party with some of the Democrats’ longest-serving and revered members of Congress disappearing in the avalanche.

Presidencies and parties decline for lots of reasons, but looking back, one of the pivotal events in writing the history of the first Obama term is likely to be the tongue-lashing he gave several Supreme Court justices seated before him at his 2010 State of the Union message.

The reason for this unprecedented public criticism of the Court by a president was its 5-4 decision the previous week in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which permitted corporations and unions to make unlimited, non-coordinated independent expenditures during political campaigns.

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In Texas, not California

The September state unemployment numbers came out last Friday, and we couldn’t help noticing that three of the four states with the highest job losses were California (-63,500), New York (-37,600) and New Jersey (-20,200). The other was Massachusetts (-20,900). Texas, meanwhile, gained 4,000 jobs.

This continues a longer term trend.Over the last year, as the economy was beginning to grow again, the Lone Star State has led the nation with the addition of nearly 153,000 jobs, while California surrendered 43,700, New Jersey lost 42,300 and New York dropped 14,600. This superior jobs recovery builds on the fact that Texas also weathered the national recession better than most states. According to a new Texas Public Policy Foundation study, Texas experienced a decline of 2.3% from its peak employment, while California fell nearly four times further, with 8.7% of jobs vanishing.

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