You Get What You Pay For

From Rich Abelson and Phil Neuenfeldt:

Let's start out by acknowledging a basic truth: Cheaper is not always better or more efficient. 

This is especially true when it comes to government.

If our roads and bridges aren't well-maintained, if a social worker isn't available for an at-risk teen, if there are delays in processing disability claims due to understaffing, if a parole officer has more cases than he can thoroughly follow up on, these kinds of shortfalls all have very real social and safety costs that don't show up as line items on any budget. 

It is politically fashionable at the moment to attack public workers and their unions. At the county, city, state and national level, it is easier to look for scapegoats than to offer real solutions that will create good jobs, increase the tax base and get our economy going again. 

Rhetoric that demonizes public workers, seeking deep cuts without recognizing the reality of deep consequences, does little to balance the books and even less to make sure that vital services are delivered consistently and well.

Read the rest here.

Also very much worthy of a reading is this piece by Brewtown Gumshoe:

If only we could honestly discuss the proper roles, actual effectiveness, and realistic impacts of our public and private sectors. History and our current recession have shownus the tax cut, deregulation, and privatization experiment is a  failure. Government can do, and does, many things well. A little more positive government and labor press seems a necessary corrective to the injudicious narrative we are being fed.

Quotable

Brewtown Gumshoe:

Scott Walker loves to repeat his "I've held property taxes low" talking-point as some sort of validation and/or credibility for his (allegedly) superior vision and management skills. The County portion of property taxes were down 0.6 percent last year. The City's portion was down 2.5 percent, while the State was down 7.4 percent.

So, using Scott Walker's own logic, Governor Doyle and Mayor Barrett have an even better vision and even better management skills.

Quotable

From the Brewtown Gumshow, writing about Scott Walker railophobia:

This is a great example of Republican politics. Appeal to voters emotions, conflate cronies wishes with those of general voters, promise the sky, then when reality hits, backtrack and make excuses as to why the initial declaration must be altered, or simply blame someone else or some "liberal" law.

Time Dulls The Memory

John Torinus' weekly diatribe about how tax payers should be subsidizing businesses is nothing really out of the ordinary for him. It is basically the same old "Taxes bad for business, but more than OK for the little guy," type of meme that conservatives have echoed for years.

Predictably, Owen Robinson thinks it's "spot on."

Brewtown Gumshoe is a little more straightforward with his opinion of Torinus' opinion:

Torinus and his ilk want to dismantle social programs, punish public workers, relieve themselves from paying taxes, and have their profits assured into perpetuity (at taxpayer's and worker's expense).

I am just curious on how Torinus would justify his double standard. Throughout the column, as with other columns, he parrots the right's usual anti-tax talking points, but then goes on to champion TOMMY!!:

Tommy Thompson was a governor in the 1990s who understood pro-business policies, but also the value of positive signals and strokes.

It looks like he's not running for office again. But he could add a lot of value to the job creation efforts by setting up a cheerleading school for presidents and governors.

So, according to Torinus, taxes are bad for business, and TOMMY!! was good for business. But under TOMMY!!, taxes were much higher than they are now. Not only that, but TOMMY!! was not afraid of spreading the money around, especially with the road builders and the health care mavens.

I will concede that TOMMY!! could be seen as pro-business though, considering how cozy he was with their CEOs and their lobbyists, and enjoyed much of his life through their generosity to him.

It just would be nice if the conservatives got their talking points straight, and even nicer if they were honest about them.

Quote of the Day

Comes from Brewtown Gumshoe:

Maybe government isn't bad after all. Maybe the way Republicans govern is the real problem.

An Argument For Unions

From the Brewtown Gumshoe:

Some, in arguing against unions, maintain that increasing union wages can only increase cost in the end because the companies paying higher wages will just pass on the cost. This opinion completely disregards the fact that maybe the executives and managers are overpaid. An equivalent decrease in executive pay alongside an increase in worker pay would therefore lead to no additional costs to the consumer. This is not hard to achieve since executives are making over 300 times as much as their workers.

Or are those arguing against better pay for workers merely unwilling to see management take home less? Is it that under no circumstances must executives receive less compensation, only workers must sacrifice? Executives can have golden parachutes, secure retirements, paid country club memberships, use of the company jet, and perks as far as the eye can see in perpetuity. But the workers are at fault for budgetary issues? The workers must sacrifice and go without? The $12 an-hour they are making is too much?

You can read the whole thing, including points two and three, by clicking here.

The Gumshoe Gets It

Brewtown Gumshoe states it better than I could:

Infrastructure - water, roads, garbage, etc. - should be handled by public workers: unionized, well-paid workers. First, the public sector acts as a safety cushion. During economic recessions they still spend - using restaurants, movie theater, concerts, buying appliances, doing remodeling, etc. - enabling businesses to stay open and workers to keep their jobs. Establishing, at least, a respectable floor during downturns. Second, they maintain the roads, water ways, sewers, airport, and on and on, that we all - businesses and individuals - count on for nearly everything we are able to do in our daily lives. This is kind of an important function for a civilized society. Not something to be privately controlled by the best-connected bidder.

We as citizens and taxpayers should, through our investment (taxes), be building/exporting a model that gives individuals a step up. People attack public employees because they have health care or because they have a pension. Are these not assets that any worker should want? How does criticizing and thereby disintegrating such achievement of labor help anyone? The more bargaining power one group of workers gains (and thereby increased wages), the more every worker is able to achieve better pay.

Why is it that taxpayers criticize public worker earnings, yet they defend CEO compensation? The same CEOs that are subsidized and bailed out with our tax dollars. Public workers actually perform a service for you. What did AIG do for you?

Wally World And Government Run Health Care

Brewtown Gumshoe has the numbers, but as I have stated before, Wally World is the biggest beneficiary of government run health care with over 1600 people receiving tax-payer-funded health care benefits. This is in spite of, and partially contributing to, the fact that Wally World makes some of the largest profits in the country and the world.

Also of note is that Aurora Health Care also makes the top three in making their profits at our expense, twice over.

Man, I Wish I Had Written That

No, seriously, I really, really wish I had written this:

It seems our tax dollars are plentiful for persistent private ventures and playgrounds, but not available for local service provision and sustaining a quality of life for all citizens.

Full post by Brewtown Gumshoe is here.