Budget Maneuvering
ABC News has reported, and Vice President Biden has confirmed, that a budget deal, providing $33 billion in spending cuts from this year's budget, has been reached. This would represent 3% of discretionary spending, less than 1% reduction in spending, and less than 2% of the deficit. The agreement, moreover, is only tentative, because it does not include either a determination as to what policy riders will be attached nor where the decreases will be made.
Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had
challenged Boehner. "Republicans need to decide which is worse: angering their tea party base, or shutting down the government and threatening our fragile economy even more."
Harry seems to mean well but.... could he be any more naive? The GOP never intended to shut down the government. In late October, Politico had reported
House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said a Republican House won’t shut down the government even if Congress and President Barack Obama can’t agree on a budget.
“I don’t think this country is desirous of seeing a government that is shut down,” he told reporters on a conference call. “People want to see a government that does what people expect it to do, which is to limit it in scope and reduce spending,” he said.
“It is my hope that the president lives up to his commitment when he says he’s interested in cutting spending,” he said. “The people expect leadership that will deliver results. People want to see results. They want to get back to work. And hopefully we can work to that end together,” he said.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Wednesday Republicans would “not compromise on our principles” with President Obama. But he’s also thrown cold water on the idea of freezing government operations, which happened in 1995 after a Republican Congress couldn’t agree with President Bill Clinton on a budget.
Some Republicans blame the shutdown for Clinton's reelection.
But the notion that Republicans would be chastened by the fear that they would be "threatening our fragile economy even more" is really quite quaint. Late last month we learned
House Republicans’ $61 billion budget-cutting plan would cost 700,000 jobs, according to a report likely to inflame the debate over the U.S. government deficit.
The measure would reduce real economic growth this year by 0.5 percentage points and by 0.2 percentage points next year, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012, said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. He said budget- cutters should wait until the U.S. economy is stronger, saying Republicans “would be taking an unnecessary chance with the recovery.”
Additionally,
Goldman Sachs said the House budget plan would shave between 1.5 and 2 percentage points off economic growth during the second and third quarters of this year.
Friends don't let friends push reductions in government spending during economic slumps exacerbated by the reluctance of consumers and the private sector to spend money. Some money has to be injected into the system, and government is the third spoke in that trio.
That did not deter the GOP, which will pursue policy objectives with the riders. The AP reported, credibly, "opposition remains strong to GOP attempts to defund or otherwise hamper implementation of the year-old health care law." There is little that Barack Obama will not negotiate away other than his family and his signature accomplishment, health care (or at least the latter). Everything else is on the table as this President avoids at nearly all costs calling the GOP's bluff and incurring the discomfort of defending Democratic values.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Support For Tea Party Declines; Rush In Denial
Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh offered a vigorous defense of the "Tea Party," commenting that CNN has found
"47% of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party." To me that means a majority has a favorable view, and she goes on to editorialize to why: "Maybe it's because of how a couple Tea Party-backed governors are trying to balance their budgets..." Ahhhh, yes. Well, Ms. Costello and the rest of you, let's just wait 'til November 2012, shall we? You want to find out what the American people are really thinking? There are stories in the stack today: The Tea Party, have they gone away? The Tea Party, have they faded away? Tea Party, did they think it was over in November? The Tea Party hasn't gone anywhere. The Tea Party is out there as passionate as ever; the Tea Party is out there growing. It's almost kinda good that the left might think the Tea Party has peaked and is on its way down.
"47% of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party." To me that means a majority has a favorable view. Someone ought to introduce Rush to the concept of undecided or "don't know." In this case, it was 14% with "no opinion" and 7% never heard of 'em. That leaves the 47% with an unfavorable view and 32% with a favorable view of the "Tea Party."
That 32% is what Mr. Limbaugh refers to as a majority. As with so many of Rush's allegations which contrast with objective reality, it is difficult to determine if it is dishonesty or extraordinary ignorance. However, understanding that avoidance of detail is often necessary to maintain a conservative worldview, Limbaugh may never have seen the actual breakdown of attitudes toward the tea party. But it is inconceivable, learning that 47% have an unfavorable view, that he would conclude that a majority have a favorable view. The most generous assumption would be 50% (plus 1) of the respondents with a favorable view, which would leave a mere 3% uncertain. This is nearly inconceivable and the conclusion that Rush Limbaugh lied is virtually unavoidable.
The poll, though, should be of only limited comfort to liberals and/or Democrats. As budget negotiations indicate, the views of the corporate interests behind the various tea party organizations still hold sway in Washington.
Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh offered a vigorous defense of the "Tea Party," commenting that CNN has found
"47% of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party." To me that means a majority has a favorable view, and she goes on to editorialize to why: "Maybe it's because of how a couple Tea Party-backed governors are trying to balance their budgets..." Ahhhh, yes. Well, Ms. Costello and the rest of you, let's just wait 'til November 2012, shall we? You want to find out what the American people are really thinking? There are stories in the stack today: The Tea Party, have they gone away? The Tea Party, have they faded away? Tea Party, did they think it was over in November? The Tea Party hasn't gone anywhere. The Tea Party is out there as passionate as ever; the Tea Party is out there growing. It's almost kinda good that the left might think the Tea Party has peaked and is on its way down.
"47% of all Americans have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party." To me that means a majority has a favorable view. Someone ought to introduce Rush to the concept of undecided or "don't know." In this case, it was 14% with "no opinion" and 7% never heard of 'em. That leaves the 47% with an unfavorable view and 32% with a favorable view of the "Tea Party."
That 32% is what Mr. Limbaugh refers to as a majority. As with so many of Rush's allegations which contrast with objective reality, it is difficult to determine if it is dishonesty or extraordinary ignorance. However, understanding that avoidance of detail is often necessary to maintain a conservative worldview, Limbaugh may never have seen the actual breakdown of attitudes toward the tea party. But it is inconceivable, learning that 47% have an unfavorable view, that he would conclude that a majority have a favorable view. The most generous assumption would be 50% (plus 1) of the respondents with a favorable view, which would leave a mere 3% uncertain. This is nearly inconceivable and the conclusion that Rush Limbaugh lied is virtually unavoidable.
The poll, though, should be of only limited comfort to liberals and/or Democrats. As budget negotiations indicate, the views of the corporate interests behind the various tea party organizations still hold sway in Washington.
Bad Cop, Awful Cop
The Republicans are coming after America's great intergenerational social contract. And except for Mitch McConnell, they're getting a little closer to admitting it. Committing himself while uncommitted, the Senate Minority Leader has said (on what may have been separate occasions)
Something must be done. And now is the time to do it. Republicans are ready and willing. Where is the president? Suddenly, at the moment when we can actually do something about this, he's silent....
I applaud all of the discussions that are going on in the House and the Senate by well-meaning members," McConnell said....But without presidential leadership, nothing will happen. We will not get a result.
Others, though, are at least a little more explicit. Kentucky's Rand Paul, pointing to his awesome political courage, says "Most young people acknowledge that it's broken — it's broken so badly that the only way we fix it and the only way it can continue is we have to look at the eligibility. But so many people have said, 'Oh, we can't talk about entitlement; you'll be unelected; you'll be unelectable if you talk entitlement reform.'" Richard Shelby of Alabama claims "Social Security is now at the tipping point, the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency if we don't do something about it."
Tea party fave Marco Rubio of Florida threatens
I will vote to defeat an increase in the debt limit unless it is the last one we ever authorize and is accompanied by a plan for fundamental tax reform, an overhaul of our regulatory structure, a cut to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid....
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor admits, incoherently,
50% of beneficiaries under the Social Security program use those moneys as their sole source of income. So we’ve got to protect today’s seniors. But for the rest of us? Listen, we’re going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be.
Oklahoma's Tom Coburn adds
The fact is ... $2.8 trillion was stolen from Social Security," Coburn said. "The money was spent. It's broke. And we're going to have to fund $2.8 trillion over the next 20 years just to make the payments that we've got. I would think most people would think we ought to fix that.
Translation: we conservatives stole from Social Security, a lifeline for poor and middle class elderly Americans, in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. So now we have to cut Social Security. It is, as a Jewish mathematician might put, chutzpah to the nth power. Or, as Hillbilly explains it
Let's say you go to work and your boss picks up a baseball bat, beats one of your fellow employees unconscious and then fires the employee for being unconscious on the job.
Minority Leader McConnell has two powerful allies, one on his right and one on his left. These young (or, in the case of Coburn, not-young) bucks, he can tell President Obama, "are demanding I do something drastic; I'd like to be reasonable, but what can I do?" And the opposition party is doing its best to help him, if the Wall Street Journal can be believed:
The White House and Democratic lawmakers, with less than two weeks left to avoid a government shutdown, are assembling a proposal for roughly $20 billion in additional spending cuts that could soon be offered to Republicans, according to people close to the budget talks.
That would come on top of $10 billion in cuts that Congress has already enacted and would represent a deeper reduction than the Obama administration and Senate Democrats had offered previously in negotiations. But it isn't clear that would be enough to satisfy Republicans, who initially sought $61 billion in spending cuts and face pressure from tea-party activists not to compromise.
Steve Benen, referring to the GOP's original proposal of a $30 billion cut, argues
And yet, here we are in late March, and now Democrats are prepared to accept the exact same number used by Republican leaders, and it seems likely GOP lawmakers still won't think this is good enough. Indeed, rank-and-file Republicans balked at their own leadership's plan when $30 billion in cuts were put on the table, and it stands to reason the caucus won't be any more impressed now that a similar offer is presented by Dems.
But putting aside whether this is likely to work, the lesson I'd like Democrats to take from this is simple: you're not good at negotiating. Republicans approved a ridiculous proposal, pushing the extreme in one direction, knowing that negotiations would ensue. One need not be a game theorist to know those talks would go better if Dems had pushed in the opposite direction.
That way, when the two sides tried to meet "in the middle," that middle would be in a more favorable location.
But, no. The discussion boiled down to one side that wanted to cut a little, and one side that wanted to cut a lot.
Clearly, the GOP would like some of that decrease to be in what they are slick enough to refer to as "entitlements"- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Fortunately, an election is approaching and a cut in Social Security or even Medicare may not be tenable. Unfortunately, the numbers point to a Repub takeover of the Senate in 2012/2013 to work with a re-elected Democratic President who urges "tackling entitlements" (and yearns to be "transformative") or, worse yet, a GOP president.
The Republicans are coming after America's great intergenerational social contract. And except for Mitch McConnell, they're getting a little closer to admitting it. Committing himself while uncommitted, the Senate Minority Leader has said (on what may have been separate occasions)
Something must be done. And now is the time to do it. Republicans are ready and willing. Where is the president? Suddenly, at the moment when we can actually do something about this, he's silent....
I applaud all of the discussions that are going on in the House and the Senate by well-meaning members," McConnell said....But without presidential leadership, nothing will happen. We will not get a result.
Others, though, are at least a little more explicit. Kentucky's Rand Paul, pointing to his awesome political courage, says "Most young people acknowledge that it's broken — it's broken so badly that the only way we fix it and the only way it can continue is we have to look at the eligibility. But so many people have said, 'Oh, we can't talk about entitlement; you'll be unelected; you'll be unelectable if you talk entitlement reform.'" Richard Shelby of Alabama claims "Social Security is now at the tipping point, the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency if we don't do something about it."
Tea party fave Marco Rubio of Florida threatens
I will vote to defeat an increase in the debt limit unless it is the last one we ever authorize and is accompanied by a plan for fundamental tax reform, an overhaul of our regulatory structure, a cut to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid....
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor admits, incoherently,
50% of beneficiaries under the Social Security program use those moneys as their sole source of income. So we’ve got to protect today’s seniors. But for the rest of us? Listen, we’re going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be.
Oklahoma's Tom Coburn adds
The fact is ... $2.8 trillion was stolen from Social Security," Coburn said. "The money was spent. It's broke. And we're going to have to fund $2.8 trillion over the next 20 years just to make the payments that we've got. I would think most people would think we ought to fix that.
Translation: we conservatives stole from Social Security, a lifeline for poor and middle class elderly Americans, in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. So now we have to cut Social Security. It is, as a Jewish mathematician might put, chutzpah to the nth power. Or, as Hillbilly explains it
Let's say you go to work and your boss picks up a baseball bat, beats one of your fellow employees unconscious and then fires the employee for being unconscious on the job.
Minority Leader McConnell has two powerful allies, one on his right and one on his left. These young (or, in the case of Coburn, not-young) bucks, he can tell President Obama, "are demanding I do something drastic; I'd like to be reasonable, but what can I do?" And the opposition party is doing its best to help him, if the Wall Street Journal can be believed:
The White House and Democratic lawmakers, with less than two weeks left to avoid a government shutdown, are assembling a proposal for roughly $20 billion in additional spending cuts that could soon be offered to Republicans, according to people close to the budget talks.
That would come on top of $10 billion in cuts that Congress has already enacted and would represent a deeper reduction than the Obama administration and Senate Democrats had offered previously in negotiations. But it isn't clear that would be enough to satisfy Republicans, who initially sought $61 billion in spending cuts and face pressure from tea-party activists not to compromise.
Steve Benen, referring to the GOP's original proposal of a $30 billion cut, argues
And yet, here we are in late March, and now Democrats are prepared to accept the exact same number used by Republican leaders, and it seems likely GOP lawmakers still won't think this is good enough. Indeed, rank-and-file Republicans balked at their own leadership's plan when $30 billion in cuts were put on the table, and it stands to reason the caucus won't be any more impressed now that a similar offer is presented by Dems.
But putting aside whether this is likely to work, the lesson I'd like Democrats to take from this is simple: you're not good at negotiating. Republicans approved a ridiculous proposal, pushing the extreme in one direction, knowing that negotiations would ensue. One need not be a game theorist to know those talks would go better if Dems had pushed in the opposite direction.
That way, when the two sides tried to meet "in the middle," that middle would be in a more favorable location.
But, no. The discussion boiled down to one side that wanted to cut a little, and one side that wanted to cut a lot.
Clearly, the GOP would like some of that decrease to be in what they are slick enough to refer to as "entitlements"- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Fortunately, an election is approaching and a cut in Social Security or even Medicare may not be tenable. Unfortunately, the numbers point to a Repub takeover of the Senate in 2012/2013 to work with a re-elected Democratic President who urges "tackling entitlements" (and yearns to be "transformative") or, worse yet, a GOP president.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Wrongheaded Reform In Florida
The Los Angeles Times, part of the mythical liberal media, chose the headline "In Florida, teacher pay now tied to performance." Reporter Leslie Potal's description, however, belies the headline:
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has signed a far-reaching teacher merit-pay bill that will overhaul how teachers across the state will be evaluated and paid.
The law creates an evaluation system that relies heavily on student test score data to judge teacher quality. For new teachers, it also creates a performance-based pay system and ends tenure-like job protections.
Florida's merit-pay push is part of a national effort to improve education by tying teachers' pay to their overall effectiveness.
"Teacher pay now tied to performance" implies, obviously, that a teacher's pay will be tied to his/her performance. It is, though, nothing of the sort. Blogger Susie Madrak explains she once was in sales and
One of the first questions before taking a business development job always was, are my incentives based on things outside my control? I learned early on not to even consider working in a place where my commission was contingent on whether or not the salesperson closed the deal. "If you developed a good lead, the deal should close," one sales manager argued with me. Uh uh. Sales people screw up the close all the time, thus blowing up my commission. So that was a major issue.
But the new evaluation system "relies heavily on student test score data to judge teacher quality." The employee will be held accountable not for his/her performance, but for that of the students. And not even on the students' performance but on test scores.
How did that work out in Washington, D.C.? When Michelle Rhee took over as schools chancellor, she took a special interest in the Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus. She boasted that implementation of her reforms took a school in which in 2006 only 10% of the students scored "proficient" or "advanced" in a standardized math test required by No Child Left Behind to one in which 58% achieved that level two years later. Noyes became one of 264 public schools nationwide honored as a National Blue Ribbon School. But a USA Today investigation has found
In 2007-08, six classrooms out of the eight taking tests at Noyes were flagged by McGraw-Hill because of high wrong-to-right erasure rates. The pattern was repeated in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, when 80% of Noyes classrooms were flagged by McGraw-Hill.
On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.
Investigations of possible cheating thus far have been cursory and nothing has been proven. But it does go to (Donald T.) Campbell's Law:
The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
Rhee, whose reputation soared with the test scores, apparently understands Campbell's Law well, for she "bestowed more than $1.5 million in bonuses on principals, teachers and support staff on the basis of big jumps in 2007 and 2008 test scores." Three other schools won awards, at which "85% or more of classrooms were identified as having high erasure rates in 2008."
Presumably, teacher performance like that will in the future merit sizeable bonuses from the Department of Education in Florida, which will put on principals (who will pass it on to teachers) inordinate pressure to boost student test scores, somehow. As a former District of Columbia principal asks rhetorically "What do you do when your chancellor asks, 'How many points can you guarantee this year?' How is a principal supposed to do that?"
The Los Angeles Times, part of the mythical liberal media, chose the headline "In Florida, teacher pay now tied to performance." Reporter Leslie Potal's description, however, belies the headline:
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has signed a far-reaching teacher merit-pay bill that will overhaul how teachers across the state will be evaluated and paid.
The law creates an evaluation system that relies heavily on student test score data to judge teacher quality. For new teachers, it also creates a performance-based pay system and ends tenure-like job protections.
Florida's merit-pay push is part of a national effort to improve education by tying teachers' pay to their overall effectiveness.
"Teacher pay now tied to performance" implies, obviously, that a teacher's pay will be tied to his/her performance. It is, though, nothing of the sort. Blogger Susie Madrak explains she once was in sales and
One of the first questions before taking a business development job always was, are my incentives based on things outside my control? I learned early on not to even consider working in a place where my commission was contingent on whether or not the salesperson closed the deal. "If you developed a good lead, the deal should close," one sales manager argued with me. Uh uh. Sales people screw up the close all the time, thus blowing up my commission. So that was a major issue.
But the new evaluation system "relies heavily on student test score data to judge teacher quality." The employee will be held accountable not for his/her performance, but for that of the students. And not even on the students' performance but on test scores.
How did that work out in Washington, D.C.? When Michelle Rhee took over as schools chancellor, she took a special interest in the Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus. She boasted that implementation of her reforms took a school in which in 2006 only 10% of the students scored "proficient" or "advanced" in a standardized math test required by No Child Left Behind to one in which 58% achieved that level two years later. Noyes became one of 264 public schools nationwide honored as a National Blue Ribbon School. But a USA Today investigation has found
In 2007-08, six classrooms out of the eight taking tests at Noyes were flagged by McGraw-Hill because of high wrong-to-right erasure rates. The pattern was repeated in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, when 80% of Noyes classrooms were flagged by McGraw-Hill.
On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.
Investigations of possible cheating thus far have been cursory and nothing has been proven. But it does go to (Donald T.) Campbell's Law:
The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
Rhee, whose reputation soared with the test scores, apparently understands Campbell's Law well, for she "bestowed more than $1.5 million in bonuses on principals, teachers and support staff on the basis of big jumps in 2007 and 2008 test scores." Three other schools won awards, at which "85% or more of classrooms were identified as having high erasure rates in 2008."
Presumably, teacher performance like that will in the future merit sizeable bonuses from the Department of Education in Florida, which will put on principals (who will pass it on to teachers) inordinate pressure to boost student test scores, somehow. As a former District of Columbia principal asks rhetorically "What do you do when your chancellor asks, 'How many points can you guarantee this year?' How is a principal supposed to do that?"
Monday, March 28, 2011
Teflon Rhee
Fraud (noun):
a: a person who is not what he or she pretends to be (Merriam-Webster);
b: Michelle Rhee (not Merriam-Webster)
When then-District of Columbia Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee closed schools and fired teachers, it was inevitable that she would become the toast of Washington for what was widely, euphemistically, touted as "reform." It was nearly as predictable that she would appear on the cover of Time Magazine and on the Oprah Winfrey Show and draw praise from Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
And oh, the Today Show. Bob Somerby caught the propaganda piece of propaganda from NBC correspondent/news host Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush Hager (Somerby's critique is well worth the read.):
GUTHRIE (3/17/11): This morning on “Education Nation Today,” saving America's schools.
Michelle Rhee captured headlines as the chancellor of schools in Washington, DC, making sweeping changes and some enemies along the way. Rhee lost her job, but not her passion for education reform. “Today” contributing correspondent Jenna Bush Hager, a teacher herself, caught up with Michelle Rhee recently.
Jenna, good morning!
HAGER: Good morning. That's right. Michelle Rhee is truly a maverick in education reform. She's controversial and a courageous change-maker. And these days, as budget cuts mean teacher layoffs, Rhee is leading the fight for a quality education for every child.
Michelle Rhee may have lost her job, but she gained a mission. She continues her life's passion to fix America's broken schools with a new lobbyist group, Students First.....
HAGER: Rhee's reforms are part of a recent documentary, “Waiting for Superman.” But her firebrand approach also inspired relentless criticism and protests in Washington. (Speaking to Rhee) While you were chancellor, the union and others who protested you, calling you names such as "hatchet lady”- How could you keep a thick skin during all of that?
RHEE: For me, what was going through my mind was, You know what? You can call me whatever names you want, you can yell at me as loud as you want to, under my watch I am not going to continue to allow the absolute dysfunction.
Who is this Michelle Rhee and why does she hold this spell over the nation's movers and shakers? Bob Somerby reports a portion of the profile of Rhee in 2008 by Evan Thomas of Newsweek:
THOMAS (9/1/08): Over the next two years, working with another teacher, she took a group of 70 kids who had been scoring "at almost rock bottom on standardized tests" to "absolutely at the top," she says. (Baltimore does not keep records by classroom, so NEWSWEEK was unable to confirm this assertion.) The key to success was, in her word, "sweat," on the part of the teacher and the students. "I wouldn't say I was a great teacher. I've seen great. I worked hard," says Rhee.
She had an epiphany of sorts. In the demoralized world of inner-city schools, it is easy to become resigned to poor results—and to blame the environment, not the schools themselves. Broken families, crime, drugs, all conspire against academic achievement. But Rhee discovered that teachers could make the critical difference. "It drives me nuts when people say that two thirds of a kid's academic achievement is based on their environment. That is B.S.," says Rhee. She points to her second graders in Baltimore whose scores rose from worst to best. "Those kids, where they lived didn't change. Their parents didn't change. Their diets didn't change. The violence in the community didn't change. The only thing that changed for those 70 kids was the adults who were in front of them every single day teaching them.”
And neither, as it turns out, did their academic achievement change much. The University of Maryland Baltimore County was commissioned by the Baltimore City School System to conduct a study of seven privatized elementary schools, one of which was Harlem Park Elementary, the school at which Rhee taught. On August 2, 1995, the day after the report was released, the Baltimore Sun's Jean Thompson reported of Tesseract, the name given the the schools by their corporate owner:
THOMPSON (8/2/95): Baltimore's privately managed public schools show little difference from comparable city-run schools on test results, attendance, parent involvement—or even cleanliness, an evaluation released yesterday found.
The report, prepared by the Center for Educational Research at University of Maryland Baltimore County, represents the first outside evaluation of the closely watched Education Alternatives Inc. experiment.
While reporting few positive results in achievement, the report said, "Change takes time and there has been an investment in the first three years that can be recouped by continuation."
[…]
In scholarly terms, the study lays out EAI's academic struggle: Only in the past year has the Minnesota-based management firm improved test scores to near the levels recorded at its schools before EAI assumed control in 1991.
Researchers said that with 11.2 percent more money, with new computers and with college-educated interns in its classrooms, the firm's schools don't do significantly better than seven comparable elementary schools run by the city.
"The evaluation team found Tesseract and comparison schools more alike than different," the study says.
It adds, "The promise that EAI could improve instruction without spending more than Baltimore City was spending on schools has been discredited."
Intensely watched nationally as the largest experiment in school privatization so far, the company's "Tesseract" program—the name comes from a children's book about time travel—has spent $106 million in public funds since 1992.
This didn't inspire Rhee to object to the "outstanding success" claimed for her on the website of District of Columbia mayor Fenty nor of the nonprofit, the New Teacher Project, she headed. Nor was she deterred from telling The Washington Times' Harry Jaffe, in yet another adoring profile
The experience I had in Baltimore was I went into one of the poorest, most segregated communities in Baltimore. I taught at a school with 100 percent African-American kids, most all of them on free and reduced lunch. I was in the neighborhood where they later filmed The Wire....
In my second year of teaching, we took them from the bottom to the top on academics, and what I learned from that experience was these kids were getting screwed because people wanted to blame their low achievement levels on the single-parent households and on the poverty in the community. In that two-year period, none of those things changed. Their parents didn’t change.... (only) What we were doing with them in school.
The acclaim kept on coming, though, as Jack Gellum and Marisol Bello report today in USA Today
In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its "shining stars."
Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes' students scored "proficient" or "advanced" in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.
Because of the remarkable turnaround, the U.S. Department of Education named the school in northeast Washington a National Blue Ribbon School. Noyes was one of 264 public schools nationwide given that award in 2009.
Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes' staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.
But they note
A closer look at Noyes, however, raises questions about its test scores from 2006 to 2010. Its proficiency rates rose at a much faster rate than the average for D.C. schools. Then, in 2010, when scores dipped for most of the district's elementary schools, Noyes' proficiency rates fell further than average.
A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.
Additionally
Among the 96 schools that were then flagged for wrong-to-right erasures were eight of the 10 campuses where Rhee handed out so-called TEAM awards "to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff," as the district's website says. Noyes was one of these.
Rhee didn't erase anything on her own- managers know not to do the dirty work themselves but to put subtle pressure on their subordinates to do what they want done. Rhee was no exception:
From the start, Rhee emphasized a need to raise scores, restore calm to chaotic schools and close those with lagging scores and small enrollments. She paid bonuses to principals and teachers who produced big gains on scores. She let go dozens of principals and fired at least 600 teachers. Others retired or quit.
Turnover was brisk. Richard Whitmire, author of The Bee Eater, a biography of Rhee, reported that Rhee hired 1,918 teachers during her three years in office –– about 45%of those on the payroll last October. Only 2,318 current teachers had been hired before Rhee took charge.
The pressure on principals was unrelenting, says Aona Jefferson, a former D.C. principal who is now president of the Council of School Officers, representing principals and other administrators. Every year, Jefferson says, Rhee met with each principal and asked what kind of test score gains he would post in the coming school year. Jefferson says principals told her that Rhee expected them to increase scores by 10 percentile points or more every year. "What do you do when your chancellor asks, 'How many points can you guarantee this year?' " Jefferson says. "How is a principal supposed to do that?"
But the paeans to Rhee, a star of the documentary "Waiting for Superman," continue unabated. She now heads a new nonprofit, StudentsFirst, and tours the country advising such anti-worker governors as Ohio's Kasich and Florida's Scott.
Eventually, this empty suit will lose steam. But the ideas she pushes, including evaluation of teachers by student test scores and privatization of public education, will find a new spokesperson and the schoolchildren will continue to be the pawns in their political power play.
Fraud (noun):
a: a person who is not what he or she pretends to be (Merriam-Webster);
b: Michelle Rhee (not Merriam-Webster)
When then-District of Columbia Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee closed schools and fired teachers, it was inevitable that she would become the toast of Washington for what was widely, euphemistically, touted as "reform." It was nearly as predictable that she would appear on the cover of Time Magazine and on the Oprah Winfrey Show and draw praise from Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
And oh, the Today Show. Bob Somerby caught the propaganda piece of propaganda from NBC correspondent/news host Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush Hager (Somerby's critique is well worth the read.):
GUTHRIE (3/17/11): This morning on “Education Nation Today,” saving America's schools.
Michelle Rhee captured headlines as the chancellor of schools in Washington, DC, making sweeping changes and some enemies along the way. Rhee lost her job, but not her passion for education reform. “Today” contributing correspondent Jenna Bush Hager, a teacher herself, caught up with Michelle Rhee recently.
Jenna, good morning!
HAGER: Good morning. That's right. Michelle Rhee is truly a maverick in education reform. She's controversial and a courageous change-maker. And these days, as budget cuts mean teacher layoffs, Rhee is leading the fight for a quality education for every child.
Michelle Rhee may have lost her job, but she gained a mission. She continues her life's passion to fix America's broken schools with a new lobbyist group, Students First.....
HAGER: Rhee's reforms are part of a recent documentary, “Waiting for Superman.” But her firebrand approach also inspired relentless criticism and protests in Washington. (Speaking to Rhee) While you were chancellor, the union and others who protested you, calling you names such as "hatchet lady”- How could you keep a thick skin during all of that?
RHEE: For me, what was going through my mind was, You know what? You can call me whatever names you want, you can yell at me as loud as you want to, under my watch I am not going to continue to allow the absolute dysfunction.
Who is this Michelle Rhee and why does she hold this spell over the nation's movers and shakers? Bob Somerby reports a portion of the profile of Rhee in 2008 by Evan Thomas of Newsweek:
THOMAS (9/1/08): Over the next two years, working with another teacher, she took a group of 70 kids who had been scoring "at almost rock bottom on standardized tests" to "absolutely at the top," she says. (Baltimore does not keep records by classroom, so NEWSWEEK was unable to confirm this assertion.) The key to success was, in her word, "sweat," on the part of the teacher and the students. "I wouldn't say I was a great teacher. I've seen great. I worked hard," says Rhee.
She had an epiphany of sorts. In the demoralized world of inner-city schools, it is easy to become resigned to poor results—and to blame the environment, not the schools themselves. Broken families, crime, drugs, all conspire against academic achievement. But Rhee discovered that teachers could make the critical difference. "It drives me nuts when people say that two thirds of a kid's academic achievement is based on their environment. That is B.S.," says Rhee. She points to her second graders in Baltimore whose scores rose from worst to best. "Those kids, where they lived didn't change. Their parents didn't change. Their diets didn't change. The violence in the community didn't change. The only thing that changed for those 70 kids was the adults who were in front of them every single day teaching them.”
And neither, as it turns out, did their academic achievement change much. The University of Maryland Baltimore County was commissioned by the Baltimore City School System to conduct a study of seven privatized elementary schools, one of which was Harlem Park Elementary, the school at which Rhee taught. On August 2, 1995, the day after the report was released, the Baltimore Sun's Jean Thompson reported of Tesseract, the name given the the schools by their corporate owner:
THOMPSON (8/2/95): Baltimore's privately managed public schools show little difference from comparable city-run schools on test results, attendance, parent involvement—or even cleanliness, an evaluation released yesterday found.
The report, prepared by the Center for Educational Research at University of Maryland Baltimore County, represents the first outside evaluation of the closely watched Education Alternatives Inc. experiment.
While reporting few positive results in achievement, the report said, "Change takes time and there has been an investment in the first three years that can be recouped by continuation."
[…]
In scholarly terms, the study lays out EAI's academic struggle: Only in the past year has the Minnesota-based management firm improved test scores to near the levels recorded at its schools before EAI assumed control in 1991.
Researchers said that with 11.2 percent more money, with new computers and with college-educated interns in its classrooms, the firm's schools don't do significantly better than seven comparable elementary schools run by the city.
"The evaluation team found Tesseract and comparison schools more alike than different," the study says.
It adds, "The promise that EAI could improve instruction without spending more than Baltimore City was spending on schools has been discredited."
Intensely watched nationally as the largest experiment in school privatization so far, the company's "Tesseract" program—the name comes from a children's book about time travel—has spent $106 million in public funds since 1992.
This didn't inspire Rhee to object to the "outstanding success" claimed for her on the website of District of Columbia mayor Fenty nor of the nonprofit, the New Teacher Project, she headed. Nor was she deterred from telling The Washington Times' Harry Jaffe, in yet another adoring profile
The experience I had in Baltimore was I went into one of the poorest, most segregated communities in Baltimore. I taught at a school with 100 percent African-American kids, most all of them on free and reduced lunch. I was in the neighborhood where they later filmed The Wire....
In my second year of teaching, we took them from the bottom to the top on academics, and what I learned from that experience was these kids were getting screwed because people wanted to blame their low achievement levels on the single-parent households and on the poverty in the community. In that two-year period, none of those things changed. Their parents didn’t change.... (only) What we were doing with them in school.
The acclaim kept on coming, though, as Jack Gellum and Marisol Bello report today in USA Today
In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its "shining stars."
Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes' students scored "proficient" or "advanced" in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.
Because of the remarkable turnaround, the U.S. Department of Education named the school in northeast Washington a National Blue Ribbon School. Noyes was one of 264 public schools nationwide given that award in 2009.
Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes' staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.
But they note
A closer look at Noyes, however, raises questions about its test scores from 2006 to 2010. Its proficiency rates rose at a much faster rate than the average for D.C. schools. Then, in 2010, when scores dipped for most of the district's elementary schools, Noyes' proficiency rates fell further than average.
A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.
Additionally
Among the 96 schools that were then flagged for wrong-to-right erasures were eight of the 10 campuses where Rhee handed out so-called TEAM awards "to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff," as the district's website says. Noyes was one of these.
Rhee didn't erase anything on her own- managers know not to do the dirty work themselves but to put subtle pressure on their subordinates to do what they want done. Rhee was no exception:
From the start, Rhee emphasized a need to raise scores, restore calm to chaotic schools and close those with lagging scores and small enrollments. She paid bonuses to principals and teachers who produced big gains on scores. She let go dozens of principals and fired at least 600 teachers. Others retired or quit.
Turnover was brisk. Richard Whitmire, author of The Bee Eater, a biography of Rhee, reported that Rhee hired 1,918 teachers during her three years in office –– about 45%of those on the payroll last October. Only 2,318 current teachers had been hired before Rhee took charge.
The pressure on principals was unrelenting, says Aona Jefferson, a former D.C. principal who is now president of the Council of School Officers, representing principals and other administrators. Every year, Jefferson says, Rhee met with each principal and asked what kind of test score gains he would post in the coming school year. Jefferson says principals told her that Rhee expected them to increase scores by 10 percentile points or more every year. "What do you do when your chancellor asks, 'How many points can you guarantee this year?' " Jefferson says. "How is a principal supposed to do that?"
But the paeans to Rhee, a star of the documentary "Waiting for Superman," continue unabated. She now heads a new nonprofit, StudentsFirst, and tours the country advising such anti-worker governors as Ohio's Kasich and Florida's Scott.
Eventually, this empty suit will lose steam. But the ideas she pushes, including evaluation of teachers by student test scores and privatization of public education, will find a new spokesperson and the schoolchildren will continue to be the pawns in their political power play.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
So Simple
Sean Hannity on Tuesday discussed President Obama's Libyan policy with a representative duo, Dana Perino and Stuart Varney, of confused conservatism. (It's a good thing he didn't ask Perino about Cuba.) The two guests remarked:
PERINO: Well, let's just say. That the left hand ought to notify the right hand as to what is going on because Secretary Clinton today was quoted saying that she has word that he's trying to leave. President Obama said he has word that he's going to go.
VARNEY: Give me some clarity of vision, please.
PERINO: Well, it is not my responsibility to give them clarity.
The Secretary of State says Khaddafy (or Gaddafi, or whatever) is trying to leave; the President says he's going to leave.
Exactly what clarity of vision is Perino/Varney referring to? There is some distance, admittedly, between "trying to" and "going to;" just as there is between between Brownsville, Texas and Mexico or ideologically between Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty.
Make that a confused trio. Two nights later, host Hannity would remark
How dangerous is this that the Obama doctrine that is emerging at all this is that, well, there's a need for humanitarian assistance. We are going to send our military and we'll going to do it with a coalition. And by the way, they may not be under the command and control of our own president. And we don't have any stated goal going in. What is this mean? Where do we go next, China, Russia, you know, Iran? Where are we going to go if that is the standard that Obama set up?
The only similarity between China or Russia and Iran, Egypt or Libya is that none of the nations boasts an American-style democratic republic. China and Russia are huge countries. They are are major powers which have developed nuclear weapons; Iran would like to. The first two are, respectively, Communist and formerly Communist. Alone among the three, Iran is dominated by Islam. And on and on.
Pretty obvious to most people, but not to Hannity, who evidently believes that intervention in Libya mandates intervention in China, Russia, and Iran. Or perhaps he would like us to believe that he believes that.
Even Yemen, currently undergoing extensive democratic protests, is different than Libya, with a government that is pro-American and approximates an approximation of a democratic republic. If only U.S. policy toward Libya could be replicated in Yemen, Egypt, or Syria- it would be so much simpler. But this is not the world of 1911 (central America), 1941 (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan) or even 1961 (Soviet Russia), but of numerous terrorist organizations, sometimes cooperating and sometimes competing with each other and with the nation-states presenting their own unique challenges.
This does not make the Obama Administration's response toward Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, or mainland China the right (or wrong) one. But the world is not allowing us the luxury of implementing a "one size fits all" approach. At least President Obama's policy, which defies easy categorization as a "Doctrine," reflects an understanding that the globe has changed since the one Sean Hannity wishes still existed.
Sean Hannity on Tuesday discussed President Obama's Libyan policy with a representative duo, Dana Perino and Stuart Varney, of confused conservatism. (It's a good thing he didn't ask Perino about Cuba.) The two guests remarked:
PERINO: Well, let's just say. That the left hand ought to notify the right hand as to what is going on because Secretary Clinton today was quoted saying that she has word that he's trying to leave. President Obama said he has word that he's going to go.
VARNEY: Give me some clarity of vision, please.
PERINO: Well, it is not my responsibility to give them clarity.
The Secretary of State says Khaddafy (or Gaddafi, or whatever) is trying to leave; the President says he's going to leave.
Exactly what clarity of vision is Perino/Varney referring to? There is some distance, admittedly, between "trying to" and "going to;" just as there is between between Brownsville, Texas and Mexico or ideologically between Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty.
Make that a confused trio. Two nights later, host Hannity would remark
How dangerous is this that the Obama doctrine that is emerging at all this is that, well, there's a need for humanitarian assistance. We are going to send our military and we'll going to do it with a coalition. And by the way, they may not be under the command and control of our own president. And we don't have any stated goal going in. What is this mean? Where do we go next, China, Russia, you know, Iran? Where are we going to go if that is the standard that Obama set up?
The only similarity between China or Russia and Iran, Egypt or Libya is that none of the nations boasts an American-style democratic republic. China and Russia are huge countries. They are are major powers which have developed nuclear weapons; Iran would like to. The first two are, respectively, Communist and formerly Communist. Alone among the three, Iran is dominated by Islam. And on and on.
Pretty obvious to most people, but not to Hannity, who evidently believes that intervention in Libya mandates intervention in China, Russia, and Iran. Or perhaps he would like us to believe that he believes that.
Even Yemen, currently undergoing extensive democratic protests, is different than Libya, with a government that is pro-American and approximates an approximation of a democratic republic. If only U.S. policy toward Libya could be replicated in Yemen, Egypt, or Syria- it would be so much simpler. But this is not the world of 1911 (central America), 1941 (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan) or even 1961 (Soviet Russia), but of numerous terrorist organizations, sometimes cooperating and sometimes competing with each other and with the nation-states presenting their own unique challenges.
This does not make the Obama Administration's response toward Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, or mainland China the right (or wrong) one. But the world is not allowing us the luxury of implementing a "one size fits all" approach. At least President Obama's policy, which defies easy categorization as a "Doctrine," reflects an understanding that the globe has changed since the one Sean Hannity wishes still existed.
Austerity Repackaged
Leave it to a Fox News analyst Stuart Varney (video, from Crooks and Liars, below) to say with words and facial expression what so many Republican politicians would state but for fear of political repercussion.
With Governor Snyder's signature Michigan, with an unemployment rate well above the national average, will become, according to Fox News' Megyn Kelly in the piece with Varney, one of the first states since the 1950s to offer state-paid unemployment benefits for fewer than 26 weeks. In this portion of the transcript, Varney cites the motive of austerity:
Michigan is going to twenty weeks and I gotta tell you, Florida is considering moving it down to twelve weeks. That would be a big crack in the established standard. It's all a response to the fact that you can't afford it. These state funded .. in that state, all of them have run out of money.
But successfully summoning considerable courage, Varney responds another question from Kelly by happily declaring
This is austerity. This is in cuts and services and benefits across the board. It's happening in state after state after state. Austerity is beginning to hit home now. The real story is how will the voters respond to this? We don't know this, but austerity is here. It bites, it hurts and it's happening now.
It bites, it hurts and it's happening now. Exclaiming with a genuine and unmistakable smile, Varney is free to exult what politicos cannot. The company line (GOP, Blue Dog Democrats, mainstream media)- that gee, we wish we didn't have to do it, but we're just so doggone broke- makes little more sense. Paul Krugman explained this week
So jobs now, deficits later was and is the right strategy. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has been abandoned in the face of phantom risks and delusional hopes. On one side, we’re constantly told that if we don’t slash spending immediately we’ll end up just like Greece, unable to borrow except at exorbitant interest rates. On the other, we’re told not to worry about the impact of spending cuts on jobs because fiscal austerity will actually create jobs by raising confidence.
How’s that story working out so far?
Self-styled deficit hawks have been crying wolf over U.S. interest rates more or less continuously since the financial crisis began to ease, taking every uptick in rates as a sign that markets were turning on America. But the truth is that rates have fluctuated, not with debt fears, but with rising and falling hope for economic recovery. And with full recovery still seeming very distant, rates are lower now than they were two years ago.
But couldn’t America still end up like Greece? Yes, of course. If investors decide that we’re a banana republic whose politicians can’t or won’t come to grips with long-term problems, they will indeed stop buying our debt. But that’s not a prospect that hinges, one way or another, on whether we punish ourselves with short-run spending cuts.
Just ask the Irish, whose government — having taken on an unsustainable debt burden by trying to bail out runaway banks — tried to reassure markets by imposing savage austerity measures on ordinary citizens. The same people urging spending cuts on America cheered. “Ireland offers an admirable lesson in fiscal responsibility,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, who said that the spending cuts had removed fears over Irish solvency and predicted rapid economic recovery.
That was in June 2009. Since then, the interest rate on Irish debt has doubled; Ireland’s unemployment rate now stands at 13.5 percent.
And then there’s the British experience. Like America, Britain is still perceived as solvent by financial markets, giving it room to pursue a strategy of jobs first, deficits later. But the government of Prime Minister David Cameron chose instead to move to immediate, unforced austerity, in the belief that private spending would more than make up for the government’s pullback. As I like to put it, the Cameron plan was based on belief that the confidence fairy would make everything all right.
But she hasn’t: British growth has stalled, and the government has marked up its deficit projections as a result.
It's not working in Ireland, it's not working in Great Britain, and there never has been much reason to believe it would work in the U.S.A. And in the federal government and in most states- as in Michigan, where the tax on large businesses has been cut- it has little to do with austerity. But the line "it's going to be painful but you deserve it" would have been, in conservative nomenclature, so politically incorrect.
Leave it to a Fox News analyst Stuart Varney (video, from Crooks and Liars, below) to say with words and facial expression what so many Republican politicians would state but for fear of political repercussion.
With Governor Snyder's signature Michigan, with an unemployment rate well above the national average, will become, according to Fox News' Megyn Kelly in the piece with Varney, one of the first states since the 1950s to offer state-paid unemployment benefits for fewer than 26 weeks. In this portion of the transcript, Varney cites the motive of austerity:
Michigan is going to twenty weeks and I gotta tell you, Florida is considering moving it down to twelve weeks. That would be a big crack in the established standard. It's all a response to the fact that you can't afford it. These state funded .. in that state, all of them have run out of money.
But successfully summoning considerable courage, Varney responds another question from Kelly by happily declaring
This is austerity. This is in cuts and services and benefits across the board. It's happening in state after state after state. Austerity is beginning to hit home now. The real story is how will the voters respond to this? We don't know this, but austerity is here. It bites, it hurts and it's happening now.
It bites, it hurts and it's happening now. Exclaiming with a genuine and unmistakable smile, Varney is free to exult what politicos cannot. The company line (GOP, Blue Dog Democrats, mainstream media)- that gee, we wish we didn't have to do it, but we're just so doggone broke- makes little more sense. Paul Krugman explained this week
So jobs now, deficits later was and is the right strategy. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that has been abandoned in the face of phantom risks and delusional hopes. On one side, we’re constantly told that if we don’t slash spending immediately we’ll end up just like Greece, unable to borrow except at exorbitant interest rates. On the other, we’re told not to worry about the impact of spending cuts on jobs because fiscal austerity will actually create jobs by raising confidence.
How’s that story working out so far?
Self-styled deficit hawks have been crying wolf over U.S. interest rates more or less continuously since the financial crisis began to ease, taking every uptick in rates as a sign that markets were turning on America. But the truth is that rates have fluctuated, not with debt fears, but with rising and falling hope for economic recovery. And with full recovery still seeming very distant, rates are lower now than they were two years ago.
But couldn’t America still end up like Greece? Yes, of course. If investors decide that we’re a banana republic whose politicians can’t or won’t come to grips with long-term problems, they will indeed stop buying our debt. But that’s not a prospect that hinges, one way or another, on whether we punish ourselves with short-run spending cuts.
Just ask the Irish, whose government — having taken on an unsustainable debt burden by trying to bail out runaway banks — tried to reassure markets by imposing savage austerity measures on ordinary citizens. The same people urging spending cuts on America cheered. “Ireland offers an admirable lesson in fiscal responsibility,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, who said that the spending cuts had removed fears over Irish solvency and predicted rapid economic recovery.
That was in June 2009. Since then, the interest rate on Irish debt has doubled; Ireland’s unemployment rate now stands at 13.5 percent.
And then there’s the British experience. Like America, Britain is still perceived as solvent by financial markets, giving it room to pursue a strategy of jobs first, deficits later. But the government of Prime Minister David Cameron chose instead to move to immediate, unforced austerity, in the belief that private spending would more than make up for the government’s pullback. As I like to put it, the Cameron plan was based on belief that the confidence fairy would make everything all right.
But she hasn’t: British growth has stalled, and the government has marked up its deficit projections as a result.
It's not working in Ireland, it's not working in Great Britain, and there never has been much reason to believe it would work in the U.S.A. And in the federal government and in most states- as in Michigan, where the tax on large businesses has been cut- it has little to do with austerity. But the line "it's going to be painful but you deserve it" would have been, in conservative nomenclature, so politically incorrect.
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