CEO's belief that white privilege just isn't high enough

As you may have heard, there was a bit of disturbance today around campus when an "educational reform" group that has received $240,000 in Koch money over the years tried to race-bait those UW-Madison liberals with statistics relating to the admission of students from different racial backgrounds. Maybe the counter-protest by the multicultural student group was a bit over the top (bum-rushing the hotel always makes the news) but as you'll see, these people were peddling a false narrative that has to be confronted and countered at every turn, and I don't have a big problem with what they did.

Well, I combed through the report, and it's research that wouldn't get you passed out of an upper-level college course. Sure, it emphasizes that the average and median white and Asian student admitted to UW scores higher on standardized test scores compared to their black and Hispanic counterparts. But why is this a noteworthy stat, especially when put into the context of black vs. white student test scores in Wisconsin, especially in the Milwaukee area?

Racial disparities also remained a problem in the state for the Class of 2011. The average composite score for black students was nearly seven points below that of white students - 16.2 compared with 23.1. Nationwide, the difference between the two groups was 5.4 points.

The percentage of 2011 graduates prepared for college-level core subject areas also varied greatly by race, with 36% of white students in Wisconsin considered ready for college classes compared with only 4% of black students......

In Milwaukee Public Schools, where all students now take the test during their junior year of high school, the predominantly minority school system's average composite score was 16....Meanwhile, students in the wealthier, suburban Whitefish Bay School District averaged 26.6 on the ACT, with about 90% of the class of 2011 taking the test.

With that in mind, the 5-6 point gap the study cites between black and white UW admittees in 2007 and 2008 is a whole lot smaller than the MPS vs. suburban difference. The statewide ACT numbers also show that Hispanics rate 4 points lower than whites in Wisconsin, and Asians interestingly are 3 points lower than whites (the report doesn't seem to show an International Asian vs. Asian-American breaksdown, so this can explain the higher UW admittee scores). So when you see the inflammatory stat in the CEO report showing that half of in-state white students would be turned down with median black admittee scores, keep the fact that the white student is actually well below the normal white advantage in scores.

And let's zoom back out a bit, because we need to realize that today's release on U.S. poverty numbers shows that blacks and Latinos have poverty rates twice that of whites, and the disparity is much wider in the Milwaukee area, as over 80% of MPS students qualify for free and reduced lunch. That's a rate as much as 4-11 times that of the high ACT-scoring districts in the suburbs. Think the low-income backgground and lack of positive reinforcement and opportunities that comes from that life has something to do with the score disparities in majority-minority MPS and the rest of the area?

Educational achievement in America is still a two-tier system between races as well, as whites are nearly 60% more likely to have a college degree than blacks, and twice as likely as Latinos. (Asians are even more likely to have a degree than whites) So when you realize that whites and Asians are more likely to come from homes with higher incomes, lower rates of poverty, and higher educational acheivement, is it any surprise that they score much higher on college tests and academic achievement in general? They have a much smaller hill to climb than the average back or Latino student, and so for a minority student to even get close to the white/Asian level indicates that ceteris paribus they performed a much higher level than their peers compared to the average white prospective UW student. If you were evaluating two candidates where they were largely similar on paper, but one clearly had overcome more to reach their destination, wouldn't you give the nod to the one that worked to get where they were at?

Being taken away from the peer group you grew up in is a serious culture shock for many minority American students when they go to a school that has 6 out of 7 students be either white or International, and while the NCAA may tout studies that show disproportionately minority athletes outperform non-athletes of all races, that makes sense as well when you think about it, because athletes are around a cohort of people with similar backgrounds and frames of reference (other athletes), and often have Athletic Department support in academic fields.

While I appreciate the time constraints and efforts that athletes put in academically (and what they do is quite an accomplishment, and a testament to a work ethic that probably went a long way toward landing them in NCAA athletics), I don't think showing up at Fall practice in August is as strange an adjustment for a minority student as a non-athlete minority may feel when he or she checks into Witte and English 207 after coming from a majority-minority school in a low-income neighborhood. Sure, the CEO types may whine about the lower retention rates, but throw those D.C. oligarchs into an inner-city company that actually requires work and proof for a living, and see if they make it, or if they pack it in and try something else. It goes much further than the whole "minorities fail because they didn't deserve to be there" argument, and the older I have gotten, the more I appreciate the breaks I got in being born to a white family that appreciated education and always laid out a pathway to success. It allowed me the chance to struggle, screw up and find my way through that many low-income and minority students never can recover from. But unlike the average 262 suburban, I am grateful for the break, and am determined to take advantage of the strong hand I've been dealt, instead of being fearful that I'll lose it or that someone else will get a good hand as well.

So these Koch whores at their Virginia think tank got rightfully reamed out of the Doubletree. These fake scholars know the real answers to solving these disparities in education don't come from whipping up resentment by whites and Asians who have enjoyed many advantages their black and Latino counterparts had. Nor is it through school vouchers that allow a select few to run away from a local school district (vouchers don't really improve outcomes anyway). Instead, it's acknowledging the two-tier society that still exists, but doing so would require the Koch whores to demand real solutions that deal with poverty and this country's obscene inequality of wealth, and that's the LAST thing those guys want angry white slugs to think about. Better to play the "affirmative action" and "crucified white guys" card, and keep 'em distracted than do anything that might cost their corporate benefactors another dime in a potential income stream.

Walker Admin. hacks- the real story of the voter ID blowup

While the voter ID fiasco in Wisconsin is reason enough to want to blow this corrupt, voter-suppressing administration out the door, there's a bigger story related to this. And that story involves the hackery and political favortism of Walker appointees at the highest levels of Wisconsin government.

Take the two DOT officials at the head of the voter ID story. The writer of the memo asking DMV employees not to mention free IDs to customers is Steve Krieser, a "recently-promoted" executive assistant. Krieser is a former GOP operative and Capitol staffer that clearly used those connections to land his current gig. Then, when a grunt worker sent an email saying that people could get free IDs and that the word should go out to others, did the DMV reward him for providing quality customer service and saving taxpayers some money? Hell no, they fired him, and the person who concocted a cover story about "documented rule violations" is another high-ranking DOT guy named John Murray.

And who is John Murray? Another former Capitol staffer who got a second job when he was elected this year as the Mayor of Sun Prairie. A Wisconsin State Journal article noted last month that Murray has worked with right-wing City Council allies to have both his City Administrator and No.2 person leave in the last 2 weeks in one of Wisconsin's fastest-growing cities. Also in the article is a point about how an unnamend source says "The people running the city now absolutely hate government and want it completely open for business." And by open for business, we know that means "unregulated growth and tax giveaways to companies."

So here are two former GOP staffers getting appointed by a GOP governor and are in charge of the implementation of a major change in state policy. Now, do you believe they will work for the taxpayers that pay their salary, or the elected officials they owe their careers to? EXACTLY. And this is what was one of the most dangerous parts of the "budget repair" bill was- turning numerous civil service positions into appointed positions. Allowing a key spot in state government to be left up to the whims of elected officials and the intersts who pay for their elections means any disloyal or overly honest employee can be replaced by a yes man/woman who will be working for the Fitzwalkerstanis, and not the people that they're supposed to serve (and get paid by).

But hiring unqualified/ corrupt hacks is the WisGOP way. Walker couldn't have pulled a lot of his union-busting ploys if the Legislature had gone along with $100 million in concessions from state workers in December. One of the guys who held that up, outgoing Sen. Jeff Plale, who was rewarded for his "no" vote by first getting a high-level DOA job and then being promoted to Railroad Commissioner last month.

And Plale's hardly the only one. Remember Randy Hopper mistress Valerie Cass using Hopper's pull to land her prime gig? How about Spalding Smails...ERRR.....Brian Deschane? Remember him, the 2-time DUI college dropout who just so happened to be the son of the head of the Road Builders and parlayed that connection into an $80K job? There's also Rich in Retail, the slimy POS who secretly recorded a union official outside of a Milwaukee bar and now has a good gig for the state? Apparently his deeds were duly noted by the Walker boys.

And we're not even going into the recently-departed Cindy Archer and Tom Nardelli, who went along with Walker from Milwaukee to Madison, only to take leave of their 6-figure jobs within a few months due to the always- sketchy "personal reasons".

The point is that the voter ID absurdity isn't just a voter suppression story, it's a "GOP hackery" story. Which really isn't surprising, because if you don't believe that government does things right, isn't it in your interest to put people in charge that will cheat and screw it up to "prove" your point? This is what happens when you elect Republicans to high levels of office in the 2010s- kissing the right ass and helping people politically matters much more to people than providing results and quality serivce to the taxpayers.

And now you know what I meant 6 months ago when I said that public sector unions are needed now more than ever. There needs to be that independent line of defense from elected and appointed hacks that serve Wisconsinites first, and politics second. In Walker World, that isn't happening, and that's as big a reason as any to recall these bums.

Health reform and Steve and Tracy, 1 year later

You may recall a couple of items on this blog discussing my friends Steve and Tracy and the hell insurance companies put them through as they battled serious ailments. Well, Steve got a chance to tell some of his story this week, as Rep. Jon Richards and Sen. Jon Erpenbach introduced a Wisconsin "Patients Bill of Rights", and they even give Steve a bit of face time in the process. (He's got some funny stories about how he had to shorten up his speech and how the other 2 guests weren't exactly as hard-pressed, which I might bring up later on the subject of Capitol hackery).

They concentrate more on their constant battles with the insurance companies to keep Tracy insured as she deals with Stage 4 cancer (which she's greatly improved against over the last 12 months, I'm happy to say), but Steve's story in having to get spinal fusion surgery overseas because they couldn't get the surgery here is no less disgusting to me.

And that's nowhere near as disgusting as DHS head and Heritage Foundation hack Dennis Smith's lies and deceptions in an attempt to funnel more blood money to insurance companies. As a former Milwaukee East Sider, I'm very happy to see Richards be the one co-sponsoring the bill, and seeing Erpenbach's name attached to it is also interesting, especially given how he stepped to the forefront this week in the smoking gun on how voter ID is nothing more than a voter-suppressing poll tax. With these two big moves and with Reps Roys and Pocan annuncing they will run for Congress, anyone else sense "Erpenbach for Governor" momentum building?

In the meantime, it's up to Dem politicians to keep the struggles of people like Steve and Tracy in the spotlight and highlight just how little the average Republican values profit over decency If they do so, I think a lot of GOPs will be losing their government-sponsored health care over the next 16 months.

Labor Day- needed in Wisconsin more than ever

Want even more evidence of how low taxes on the rich and union busting = an increasing unequal system? I checked out the corporate profits from 3Q 1996- 2Q 1997 (good times with big growth), 3Q 2000- 2Q 2001 (leading into recession and shrinking profits), and 3Q 2010- 2Q 2011 for today. As you'll see, despite the fact that we're in a similar GDP situation to early 2001 with a stalling expansion, the amount of profits compared to the overall economy has boomed since the Bush tax cuts.

corporate profits as % of U.S. GDP
1997 10.41%
2001 7.77%
2011 12.64%

So the share of corporate profits is 20% higher now than in 1997. And that hasn't gone over into total compensation to workers with the same stat, and has dropped in the same time period.

employee compensation as % of U.S. GDP
1997 56.06%
2001 57.64%
2011 54.85%

Now check out to how that translates in Wisconsin for the same time period, and how much these entities are taxed here. For this case, we'll look at how income taxes compare to corporate taxes as a share of Wisconsin revenues for the following fiscal years, which fall in the same time periods (3Q-2Q). (Good historical stuff from the LFB here on the subject)

1997 51.69% income, 7.30% corporate
2001 51.24% income, 5.34% corporate
2011 51.90% income, 6.61% corporate

And lastly, let's combine these two stats from above, and create an index to see if we're proportionally taxing corporations and individuals at the same amounts that they make. (% of Wisc. revenues/ % of overall income vs. GDP * 100) If there is equal taxation, this index should remain constant, as corporations will pay more taxes as they make higher profits, and it'll even out.

1997- 92.22 income, 70.12 corporate
2001- 88.90 income, 68.73 corporate
2011- 94.62 income, 52.29 corporate

Yeah, not so equal. The share real workers pay has gone up, while corporations' index is DOWN BY MORE THAN A QUARTER. And we're not even talking about the many property tax exemptions and TIF districts corporations pull compared to everyday homeowners.



Now do you see why I think we need to get up, and take the fight back to those who have STOLEN so much from us? Let's make the unproductive fat cats feel the fist over the next 14 months, frequently and fiercely. And make anyone pay who supports the oligarchs who have robbed this country of the middle class that made this country the greatest on earth.

Labor Day- needed more than ever in America

The attempts to downplay Labor Day and the need and importance of unions (as illustrated by this J-S article today) ignore the simple truth in this country. As we have deindustrialized, deunionized, and cut taxes for the rich, the average American worker has had their money taken from them, and sent upward.

First of all, workers produce more than ever over the last 20+ years, and have gotten nothing for it. Check out this picture.


In other words, productivity has gone up 3 times the amount of wages. So much for that Econ 101 theory that people are paid increased real wages at the same amount that they increase productivity.

This is one of the many findings in an excellent article from the Economic Policy Institute earlier this year. Here are the two real kicker parts.

This two decades worth of low pay growth is part of an even longer trend of wage stagnation for the typical worker: median hourly wages only grew 10.1% in real terms from 1979 to 2009, even though productivity grew 80% in those 30 years. Since virtually all of this real wage growth occurred in the six years from 1996 to 2002, reflecting the wage momentum of the strong economic recovery in the late-1990s, it is fair to say that there has been no real wage growth for the typical worker for most of the last 30 years. Analyses of total compensation that factor in the value of employee benefits yield the same result because nonwage benefits as a share of total compensation also have failed to grow since 1979, meaning benefits did not grow faster than wages....

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also has recently noted the failure of compensation to keep pace with productivity (they grew in tandem from 1947-73). That productivity-pay gap is the bigger story here than any public-private pay gap: The ability of the economy to produce more goods and services has not translated into greater compensation for workers.

Hmmm, why did things change in the last 30+ years vs. the post-World War II period? You know, the period where a huge amount of Americans joined the middle class, had millions of "first generation in college" members, and America became the Western world's clear economic and military superpower.

Think it might have something to do with the fact that the top income tax rates from 1947-1973 were between 70 and 91 percent while they were dropped from 70% to 50% in 1981, and have been between 28% and 39.6% since 1988 (the time shown on the graph)? And as the EPI article brings up, the only time we've had real wage growth is in 1996 to 2002- a time that had the highest tax rates on the rich over the last 25 years.

Know what else we had back then? High levels of unionization. In post-World War II America, unionization was between 25 and 30 percent until the early 1970s, and stayed over 20% until Reagan. (See figure 1) Not coincidentally, as real wages have slacked productivity in the last 3 decades union membership has fallen from 20.1 % to 11.9% since 1983. Amazing how not having a voice in the workplace allows you to have the worth of your work stolen from you and given to the owners, isn't it?

And in this case, I will say correlation = causation. 65 years of correlation isn't an anomaly, because it isn't very worthwhile to hoard profits and pay CEO's and executives absurd salaries at the detriment of your workers if you're going to be taxed at high rates for doing so. This is what happened in America in the 1940s to the 1970s, when we had mobility that 95% of us can only dream of nowadays. And unless we have a real labor movement and a government willing to counteract the power of corporations and big-money greed, we will never get it back.

Walker budget already working- people paying more, corporates less, deficit coming

Those end of the fiscal year revenue numbers finally came out on Friday, conveniently dumped before a holiday weekend. This only shows the numbers through the end of June, but we're already seeing the effects of the Fitzwalkerstani takeover seeping in. As the report notes, one group paid more, and another paid less than expected in May.

Revenues from the individual income tax and the sales and use tax were higher than the estimates by $10.6 million and $19.0 million, respectively. These increases were offset by lower than anticipated revenues from the corporate income and franchise tax ($27.1 million) and the cigarette tax ($15.2 million). The remaining tax sources had smaller variances.

Seems even when put that way, and the FY2011 revenues only came up $12.8 million short of the new and improved revenue numbers revealed last May. (These were the estimates which showed how huge a lie Walker made when he claimed the state was "broke", as $636 million in new revenues for FY2011, 2012 and 2013 were revealed as the result of an improved situation due to the budget passed by Jim Doyle and the Dems in 2009)

Now, the $27 million in lower corporate taxes basically cancels the higher amount of income and sales taxes, but here's the kicker. That $27 million is 3% less than what the LFB expected in May, so apparently companies are more than willing to grab a piece of those tax breaks Walker signed in his first month in office. You know, right before he "dropped the bomb" and claimed that public employees had to sacrifice for a state that had an impossible deficit over the next 2 years? All workers in Wisconsin certainly paid a lot more in over the last fiscal year than corporations, as income taxes went up 10% over FY 2010, and sales taxes went up 4.2% while the state only got 2.2% more out of corporations.

Then you look at the 6 months of the Fitzwalkerstan regime, and the skewing toward workers and away from corporations is even worse. I'll compare January to June figures for the last 2 years.

Inco. tax $3.076B $3.554B +15.5%
Sales tax $2.293B $2.373B +3.5% (slowdown vs. 1st half of FY)
Corp. tax $0.505B $0.489B -3.3%

And the worse part with those lower corporate taxes is that U.S. corporate profits were UP 8.5% over the same time period, and Wisconsin personal income was only up 5.7% Year-over-Year in the first 3 months of 2011 (2nd Q 2011 isn't up yet for Wisconsin.) So either Wisconsin companies are inept, or Walker gave away the farm at the expense of people that actually work, and the workers ended up paying the taxes.

Of course, worse-than-expected employment numbers for 2011 and a falling economy would drop a lot of these revenue numbers. And remember what happened in month 1 of FY 2012? That's right, 8,200 jobs lost on a seasonally-adjusted basis. The allegedly "balanced" budget for 2011-2012 had $14.058 billion in revenues, but this included an $86 million carryover balance, with lower revenues already cutting $12.8 from that (the carryover would be even less if expenses go up above expectations). So let's throw in the $12.8 million drop in FY2011 revenues, and we run the numbers and we find that in order to meet FY 2012's budgeted revenue numbers, the Walker boys need revenues to go up 8.3% for the next 12 months. By comparison, last year's upside surprise netted a 6.4% increase in revenues. Somehow, when you're already losing jobs, seeing a massive increase in public employee retirements and reducing the take-home pay of those left with pre-tax deductions on pensions and health care, I don't think they're making those numbers. And even if they get half that increase at 4.2%, they still miss by over half a billion dollars. That is well over the 0.5% 2-year budget mark to trigger a budget repair bill.

And Friday also revealed ZERO job growth in the U.S. for August, the worst performance in 11 months overall, and with lower revisions to previous months, only 872,000 jobs added for the entire year. The LFB figured there'd be 1.6 million jobs created in 2011, so unless 182,000 a jobs a month are created for the rest of this year (With the Baggers in Congress and teachers not being rehired? HAH!), those numbers will fall short. Nor do I see us hitting 2.7% GDP growth when we've been muddling around 1.5% for the last year and 0.7% in the last 6 months.

So in other words, not only has the worker class gotten the short end of the stick in having to pay taxes under Scott Walker, his "tools" and tax moves aren't going to balance the budget, like his talk radio lackeys like to say it will. And the best part about all this? The first 3 months of revenues will come out from the DOR in late October....about 10 days before Walker's recall petitions can start circulating. There's going to be even more ammo to stock up on to back those petitions up once that budget deficit starts to open up in late 2011.

On the road again

Off to Indiana for the weekend to see a good friend get married on Saturday (an outdoor ceremony at 93 degrees, hoo boy). I'll see if I notice anything from the state that has this feather in its cap.

Over the year, 24 states experienced statistically significant changes in employment, 23 of which were increases....The only
state with an over-the-year statistically significant decrease was Indiana (-28,300).

Nice to know that Mitch Daniels' "privatize everything and hoard $1 billion surpluses" strategy is working so well. You know, the one that Scott Walker wants to follow here.

I got the weekend off to a good start last night by watching Bucky roll up UNLV. Sure, it was a bit steamy, but nowhere near as hot as this offense looked last night. If the Brewers start taking this pennant race seriously again, Fall could be an epic season in Wisconsin sports history. Good times.